Film

The Cat and the Canary

Name: The Cat and the Canary
Genre: Comedy, Horror, Mystery
Released: 1927
Cast: Laura La Plante, Creighton Hale, Forrest Stanley, Tully Marshall, Gertrude Astor

This is the film that basically wrote the rulebook for the haunted-mansion whodunit: squabbling heirs, a midnight will reading, a homicidal maniac loose somewhere in the walls, and Creighton Hale's jittery cowardly hero holding the comic relief together. Director Paul Leni brings German Expressionist camerawork to the creaky set, all grasping curtains and hands through secret panels. Playful, atmospheric, still genuinely funny.

TMDb rating

6.9

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The wildcard

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Ready or Not2019

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Seven Keys to Baldpate1935no page yet

Adapted from the same stage-mystery tradition that produced Cat and Canary, this earlier old-dark-house plot — a writer locked in a supposedly empty inn on a bet — helped invent the genre's tropes.

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