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.

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.

After years of only reading about this-Bob Hope's first starring role in an A picture after a few years struggling in some B's-I finally got to watch this rare showing of The Cat and the Canary on YouTube. Long unavailable on TV and video, this was a very pleasurable experience with the mostly clear print I saw on the site. While director Elliott Nugent provides the right sinister atmosphere for this third film adaptation of this classic mystery play that takes place in New Orleans in my home state of Louisiana (by the way, Crescent City residents would not take kindly to the way George Zucco pronounces their city's name here), Bob Hope provides perfect wisecracks in his role of a radio actor who's one of several possible heirs to a man that's been dead for 10 years. Besides him, there's also the stunning Paulette Goddard as the woman Hope falls for and is willing to protect despite his admitted cowardice (though it's not too emphasized here). As the housekeeper who was long loyal to the late house owner, Gale Sondergaard provides her own haunting beauty to the fore. I was also pleasantly surprised by a couple of familiar character actors who would become recognized on TV: Elizabeth Patterson (later Little Ricky's babysitter on "I Love Lucy"), and Charles Lane (who appeared as Homer Bedloe on "Petticoat Junction" and is another player that is in my favorite movie, It's a Wonderful Life). Even today in this age of more explicit horrors, The Cat and the Canary is great fun to watch. Oh, and I have to mention that one of my favorite lines from Hope concerns dead people coming back. "You mean Republicans?" he asks.