The Cat and the Canary

Paul Leni's Hollywood debut — and the film that essentially invented the haunted house genre as we know it. Twenty years after the death of eccentric millionaire Cyrus West, his potential heirs gather in his crumbling mansion to hear his will read at midnight. The house is full of secret passages, clutching hands emerging from walls, and a lurking figure known as "The Cat" — and the designated heiress (Laura La Plante, wonderful) must survive the night to claim her inheritance. Leni, fresh from his triumph with Waxworks in Germany, brought his Expressionist visual sensibility to Universal, creating a template of shadows, cobwebs, and creeping dread that would influence every haunted house film for a century — from James Whale's The Old Dark House to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting. The perfect blend of scares and laughs.