Product Details

• Actors: Tully Marshall, Laura La Plante, Creighton Hale, Harold Lloyd
• Directors: Paul Leni, Hal Roach
• Format: NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Kino International
• Run Time: 102 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305111642
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #507,714 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scared spitless at age 5!, October 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Cat & the Canary: Includes the Harold Lloyd short "Haunted Spooks" [VHS] (VHS Tape)

When I saw this movie at age five (I'm now 67), I had nightmares over the scene of the panels opening behind the bed, and for years, would not sit with my back against the wall! Any wall! The scene of the snagged gown on the staircase, and looking for the "monster" in the subterranean tunnels left it's mark on me for many years. And here my mother, who screened everything I saw, knowing I was prone to having nighmares, thought the movie was about a "cat" and a "bird!" Not only was I amazed to find this 1927 film on Amazon.com, I'm looking forward to facing the "demons" that had such a profound effect on my youth. Thank you Amazon.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is why German filmmakers dominated early horror films, February 6, 2001

By 

P. I. Johnson (Cape Town, South Africa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cat & the Canary: Includes the Harold Lloyd short "Haunted Spooks" [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Director Paul Leni is yet another exceptional filmmaker in the German expressionist style (cf. F.W. Murnau; Karl Freund; Paul Wegener; Robert Wiene; Henrik Galeen etc.) which dominated horror movies in the silent era. He is perhaps most regarded by horror fans for his interesting blend of expressionist style and humour (if you can believe that!) in this effective 1927 silent version of the oft-remade The Cat and the Canary. An important acquisition for collectors tracking the development of knowing humour and self-referential awareness in the genre (a la Scream; Abbott and Costello meets Frankenstein etc), Leni's early entry has an appealing couple joining an avaricious bunch of grotesques for the reading of a wealthy relative's will. The will requires them to spend a night in the eerie house - the perfect pretext for Leni to subject his characters to an audacious fright night, incorporating secret panels, a broken clock that reactivates and a pair of creepy, clawing hands. Mixing decisive genre spice into the concoction, an escaped lunatic from a nearby asylum is added to the gallery of terror faced by the central characters. From a gloriously deranged opening scene depicting an old man menaced by a malevolent giant cat in a room surrealistically filled with giant medicine bottles, the movie sustains a chilly ambience aided in no small part by characteristically expressive camera, lighting and set design choices. Much better - in my opinion anyway than Roland West's The Bat (1926) - another old dark house classic from that early period. Pioneeringly, Cat and the Canary also strikes a confident balance of laughs and chills. A seminal forerunner of the "old dark house" mystery sub-genre, Cat and the Canary also anticipates many other great movies to follow - Dead of Night (1945) in particular comes to mind - that also succeed in nailing down a satisfying blend of horror and irreverence.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thrills, chills, and humor in a dark eerie mansion!, November 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Cat & the Canary: Includes the Harold Lloyd short "Haunted Spooks" [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Greedy relatives, disappearing victims, and a dark eerie mansion make for some splendid thrills and chills in this silent movie which "opened the door" for haunted house movies to come. Richly sprinkled with some great dry humor throughout (and a most unwitting hero), "The Cat and the Canary" is a must for connoisseurs of both silent films and the horror/thriller genre.