The Silent House (1929)

Directed by

Walter Forde

Genre

silent film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 28m

Rating

7.0 of 10 from 1 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A 1929 silent mystery film based on a stage play. It follows events in a house where secrets and a corpse are discovered. An Oriental character adds an exotic and sinister element.

mysterioustenseold-fashionedspookyquietslowatmosphericstagey

What happens

The Silent House (also released as The House of Silence) is a 1929 British silent mystery film, directed by Walter Forde and starring Mabel Poulton, Gibb McLaughlin and Arthur Pusey. It was made in 1928 at the Nettlefold Studios in Walton-on-Thames and trade-shown in January 1929. The film was written by H Fowler Mear, based on a hit stage play by John G Brandon and George Pickett, but it was not a success at the box-office. A print of the film exists at the National Film Archive in London. Chan Fu, the Oriental character played by Gibb McLaughlin, resembles Sax Rohmer's then-popular Fu Manchu character. Jonathan Rigby, in his book Studies in Terror, points out that "The film contains an almost de rigueur tribute to The Cat and the Canary when a corpse pitches forward from its concealment in a fireplace, as well as betraying a submerged uneasiness about Britain's colonial past that was to resurface in several British horrors of a later period." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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