London After Midnight

"London After Midnight" is perhaps the most sought after movie, that is presumed lost. The only remaining print of it was destroyed in a fire in the late '60's. I tend to say no. Remaining still existing pictures of Lon Chaney in full make-up effect added to the hype of this movie and also the fact that this Tod Browning movie features vampires, 4 years before he made the horror-classic "Dracula", starring Bela Lugosi. In 2002 a reconstruction, made from still photographs of the 1927 was made and aired on TCM. It's an attempt to retell the story and show how the movie must have been like, also with the help of persons who had actually seen the 1927 movie at the time of its release. It's an interesting experiment and attempt to reconstruct a lost movie, though it of course doesn't work out as good as the moving images would had.

The movie purely consists out of photographs. It makes the sequence feel rather limited in terms of its mood, acting and overall storytelling. It's a flat and far from engaging way of film-making, that is not always easy to watch. I mean, you can just as good read a paper version of this movie with pictures in it and let your own imagination do the work. It perhaps would work out way better than this movie eventually did.

The movie features a whole lot of characters that don't get properly introduced (but then again, how could they). It makes the movie confusing and also from an engaging one to watch.

The story and its plot really don't work out because of the way of storytelling. The movie is more of a murder-mystery than a horror-movie, like you perhaps would expect from persons like director Tod Browning and actor Lon Chaney. I suggest that if you want to understand the story, you watch "Mark of the Vampire". A 1935 sort of remake of this movie, also directed by Tod Browning and starring Lionel Barrymore and Bela Lugosi.

But was the 'real' "London After Midnight" really a great classic movie? I tend to say no. At the rime of its release the movie already got mixed reactions from the critics, though the movie still was the highest grossing Tod Browning/Lon Chaney movie.

The story was too weak and messy to make this a classic must-see. It isn't a very intriguing story and the movie misses tension, a good solid main plot and likable main characters. But of course it's impossible to say this with a 100% certainty, since I haven't seen the 'real' moving full length version of this movie, for the obvious reason.

It really looked like Lon Chaney's presence uplifted the movie though, both with his looks and performance. He looked genuine creepy in his role, with some great make-up effects and mimics from 'the man of a thousand faces'. It's the reason why this movie is still probably better than the average one from the same genre, especially for 1927 standards. Also Edna Tichenor as Luna the Bat Girl looked impressive in her role.

The sets looked good and it must had given the movie a real good and creepy kind of atmosphere, I assume. Like mentioned before, the make-up effects also looked really convincing and are now part of the movie its legacy and status among movie lovers.

This movie forms a good enough alternative to still be able to watch this lost 1927 movie from legendary director Tod Browning and actor Lon Chaney, until the real movie shows up again somewhere, though this isn't very likely to ever happen.

7/10

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but it can't replace the original film work as others have said here. While it certainly casts some new light on LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT (1927) and some of us finally get to see what it was all about, it's never going to be able to in any way duplicate the experience those who first enjoyed the film in the theater had..still it was fascinating to see so many previously unseen stills from this movie especially those which show off Lon Chaney's most unusual make-up.

I would like to disagree with the above. I thought that the use of the remaining stills to recompose this movie, was brilliantly done. It was, indeed, obviously a labor of love, but now, we at least have SOME idea of what the audience saw in 1927...here it is, 2006, and I thought that for it's time, it probably WAS frightening. And Chaney's makeup is outstanding. The people of that era weren't used to those kinds of images on the screen, so I imagine that they were probably petrified by Chaney and his ghastly makeup, which, for its day, was superb, as I stated before. I'm clearly a Chaney fan, however, so, more than likely, I am truly biased.

All in all, this was brilliant, I thought.

London After Midnight (2002)

*** (out of 4)

Tod Browning's lost and highly sought after film got a photo reconstruction several years ago that tries to capture the mood and feel of that original film and for the most part I think this works. In fact, these photos are still a lot more entertaining than Browning's 1935 remake Mark of the vampire. As I've said countless times before, it's probably best that this film remains lost because if it were ever found then all the mystery and legendary status would probably be gone since most reviewers called this a very poor film. It's doubtful the film will ever be found but I'd love to just see a few moving frames of Chaney as the vampire because the make up is so incredible that I'd love to see how Chaney played the role.

A 45/47-minute reconstruction using the same still photographs with added camera motion, released by Turner Classic Movies in 2002.

It's such a shame that we had to watch an influential film like this in this format. I'm grateful for TCM for this reconstruction.