Customer Reviews
Stylish, scary and funny - By: C. O. DeRiemer, 18 Jun 2007 
If you have a sense of humor, like a good fright & are unsure whether or not you can tolerate the old silent films, this is one to start out with. It's clever, scary, eerie & funny. One critic said it looked like Hollywood gothic. The director, Paul Leni, came over from Germany & brought a whole bag of German film tricks with him...weird shadows on staircases, images superimposed on other images & billowing drapes. One character looks like a first cousin to Dr. Caligari. Another has fingernails that would make a manicurist retch.
An eccentric, rich old man diedin his huge, grotesque mansion. His relatives had circled around him "like cats around a canary." He stipulated that his will was only to be opened twenty years after his death, at midnight; that the person inheriting had to be examined & declared sane by the end of the night; & that if the person is judged insane then another person, namedin a second sealed envelope, will inherit. And so, on a dark & stormy night, the relatives gather. The will is read & the inheritor is a young woman, Annabelle West (Laura La Plante), who was the most distant relative. But what of the others...the lawyer who reads the will, the tall, enigmatic man & his more forthright cousin, who appear to dislike each other intensely; the young, feckless man who seems more fearful than brave; & the rather vapid young woman & her sour aunt. Hoveringin the background is Mammy Pleasant, the dour housekeeper who has lived by herselfin the mansion for 20 years. She has a glare that can freeze your toes. If that isn't enough, the group learns that a madman has escaped from a nearby asylum & is hiding on the grounds orin the mansion.
This movie has everything...sliding doors, hidden passages, clutching hands, lost diamonds, jealousy & murder. It also has two winning performances by Laura La Plante & Creighton Hale (as the timid young man). Most of all, it has style & humor mixedin with the scares. The movie is a lot of fun. The restored DVD picture looks very good, especially when considering the movie is nearly 80 years old; it's easy to watch. There are two background scores that come with the movie. I played the one by Eric Beheim & enjoyed it almost as much as I did the movie.
The Canary still sings! - By: Mr. T. Darragh, 24 May 2006 Paul Leni's fantastic 1927 "old dark house" film of the then very successful play "The Cat & the Canary" still packs a cinematic punch that none of the later remakes could even approach. The film is played completely straight & the German imprssionist cinema that Leni had proved so successful within his homeland translated to Hollywood without a shadow lost or a set that would let it down. Laura La Plante is a heroine-in-peril without parallel & the cast of characters that surround herin this creepy, truly brilliant piece of cinema history all give 100 per cent support. The plot has been imitated more times than one could count, but never equalled. The cinemaphotgrapy, with its use of light & darkness, shadows & light & the cage-like framing of the damselin distress is a joy to behold. Leni died just two years after making this movie, but I challenge anyone to realise that this is a "silent movie". (In reality there was no such genre, just movies without spoken dialogue & usually an excellent score, as Leni's film now possesses to assist the atmospherics). See it & delightin it, it is one of a kind & as gripping & funny - & above all, superbly cast - today as it wasin 1927! Tom Darragh, Dublin, Ireland.
