German Silent Era master Paul Leni (Waxworks, The Man Who Laughs), creates a genre-defining work with Alfred Cohn’s (The Jazz Singer) adaptation of John Willard’s 1922 stage play, The Cat and the Canary. Leni fills the screen with a conglomeration of killers, Machiavellian alliances, and ghosts while never lapsing into narrative convolution as the film culminates into a resounding, taunt horror mystery. The pacing, cinematography, and casting all combine into a work which is second only to Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in its influence upon horror cinema.
Cyrus West (uncredited) has been haunted by his relatives, who have been eagerly anticipating his death so that they can obtain his wealth, which is comprised of diamonds, a mansion, and cash. Upon his demise, he leaves a will which is to be read twenty years hence. At the appointed time, the West family returns to the mansion shortly before the stroke of midnight, when the contents of the will are to be disclosed by the family attorney, Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall, Sergeant York, Intolerance, Scarface, A Tale of Two Cities, Grand Hotel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Cyrus’s fortune goes to Annabelle (Laura La Plante), the only person whom didn’t fervently desire his death. However, she is only able to collect her inheritance after a psychiatric evaluation to assure that the deceased’s wealth will be in the hands of a sound mind (so as to assure that she won’t succumb to mental fatigue brought upon by the remaining heirs), otherwise the fortune will shift to an unnamed individual in an undisclosed, secondary will. As the occupants of the West mansion await the arrival of the Doctor Ira Lazar (Lucien Littlefield, whom I’m assuming wasn’t cast solely due to ironically appropriate first name given the role), ominous occurrences take place, beginning with the disappearance of Crosby (who holds the secondary will), all of which lead directly back to Annabelle. Alliances form and are immediately questioned as Annabelle’s well being and sanity comes into question.
Arguably, second only to Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in relation to its influence regarding its subject matter, Paul Leni’s silent masterpiece readily establishes many motifs for the haunted house genre. Cinematographer Gilbert Warrenton shoots the entirety of the picture with a red-orange gel, thus giving the atmosphere an eerie resonance as the West family filters into Cyrus’s mansion before creeping, catlike, throughout the corridors of the house. The film opens with a double exposure of Cyrus as three gargantuan black felines paw maliciously at him, thus representing the West family prompting his lapse into insanity before his demise. The momentary pacts the family members form in anticipation of the Lazar’s assessment add to the suspense before we are introduced to a prison guard (George Siegmann, Intolerance, The Birth of a Nation), who informs the house’s occupants that a maniac, dubbed “The Cat” due to the mammalian nature of his murders, has recently escaped and was last seen entering the mansion. Thus, atop the threat that the relatives themselves might become homicidal, we are given an unidentified psycho, the possibility that Cyrus’s ghost still haunts the estate, a creepy doctor whose intentions may or may not be all that pure, as well as a cloaked, Chaney-esque individual residing in the basement of the West estate.
Aside from creating a quagmire of ambiguity which leaves the viewer unsettled, Leni establishes, not only a horror mystery, but also a horror comedy using the figure of Paul Jones (Creighton Hale, Casablanca, Sunset Blvd., The Maltese Falcon, Sergeant York, Yankee Doodle Dandy) as the comic, good-natured gimp. A Harold Lloyd throwback, Paul only haphazardly considers being a millionaire for a second but, as soon as Crosby announces Annabelle as heir, his benevolence shines through once more (yet, Leni does allow that Paul might be feigning kindness in order to get closer to Annabelle). We watch as he blows a tire on his way to the West mansion and, upon his arrival, begins to tell and retell his near-death experience–a gunshot intended for him (that is, the sound of the exploding tire)–countless times, beginning the tale anew whenever a character enters the frame. Yet, Hale isn’t the only one to hold his own within the film. Laura La Plante as Annabelle does a stunning job as the vulnerable heir to the West fortune as she is bombarded with self-doubt in the wake of a psychiatric evaluation atop the fact that whomever is responsible for Crosby’s disappearance is now in possession of the secondary will (Leni once again adding to the tension by positing the possibility that another potential murder will take place once Annabelle has met an untimely death). Flora Finch as Aunt Susan Sillsby (Flora Finch) is outstanding as the cynical old biddy whose self-righteous contempt is projected upon anyone and everyone around her and serves as a precursor to Una O’Connor’s performance as Minnie in James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein.
The influence of Paul Leni’s The Cat and the Canary not only includes the various remakes of the film–Rupert Julian’s The Cat Creeps, Elliott Nugent’s 1939 rendition starring Bob Hope (which focused upon the comedic aspects of the work) and Radley Metzger’s 1979 mishap–but in virtually every haunted house/inheritance narrative thereafter, most notably in Roland West’s The Bat Whispers, James Whale’s Old Dark House, Crane Wilbur’s The Bat, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (the American director reportedly cited Leni’s film as an influence), William Castle’s 13 Ghosts, Robert Wise’s The Haunting, and the various incantations of House on Haunted Hill.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
