Michael_Elliott The Phantom in the House (1929) ** (out of 4)Peggy (Grace Valentine) accidentally kills her lover just as her husband Boyd (Henry B. Walthall) walks in. Boyd agrees to say he did the crime and spends the next fifteen-years in prison. When he's released he meets back up with the wife but both agreed not to tell their now adult daughter Dorothy (Nancy Welford) that he's really daddy. Soon she wanting to marry Paul (Ricardo Cortez) but he's accused of a murder he didn't really commit. This leads Boyd with a decision to make.If you watch enough of these early sound pictures then you'll notice a few things. For starters, there's usually some sort of musical number for no reason. Second, there's usually a lot of boring dialogue that means absolutely nothing to the story. The third thing you'll notice is that there's usually enough plot for ten different movies. All of this can be understood because sound was something new and people wanted to hear it.With that said, those three things usually make these early talkies rather difficult to watch today and there's no question that this here is one of the silliest I've ever seen. The entire plot is just downright crazy and stupid. What makes matters even worse is that the love affair, the murder, the lie and the prison term is all handled in the first seven minutes of the movie. From here we get on to the new stuff with the daughter getting involved with a man her mother doesn't approve of. This here leads to another murder and we're off on a whole new storyline.The best thing about this picture is Walthall who really was a very good actor. He was perfectly capable of handling silent pictures and he made the transition to sound very well. He's very low-key here but he's certainly easy to follow and you can't help but enjoy the performance and the character Cortez gets the top-billing but the picture certainly belongs to Walthall as he's the actual lead. The supporting performances are mixed to say the least with Valentine coming off the worst with her overacting.THE PHANTOM IN THE HOUSE is a pretty routine drama and for the most part it's very boring. The over-the-top nature of the story and the fact that it was an early sound picture help keep it mildly interesting but for the most part it's a dud.

mark.waltz Oh how the reel creeks in this tedious melodrama that starts off ridiculously and slides down into the muck of a total yawn-fest. Knowing that his wife killed an admirer accidentally in self defense, the husband spends 15 years in prison while she turns into a bitter, controlling shrew of a mother for their child. When he is granted parole, the husband moves in as the eternal guest, becomes supportive to his daughter (unaware of his identity), and tries to brighten up her life, even though she is involved with an alleged scoundrel that her mother does not approve of. Snail paced direction by Phil Rosen and dialog delivery is the nail in this squeaky coffin that features weak acting, an unbelievable plot line and poor, slow editing. Silent star Henry B. Walthall looks like a walking corpse as the long-suffering husband, and handsome Ricardo Cortez seems embarrassed by the whole thing while playing the young love interest. A melodramatic plot twist comes out of nowhere to attempt to liven things up, but by that time, it is too little, too late. Yes, this is a very early talkie, so some creakiness is expected, but this just never crosses the line into anything memorable.

Robert J. Maxwell 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.

boblipton This 1929 mystery-tearjerker suffers from all the stereotypical problems of talkies in this year -- a very few works like Mamoulian's APPLAUSE aside -- immobile camera and actors who seem unable to read a line with any naturalism. The sound track sounds poor, too, but that might will be an artifact of a worn print.Director Phil Rosen makes a good stab by using short cuts to fake a mobile camera, and it's a pleasure to watch old pros Henry Walthall and Ricardo Cortez exhibit their physical naturalness, but the many poor performances and, by modern standards, decidedly pinheaded plot keep this from being worthwhile as more than a curiosity.