The Cat and the Canary

Paul Leni, Universal, 1927, from John Willard’s 1922 play. Twenty years after Cyrus West dies, the heirs meet in a river mansion to hear the will; Laura La Plante is the one named, if she stays sane. A claw through a wall, sliding panels, a guard who talks about a cat. Leni, late of Waxworks, gives Hollywood the German hallway. The AFI files it as the haunted-house comedy the studio would remake. Eighty-seven minutes. The title is the old man’s joke about his relatives. Leni makes the joke architectural.