Watch The Phantom in the House For Free

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Some rather stilted acting characterizes this melodrama about a man who confessed to a murder his wife did and got life in prison for it. Henry B. Walthall who played a lot of noble and self sacrificing characters on the silent screen and in talkies was at the top of his game in both those categories. The title of the film is a misnomer because there are no ghostly apparitions here, simply Walthall hanging around his family under an alias. But his daughter Nancy Welford bonds with him and can't explain the connection she feels.Walthall was an inventor and his patents were assigned over to his wife Grace Valentine which has made her a most wealthy society dame. She wants a title for Welford to marry and there's some silly English earl played by Rolfe Sedan hanging around probably looking to give some woman his title for her money. That's not what Welford wants, she wants to marry earnest young Ricardo Cortez. But Valentine threatens to ruin him if he marries her.Into this mess walks Walthall back into their lives, given parole after 15 years. He's traveling incognito at first as the daughter has been given a whole different story about a father who died in the late World War. I won't go any farther except that in the end both the women come to a radical reassessment about things. And Walthall once again thinks of others.I doubt we'll ever see a remake of this old fashioned story. The Phantom Of The House was written for a different with different tastes in literature and different ideas about what constitutes a hero. Also it is plain the players were getting used to sound and both Walthall and Cortez did much better work in sound very shortly.It's a real museum piece of a film.

Not a bad effort for its era. People seeing the audience reaction in "Singin' In the Rain" are seeing an anachronism.That would be the reaction of a 1950 audience used to perfected talking pictures.But for audiences accustomed to silent movies,even imperfect sound was marvelous,making complicated plots like this far more practical than with silents. As others said, Henry Walthall and Ricardo Cortez give very professional performances. The film of course is "stagy", partly due to the limitations of sound equipment at the time but more due to the type of story it was.Even later efforts like"The Mask of Demetrius" were just about as stagy because of the nature of the plot. For one thing, this and other movies allow us to see basically what a stage melodrama of the period was like,something almost impossible to completely duplicate today,because todays actors simply didn't grow up in that old tradition. Still, the sets are very interesting, and it is somewhat filmic, allowing scenes and shots such as closeups that stage can't provide, so it is better than merely a filmed stage play. All in all a rather interesting movie.

It's not really necessary to keep in mind that this movie was made at the dawn of the sound era. You don't have to keep it in mind because you'll be constantly reminded of it.The actors pause for eons between lines and when they speak the utterances seem to roll on slowly forever. When the wife addresses the husband's back, you can go outside and take a stroll around the block while he slowly turns around and prepares a response."Do you expect me . . . to believe . . . . . . . . . . . . that?"The lines are stilted and overly theatrical, as if drawn from the 1800s, a parody of the silent movie being parodied in "Singin' in the Rain." The acting is outlandishly overdone. "Oh, mother dear," sobs the young girl sobbing on her mother's shoulder. No kidding.The story is a little complicated and not worth explaining in detail. Henry Walthall takes the rap for his wife when she murders a man trying to rape her. He sends her diagrams of his inventions from prison. She patents them and becomes rich. After fifteen years he returns home under a nom de geôle and finds his spouse distant and materialistic, while his little girl is now grown up and cute. Conflict ensues. Some critical scenes have been deleted for one reason or another.The movie isn't without merit. We often use the expression "lockstep." Originally it didn't mean simply complete agreement on an issue. Lockstep was a method of getting a group of prison inmates from place to place, walking so close behind one another that the steps had to be simultaneous. It used to be sometimes used by hoofers on the stage too, where it was called "nesting." There is an interrogation scene in a police station that lacks any subtlety whatever but does use dramatic lighting. And the director shoots a woman making a phone call. When she hangs up, the camera goes out of focus and wobbles in for a close up of the telephone dial. Cut to a similar shot of another telephone later. It's a wonder he could move the camera at all, those blimps being what they were at the time.If it fails as gripping drama, it succeeds as historical curiosity.

When a male friend tries to take advantage of a woman she kills him in order to protect her honor. Her husband rushes her way just as the police arrive and ends up taking the rap for her. 15 years later he returns home, his wife rich with the money from his inventions, and his daughter believing he's dead. As he tries to get his life back complications arise which threaten the lives of his wife and child.Slow melodrama this film suffers from being made in the early early days of sound. Scenes are often static (though not as static as some other films of the period) with the result the movie feels like its moving at a snails pace. The script isn't bad but it feels more like a mannered play than anything thats real. The dialog is either a pronouncement or an attempt at witticism which more often falls flat. The cast is a mixed bag. To be certain stalwarts like Henry Walthall and Ricardo Cortez show every reason why they had long careers, others clearly were hired because they could speak. This is not the sort of thing one really needs to see unless you are in need of sleep.