The Cat and the Canary
Synopsis
Rich old Cyrus West's relatives are waiting for him to die so they can inherit. But he stipulates that his will be read 20 years after his death. On the appointed day his expectant heirs arrive at his brooding mansion. The will is read and it turns out that Annabelle West, the only heir with his name left, inherits, if she is deemed sane. If she isn't, the money and some diamonds go to someone else, whose name is in a sealed envelope. Before he can reveal the identity of her successor to Annabelle, Mr. Crosby, the lawyer, disappears. The first in a series of mysterious events, some of which point to Annabelle in fact being unstable.
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The Cat and the Canary is probably most notable for showing off the considerable talents of its director, the criminally underrated Expressionist Paul Leni, as the camera prowls the environs of an old dark house with the gracefulness of a cat, while the actors bob around like canaries, forming uneasy alliances and plotting against one another. The cast is well chosen. Laura La Plante makes a lovely heroine, while bespectacled Creighton Hale makes an agreeable, somewhat Harold Lloyd-like hero. Tully Marshall and Martha Mattox represent, none too flatteringly, the older generation; the former has the face of a drawn, white prune, while the latter makes a perfect battle-axe as the ironically named Mammy Pleasant. By today's standards the movie isn't…
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Entertaining dark and spooky film. Imitated by many horror films that followed.
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The June Challenge: 16 of 100
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The Cat And The Canary epitomizes everything I find insufferable about silent films. Overcooked, overacted, static, and insanely boring, this tale of a group of potential heirs to the estate of a relative who died twenty years ago, who are all gathered together for the reading of the will in his spooky old house, wears out its welcome very early after one of the characters dies and everybody else becomes a suspect. The film wants to be a mystery, a horror, a romance, and a comedy all at the same time, but what it really made me want to do was turn it off and watch Clue instead. There are some pretty neat… -
The story sounds like something you'd expect from a 50's B movie: old man dies and there are several heirs to his fortune. But here's the catch: only one person will get it that person has stay for one night in his mansion and remain sane the following morning to claim it.
Cue lots of happenings that night. The sequence of the necklace theft is spooky even to modern standards. Worth seeking out if you can.
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The Cat and the Canary (1927)
7/10
Written for my Masters of Horror post on Paul Leni
One of the first haunted house films that came out under the Universal brand, the most influential of those directed by Paul Leni during his stay in the United States, spawning a genre on its own and at the same time introducing most of the elements that fill the screen and give visual luxury in terms of cinematography (beyond to what ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ (1925) could do at the time, even if that film is much better than this one) and how the characters move inside the frame. There’s also a play on the captions used for dialogue, transforming them and… -
Lacking in charm and just not that interesting.
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I always tend to get a bit soft and emotional when commenting on old films, such as the 1927 version of "The Cat and the Canary". Just imagine … 85 years of age, this film is, and it still manages to find its way to new audiences. Everyone of the cast and crew is long dead and – to put it a bit less respectful – decomposed – but at least their legacy will live on for much longer than mine or yours (probably). "The Cat and the Canary" even still reaches fairly large new audiences, as I watched it in an artsy theater during a thematic festival and complete with musical guidance on the piano. Paul Leni's version of…
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The Cat and the Canary is probably most notable for showing off the considerable talents of its director, the criminally underrated Expressionist Paul Leni, as the camera prowls the environs of an old dark house with the gracefulness of a cat, while the actors bob around like canaries, forming uneasy alliances and plotting against one another. The cast is well chosen. Laura La Plante makes a lovely heroine, while bespectacled Creighton Hale makes an agreeable, somewhat Harold Lloyd-like hero. Tully Marshall and Martha Mattox represent, none too flatteringly, the older generation; the former has the face of a drawn, white prune, while the latter makes a perfect battle-axe as the ironically named Mammy Pleasant. By today's standards the movie isn't…
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I was in the mood for an old horror film; I found this one on Netflix Watch Instantly; I watched the movie; there is, now, another Letterboxd review of it.
That almost sounds dismissive, which is not at all befitting the high quality attributable to Leni's spookhouse picture. Attempting to go past the unshakable novelty that this movie takes place somewhere near the area in which I grew up (sue me), Canary is a film whose simple, strangely amiable horror plottings are enlivened by a German Expressionist eye. These are not Calagari-level designs, but they're capable of handing what's sort of like a long Scooby-Doo episode intangible atmosphere so sorely missing in much of the genre nowadays.
The Cat and the Canary is quick, beautiful, and, no matter the extra step taken in stylings, contains zero pretensions about what it's supposed to do. That's just how I like my horror.
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Entertaining dark and spooky film. Imitated by many horror films that followed.