O Gato e o Canário

It may sound strange, but there was something so cute and appealing about Bob Hope in the '30s and '40s. I loved that guileless, spineless sweet character he played.

Here Hope is in top form in "The Cat and the Canary," the 1939 version also starring Paulette Goddard, Gale Sondergaard, John Beal, Douglass Montgomery, George Zucco, and Elizabeth Patterson. A group of relatives have to spend the night in a haunted house after the reading of their late relatives' will.

Hope and the beautiful, vivacious Goddard are wonderful together -- so good, in fact, that they did it again in "Ghost Breakers." No one could do one-liners like Hope.

This movie is a lot of fun, with secret panels and things that go bump in the night. Delightful, funny, and spooky.

This tale of greedy relatives out to get a fortune had been filmed at least two times before Bob Hope took a crack at it, and the world is a better place for it.

Though not the perfect haunted house film, this is a very funny movie. One of the reason that this isn't perfect is that the wisecracks get in the way of the mystery, or if not the mystery, the suspense. Such is the danger of comedy thrillers, either its too funny so its not scary, or too suspenseful and the comedy destroys the tension at the wrong time, here its simply too much humor before it turns serious.

Fortunately here funny is good, so even if the suspense gets the short end of the stick, its still an enjoyable time at the movies. What more could you want, especially since it gives Bob Hope ample chance to do what he does best.

See this movie. Its a lot of fun. 8 out of 10.

The silents brought us a number of classic comedians who were skilled at making the audience laugh without uttering a word. With the advent of sound, some of these comedians found the transition hard and most still relied on their old silent routines for their jokes. Bob Hope was the first comedian who's mouth provided the punchline. The Cat and the Canary was his first leading part and yet it's not designed purely for his advantage, this is a great picture, both funny and exciting.

Bob Hope is the star. He's hilarious. He's sympathetic. He's also a coward, which isn't such an asset when you're staying in a house filled with escaped lunatics, suspicious servants, and numerous trapdoors. Hope plays a radio personality who involuntarily becomes the bodyguard to a woman, Joyce, who recently inherited a lot of money. The house is filled with other guests that are upset at having lost out on the inheritance. To make matters worse, if Joyce dies within a month, the money goes to whoever was the substitute inheritor and that person's name lies in an envelope safely hidden in a safe. As guests start dying, the tension increases, as does Hope's one-liner's. "I've got goosepumps. In fact, my goosebumps have got goosebumps."

Today, the plot seems like one from an episode of Scooby-Doo but it's still fun and surprisingly smart. The cast is small but solid and the murderer is never guessed until the end. A few red herrings are thrown in but when the guilty party is revealed, it does make sense, a necessity rarely used in Hollywood today.

As a vehicle for Hope it works a charm. As a movie in itself it should be recognised as a classic.

This has always been one of my top10 favourite films, since I first saw it in 1972, at least 14 times since. Bob Hope was still a little green at this stage, but you can almost see (and hear) him coming of age in CATC, his comic delivery technique and timing noticeably improved by the end. The spooky atmosphere generated onto the b&w nitrate stock by the Paramount cast and crew was palpable, compare it - if you can stomach it - to the 1979 remake!

8 people are summoned to a will-reading at a rather eerie old house; the one that wins the fortune seems to be going insane as one of her relatives sweetly puts it, whilst another just says she's going out of her mind. There's only 2 nice people here, Hope and Goddard, the rest are more or less on the make. She's the visual jewel in here - as Hope says, "Terrific". The scene with Goddard and the Cat in the library is my all-time Spooky Moment on Film - nowadays all the "artists" involved in the making of "horror" films don't trouble about niceties like Spookiness, but just get on with the Gore. That of course is the problem for most people coming to this, they've probably inured themselves over the years to see disgusting and vile-ent things - so much so that they would laugh at the most savage scene in this where someone gets knifed in the back. The 1927 Laura LaPlante version is good and nicely atmospheric too, but it's difficult comparing chalk and cheese to silent and talking pictures - they're both great comedy films on their own merits.

A wonderful piece of art, topped the next year with an even better follow up, Ghost Breakers.

Bob Hope murder mystery/old dark house parody film with someone trying to knock off an heiress. A fiendish figure named The Cat appears but all is not what it seems. This was good fun..I quite enjoyed it although it could have benefited from a few more legitimate frights..certainly a good starting point for Hope who went on to make many more delightful films like this.