The silent
movie The Cat and The Canary made just a few years before this talkie version and it was the
first of the “Heirs in Haunted House” movies.
It was the model for nearly all that came after.
.
The Cat and
the Canary with Bob Hope and Paulette Godard took this same movie and added
some quick wit and a love interest. You
have to toss out your pre-conceptions of Bob Hope, because he wasn’t all
slapstick and buffoon yet. He was a
comedy man, and uses it particularly well here, but still possible to think of
as a hero. Here the comedy was more
integrated into the story, not an aside to the audience.
 |
| Bob Hope and Paulette Godard |
.
Set on a
bayou in Louisiana, old man money bags is dead.
The surviving heirs have to spend the night in the house (ten years
later) for the reading of the will. If
the primary heir (not reveled) dies, then the money goes to everyone else.
.
Spooky
things happen, things go bump in the night, an inmate escapes from a nearby
mental asylum – plot points that are old and worn now, but were still fresh then. Paulette Godard is great. And the supporting cast is appropriately
scared or scary.
.
 |
| The Main Cast (Douglas Montgomery, Paulette, Bob and John Beal) |
I like it
not only for its history, but as a first class fun movie. Warning that most prints of this are a little
washed out.