Customer Reviews

Cat & the Canary: Includes the Harold Lloyd short "Haunted Spooks" [VHS]

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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.

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.

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.

It all began in 1927 with this film. It took a German director (Paul Leni) to teach America how to make haunted house films; and there have been hundreds of imitators. The whole repertoire is there: corridors with curtains blowing in the wind, trick bookcase/doors, mysterious sliding panels, corpses that fall stiffly toward the camera as a door opens, secret passages, the eerie housekeeper.

The expressionist prologue begins with the death of Cyrus West, a millionaire paranoid who felt like a canary in a cage surrounded by ravenous catlike relatives (hence the title) in his lonely castle-like mansion on the Hudson. We get a chance to see these relatives, but most of them come across as ineffectual and somewhat funny. In fact, after the first 15 minutes, Leni begins to have some fun with the story. We lose track of all the complications, until everything comes clear in the last reel. The grim-faced housekeeper, "Mammy Pleasant," is hilariously spooky; and the rest of the cast, including stars Laura La Plante and Creighton Hale, put in a good performance.

This Kino release is based on a print from the mammoth David Bradley Collection. It is paired with an innocuous Harold Lloyd short entitled "Haunted Spooks," produced by Hal Roach. I think that CAT AND THE CANARY should have starred Lloyd in the Creighton Hale role: It seemed to be made for him.

The Cat and the Canary is the epitome of an "old dark house" film. It begins with a backstory about a wealthy man who lives in a scary mansion on a hill. His family drives him crazy with their constant greed, hoping he will die and leave them his inheritance. When he does pass on, it is said his ghost lurks in the house, but the family does not seem to mind that since they are to congregate in hopes of being named the heir to the estate. When one of them is named, that person becomes the brunt of the family's bullying and strange events make them wonder if the new heir is sane after all.

Some of the lesser known names of the silent era adorn this film's cast. Laura la Plante, Tully Marshall, and Gertrude Astor bring sophistication, eerieness, and beauty to the film. The original music score is accented by a few sound effects which help dramaticize the movie.

Also included on this VHS is a comical story similar to The Cat and the Canary. It stars Harold Lloyd as a man who is roped into marriage so his new wife can win an estate. It features many hilarious scenes, including Lloyd's attempted suicides.