The Cat and The Canary

The Cat and the Canary

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Joyce in bed with a disembodied hand making for her throat

Is there anything as unfashionable right now as a Bob Hope movie? The Cat and the Canary is as good a place to start as any if you want to start understanding the huge appeal Hope once had. Bear in mind that this movie was made in 1939, before he teamed up with Bing Crosby in the Road movies, which propelled the familiar Hope character – quipping and cowardly – to even greater heights. It’s a remake of a 1927 silent movie of the same name by Paul Leni, one of the great directors, largely forgotten these days because he died young, aged 44, a year after he arrived in Hollywood just as … Read more

The Cat and the Canary

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Annabelle in bed with a hand hovering over her

The director Paul Leni died just as the talkies were coming in, but even so his name still has clout 100+ years on. 1927’s The Cat and the Canary reminds us why. It’s not only a cracking whodunit, and a demonstration of technical wizardry but is also a masterpiece of gothic expressionism… done only semi-seriously. Leni later directed The Man Who Laughs and he’s also having a lot of fun here. The plot is so familiar Agatha Christie might have written it – a group of people gather in a spooky old house to hear the reading of the will of a relative who died 20 years before. This will make one of the … Read more