THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Paul Leni's CAT AND THE CANARY was not the direct progenitor of the many "old dark house" films seen throughout the 1930s, for it came near the end of a spate of film adaptations of Broadway suspense-plays. But even without seeing all the other silent films, I doubt any of them go as far as Leni did, in trying to turn static theaterical scenarios into impact-filled "movie magic."

The plot in this case is pretty incidental. After a patriarch dies, embittered at the many greedy members of his family, his potential heirs gather at the patriarch's creepy old mansion to hear his will. As soon it's announced that his niece Annabelle (Laura LaPlante) is the main beneficiary, she becomes the target of familial enmity even as the old man was, a "canary" besieged by predacious cats. And as if to underline the feline metaphor, a guard from the local asylum shows up at the manor and warns everyone that there's an escaped madman on the loose. The fiend is called "the Cat" because of his habit of tearing his victims apart.

In contrast to many other ODH movies, nothing actually keeps the members of the gathering from getting in their cars and leaving, except perhaps the lateness of the hour. But then, while Annabelle is asleep in her bed, a clawed hand emerges from a panel in the wall and goes for her throat. Jump-scare! The claw-hand only takes her necklace, not her life, though she screams (in capital letters, yet).

Leni's playing around with the size of the inter-titles is just one of various Expressionist devices the director used to enhance a very gimmicky thriller. None of the characters are memorable, but Leni uses techniques like superimposed images and off-kilter set designs to enhance the emotions of the trapped characters. This is particularly true of Annabelle's cousin Paul (Creighton Hale), who gets most of the scenes in his role as the comedy-relief defender of the womenfolk. He sets the pattern for many similar viewpoint characters in ODH movies, not least the 1939 remake, with Bob Hope in the role. Interestingly, the later film makes more than the original of a possible romantic connection between Hope's character and that of Paulette Goddard, even though they too are figured as distant cousins.

I shouldn't need to expatiate on the nature of the Cat in a landscape where everyone knows what "the Scooby Doo Ending" means. Nevertheless, there's something almost archetypal about that key scene of the helpless female being menaced by a monstrous claw-hand-- a trope that would grow in strength over forty years later with the rise of the Italian giallos, followed by the American slashers.