Alrighty folks, this is a quick and easy one. The Cat and the Canary is classic proto-gothic mystery stuff, straight out of an episode of Scooby Doo. You've got an old manor, supposedly haunted, a cast of characters gathered for a purpose (the reading of a will), and, Bum Bum Buummmm, a killer on the loose! Who could it be?? The scared old lady? The doting ex-boyfriend? The cat man, loose from the insane asylum? Tune in to find out!!!
The eyes of paintings replace themselves with those of the watchful scoundrel, secret passages steal people away from in front of bookcases, and suspicion abounds as all the characters, along with the audience, participate in a Whodunnit. You know all you need to know, just from this sentence.
So is it any good? Well, the black and white photography is great, particularly the lighting, so we're covered on the looks front. Bob Hope is fun to watch as the classic character Bob Hope (not really, but you know what I mean), flustered and quippy and affable, and the rest of the cast shines as well, the ensemble and their interplay being the highlight of the movie.
Narratively, it's about what you'd expect. Things play out, clues are found, the mystery deepens, and is resolved. If there's a kink in the machine, however, that keeps this fun movie from being totally solid, it lies within the details. Certain character motivations remain unanswered, and logical details about the functioning of the house itself and aforementioned supernatural elements are never properly elucidated. It's as if the movie put them in because that's what you do in a movie like this, and then hopes you'll forget to ask why and how. Scooby and the Gang would have explained these mechanics with aplomb in a nice end scene, so it's mildly frustrating that the movie sees fit not to.
However, at the end of the day, these things don't matter too much. You're not watching a movie like this for the superb logic of its machinations, most likely, but to indulge in some good old fashioned murder mystery fun, and at an incredibly light 70 minutes, it does all it needs to do in order to scratch that itch.
FINAL TAKE: The Cat and the Canary isn't going to blow anybody away, but at this point in history, that's almost the point. It's a comfy blanket of a type we no longer get anymore in movies, a relic of a bygone story archetype long since parodied to extinction, but it does said archetype earnestly. Some mechanical and character logic problems aside, it thoroughly entertains.
The eyes of paintings replace themselves with those of the watchful scoundrel, secret passages steal people away from in front of bookcases, and suspicion abounds as all the characters, along with the audience, participate in a Whodunnit. You know all you need to know, just from this sentence.
So is it any good? Well, the black and white photography is great, particularly the lighting, so we're covered on the looks front. Bob Hope is fun to watch as the classic character Bob Hope (not really, but you know what I mean), flustered and quippy and affable, and the rest of the cast shines as well, the ensemble and their interplay being the highlight of the movie.
Narratively, it's about what you'd expect. Things play out, clues are found, the mystery deepens, and is resolved. If there's a kink in the machine, however, that keeps this fun movie from being totally solid, it lies within the details. Certain character motivations remain unanswered, and logical details about the functioning of the house itself and aforementioned supernatural elements are never properly elucidated. It's as if the movie put them in because that's what you do in a movie like this, and then hopes you'll forget to ask why and how. Scooby and the Gang would have explained these mechanics with aplomb in a nice end scene, so it's mildly frustrating that the movie sees fit not to.
However, at the end of the day, these things don't matter too much. You're not watching a movie like this for the superb logic of its machinations, most likely, but to indulge in some good old fashioned murder mystery fun, and at an incredibly light 70 minutes, it does all it needs to do in order to scratch that itch.
FINAL TAKE: The Cat and the Canary isn't going to blow anybody away, but at this point in history, that's almost the point. It's a comfy blanket of a type we no longer get anymore in movies, a relic of a bygone story archetype long since parodied to extinction, but it does said archetype earnestly. Some mechanical and character logic problems aside, it thoroughly entertains.