The Silent House (1929 film)

The Silent House (also released as The House of Silence)^[2] 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.^[3] 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.^[4] A print of the film exists at the National Film Archive in London.^[2]

Chan Fu, the Oriental character played by Gibb McLaughlin, resembles Sax Rohmer's then-popular Fu Manchu character.^[2] 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."^[5]

The film takes place in an 'old dark house' sporting hidden panels, clutching hands, a snake pit and a secret panel leading to a room used to conceal dead bodies. A Chinese mandarin named Chan Fu (Gibb McLaughlin) uses his Svengali-like powers to hypnotise a woman into revealing the hiding place of a cache of expensive bonds.

• Mabel Poulton as T'Mala
• Gibb McLaughlin as Chan Fu
• Arthur Pusey as George Winsford
• Gerald Rawlinson as Captain Barty
• Albert Brouett as Peroda
• Rex Maurice as Legarde
• Raston Medrora as Mateo
• Frank Perfitt as Richard Winsford
• Arthur Stratton as Benson
• Kiyoshi Takase as Ho-Fang

• Low, Rachel. The History of British Film: Volume IV, 1918–1929. Routledge, 1997.
• Wood, Linda. British Films, 1927-1939. British Film Institute, 1986.
• Rigby, Jonathan. Studies in Terror: Landmarks of Horror Cinema. Signum Books, 2011.

• The Silent House at IMDb

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