The Last Warning

Last Warning, The (1929)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Paul Leni (The Cat and the Canary, The Man Who Laughs) directs this Universal horror film, which has been forgotten over the years but if you've seen some of the studios bigger pictures then you've can tell what all this film has influenced. A popular show on Broadway, inside a creepy theatre, is closed down after the mysterious murder of one of the actors. Years later the police reassemble the original cast and bring them back to the theater to see if they can trap the murderer but it might be a ghost they're dealing with. This film mixes elements of The Phantom of the Opera with the old dark house themes of films like The Bat and delivers a terrific entertainment. This film has never been officially released so I had to view it via what appears to be a 16mm print and the quality was pretty bad throughout so if I get a chance to see a pristine print then I'll probably bump my review up. The technical eye of Leni, who died after this film, is untouched by nearly everyone as he's constantly trying new and different things with the camera. I love how he'll have a medium shot and then move the camera in to show some evidence before moving it back out to let the action role. The film runs just under 80-minutes and goes by very fast with some exciting action but also a great story to work with. The actors, including John Boles who would later appear in Frankenstein, all do nice work as well. There are a few twists and turns along the way that actually work well within the story. This film works on a technical level as well as the story level and that makes this a wonderful little gem that needs to be rediscovered. The only thing people know about this movie nowdays is that it was a huge influence on James Whale and this is easy to see. There's a woman here, used as comic relief, which is later a carbon copy in Una O'Connor. The Old Dark House also lifts some shots here but I won't say which ones since it'll ruin scenes in both movies. The score here was also later reused in Dracula and this film was shot on the same sets as The Phantom of the Opera so there's a lot of connections here.

"The Last Warning" (1928) was Paul Leni's last film as director before his untimely death from sepsis at the age of 44. Starring Laura La Plante, Montague Love, John Boles, Margaret Livingston, Roy D'Arcy, and a host of other pre-eminent silent film actors of the day, this film continues in the vein of "The Cat and the Canary" (1927), another Leni film starring Laura La Plante. Based on a successful 1922 play, the film opens on a stage play where John Woodford (D'Arcy Corrigan) is on stage reaching for a candle, but dies as the mechanical candle electrocutes Woodford. Now, the play is halted, police called in, and, after a series of several hectic and quickly moved-through scenes, the body disappears, never to be seen again. Five years later, a "producer", Montague Love, decides to re-open the theater - which had been closed in the interim - and re-stage the same play Woodford had been killed performing in, and now have the same cast perform the play for the re-opening of the theater. Roy D'Arcy will replace Woodford in that part and John Boles will replace D'Arcy in his old part. Well, D'Arcy is nearly electrocuted during a rehearsal; then seemingly disappears! Boles replaces D'Arcy, and the play opens that night! Near the scene where the candle is to be reached for and grabbed, the police - a group of at least 10 and perhaps a couple of unsuspected persons who might be the police - are ready for anything.

The photography; that is, the movement of the camera, what it captures and how, is how Leni made his reputation. He'd done remarkable things with films like "Hintertreppe" (1921), "Waxworks" (1924) and "The Man Who Laughs" (1928). Hal Mohr was Leni's cinematographer on this shoot, and the fluidity and creative shooting is what makes this film a cinematic masterpiece. The story is rather "old dark house", and it's fun, with comic touches and dramatic incident, but it's the deft direction and smart editing, along with a cast of pros, that makes this film something to enjoy and wish to come back to in the future.

There were a few sound scenes added to the original release that are no longer extant. The restored version is quite good, though a few scratches here and there, especially near the beginning and end, are evident. My print is the European restored one from Eureka Masters of Cinema. I needed to re-set my Blu-Ray to Region 2 to play it. It didn't do it automatically.

The opening and closing scenes have been described as 'kaleidoscopic', and that is a perfect description. Wonderful cinematography and editing throughout make this a wonderful experience over 90 years after release! Highly recommended. Among others in the remarkable cast are Burr McIntosh, Bert Roach, Mack Swain, Slim Summerville, and Carrie Daumery.

