The Cat and the Canary

"Don't big, empty houses scare you?" "Not me. I used to be in vaudeville."
In 1939, Paramount Pictures released the second film adaptation of John Willard's stage play THE CAT AND THE CANARY. This version just might be the second best example of the "old dark house" sub-genre, the first being, what else, The Old Dark House itself. What makes this version of THE CAT AND THE CANARY so very good is Bob Hope being cast as the movie's lily-livered but very funny hero. Star making role? Surely.

It wasn't a dark and stormy night, more like a gloomy and atmospheric late afternoon somewhere in the bayous of Louisiana, where we glimpse a man being ferried on a boat towards the old, bleak-looking Norman mansion. He is the family lawyer, come to read the will of old, decade-long-deceased Cyrus Norman, who in his time was eccentric and so crooked that "when he died they had to screw him into the ground." Shortly after, six farflung relations of the Norman clan gather to see who'll win the...

Five stars for the film, but 1 for the region 2 DVD being sold
Yes, this is a great film - I can understand why people rave about it. My review is a warning about the import region 2 UK DVD being sold by some Amazon sellers. It's absolutely dreadful - the sound is ok, but the picture is a mess and clearly taken from an old VHS tape (zoom back on the picture and you can see signs of VHS head switching). It's also been through an NTSC-PAL conversion, so watching it in North America will mean giving it another conversion back to NTSC - the DVD already has barely any detail in it, so another conversion will likely finish it off completely. The disc is from Orbit Media, who are a public domain specialist (the film is actually be owned by Universal). It looks worse than any bootleg.

Great early Bob Hope comedy. But Nostalia Family copy is 2nd generation DVD-r
This rarely seen Bob Hope comedy is a delight to see. But it does not hold up well against the original silent version. The original mood & atmosphere is gone, what you have here is a brisk old house mystery/comedy. It stands up well on its own, and is best seen without watching the original.

My reason for only four stars is because the Nostalgia Family DVD is really a DVD-r copied from a 3/4 video tape. There is a slight blurriness to some objects not common to professional DVDs. It is not enough to distract from the enjoyment of this film, but buy it with the understanding that it will not measure up to the picture quality of Universal's Bob Hope DVDs.

Click to Editorial Reviews