Just one year before unleashing the Joker upon the media
empire with his 1928 expressionist horror drama The Man Who Laughs starring
Conrad Veidt involving a man with a permanent grotesque smile surgically
inscribed upon his face, German Expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni at the height
of his creative power within the Hollywood studio system at Universal Pictures
began in 1927 with an adaptation of John Willard’s 1922 dark comedy play The
Cat and the Canary. Paving the way
for such iconic horror-comedy fare as The Old Dark House with airs of
the Agatha Christie whodunit, the story concerns a subset of characters who
return to their late uncle Cyrus West’s desolate haunted mansion during a dark
stormy night to resolve his last will and testament intended to be read twenty
years after his passing only to encounter a murderous figure with sharp furry
claws while news breaks a local maniac dubbed ‘the Cat’ has escaped the
confines of asylum and takes refuge in the mansion intending to pick its
patrons off one by one.
--Andrew Kotwicki