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Nov 14, 2025 Web Exclusive By Mark Metzger Photography by Kino Lorber

Few genres remain as enduringly entertaining as the “old dark house” mystery: A motley group of characters gather in a sprawling manor on a dark and stormy night, only to spend the evening unraveling an unexpected murder in their midst. Popularized by Agatha Christie in the 1930s and kept alive in contemporary works such as Knives Out (2019) and Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), the genre’s roots go back to Paul Leni’s 1927 film The Cat and the Canary, where it all began.

Adapted from the popular 1922 Broadway play, The Cat and the Canary set the standard for the “old dark house” mystery. The film opens with a hand-drawn shot of an ominous-looking gothic mansion (an image that has been replicated countless times in Scooby-Doo) on an evening when its eccentric millionaire owner, Cyrus West, is dying. His greedy relatives have been descending on him like “cats around a canary” and driving him to madness. But before he dies, Cyrus decides that his will cannot be read until 20 years after his death. Fast forward 20 years: His relatives have descended upon his mansion to finally hear the reading of the will in hopes that they will walk away with a fortune. But who will get the inheritance, and will anyone make it out of this haunted house alive?

With Kino Lorber’s release of this 4K UHD restoration, The Cat and the Canary has never looked better. As one of the first German expats to arrive in Hollywood, Leni transforms The Cat and the Canary into a German Expressionist marvel. The influences of Murnau and Wiene are all over this film: Chiaroscuro lighting, towering gothic sets, spectral title cards, tinted frames and shots dissolving into each other. And with this new restoration that comes directly from the original nitrates, these techniques are brought to life with an enriched clarity and vibrancy that looks as if it were shot today.

The film’s excellent ensemble brings this story to life with an air of melodrama and whimsy that would go on to define a key stylistic element of the broader genre. Filled with stars from the silent era, most notably Laura La Plante as our heroine Annabelle West, the film becomes a real romp that mixes a comedy of manners with the horrors of murder.

Kino Lorber’s two-disc release also includes a Blu-ray master and many wonderful features, including two different commentary tracks by film historians, the trailer for the 1939 remake of The Cat and the Canary and, most splendidly, Paul Leni’s 1925 short film, Rebus-Film No. 1, the first of a series of cinematic crossword puzzles. Rebus-Film No. 1 is not only fun to solve, but it showcases the progressive experimental trials of Weimar-era German filmmaking, pushing the art form into uncharted territories.

Nearly a century after its release, The Cat and the Canary still feels remarkably alive. Paul Leni’s command of light, shadow, and architecture transformed what could have been a routine stage adaptation into a cinematic event that helped usher German Expressionism into Hollywood’s vocabulary. With Kino Lorber’s stunning restoration, The Cat and the Canary can finally be appreciated not just as the blueprint for every “old dark house” mystery that followed, but as one of American silent cinema’s most exuberant and enduring achievements.

(kinolorber.com/product/the-cat-and-the-canary-4kuhd)