Paul Leni's last film after which he died from sepsis brought on by an infected tooth (seriously, go to your dentist), this is probably the first film in his Universal contract where he had real freedom after the large series of successes that had preceded it. Smaller in scale than his previous The Man Who Laughs and more than somewhat reminiscent of his first Universal feature, The Cat and the Canary, The Last Warning is a whodunit with a real sense of fun about its mystery and the movements through the plot without ever quite becoming a comedy. It stands on this razor's edge of tone and balances quite nicely, I think. It's not a great film, but it is a solidly fun one.

John Woodford, the actor whose theater shares his name, dies suddenly during a performance of the play The Snare when he grabs an electric lamp and dies instantly. It's a mystery that the police cannot solve, and the theater shuts down that very night for years.

Years later, the Bunce Brothers, Josiah (Burr McIntosh) and Robert (Mack Swain), reopen the theater under the supervision of Arthur McHugh (Montagu Love) who wants to do The Snare again with the same cast. McHugh is actually a police officer doing those sorts of weird, out-there investigations of a cold case that's going to get the culprit to reveal themselves out of guilt. I mean, it's nonsense, but it makes for some good melodramatics.

Anyway, the cast includes leading lady Doris (Laura La Plante), Richard (John Boles), and lothario Carleton (Roy D'Arcy). There's also the electrician Tommy (Slim Summerville) who points at every returning man and whispers that they're the one who killed Woodford, and the stage manager Mike (Bert Roach). They're all suspects, but the main focus falls on our leading lady and the man who loves her, Doris and Richard.

Things start going weird when people start seeing ghostly figures about as McHugh tries to organize rehearsals. There are messages hidden in the drawer with the scripts. There's a fire suppressant that gets uncorked just outside the room. There are power outages. It's all spooky and scary, and it's made all the worse by the fact that McHugh breaks into Woodford's old dressing room which has been shut up for the five years since the last show and discovers hidden passages leading to other parts of the theater, including Doris' dressing room.

The only way Robert can clear Doris' name given this evidence is to take up the role Woodford had been playing despite the warnings (including the titular last warning) at risk of his life. Okay, it's kind of dumb, but if Leni were taking it more seriously with less tongue in cheek that would be a problem, and this points to how Leni made his movies. It's this great combination of German Expressionism and a light touch that pushes the visuals into a greater camp direction. It's the combination that James Whale would continue later with things like The Old Dark House and Bride of Frankenstein in the sound era, a time that I am convinced Leni would have thrived in if he had just visited his dentist at some point in 1928.

So, it runs like minor, lightly comic Agatha Christie brought to the screen, and it kept me going for its brief runtime of about 80 minutes. I got Leni's playfulness in intertitles, interesting use of shadows and editing that sometimes replaced the use for actual sound (which, of course, the early-sound soundtrack makes somewhat redundant) and some campy performances from everyone. It's not high art, but it's playful fun.

I strongly suspect that if Leni had been given the early reins of the Universal Monster movies, like was reportedly the plan, he would have taken it in a similar direction as James Whale did. The early movies would be largely similar, but while I do enjoy films like Bride of Frankenstein, the camp feels amped up to a degree that takes me out. I like to think that Leni would have found a more delicate balance.

This dazzling example of late silent cinema was available only in shoddy, awful looking prints for 80 years or more, until it was restored in 2016 and finally released on home video in 2019, and now for the most part looks fantastic. It was the final film made by the great Paul Leni, whose magnificent "The Man Who Laughs" is one of the absolutely essential silent works everyone needs to see at least once before they die.

The story of this one is a cross between The Cat And The Canary and The Phantom of The Opera, but not really as good as either: an actor is killed onstage and everyone in the cast and crew becomes a suspect; the theatre closes for years until the play is revived, and the killer plans to kill all over again. There's secret passageways and cobwebs galore, and a decent enough mystery, but it's got to be said the plot's a little messy and hard to follow at times.

It's in the visuals that The Last Warning really shines, with the camera in every scene swooping and zooming in on every action taking place, and great use of depth of field to draw one's eyes to things happening in the background: the camera is always doing something, always telling us something about the story and the characters, purely through visual means. This is the very peak of what silent cinema was reaching for at the end of the 1920s, just before the talkies came in the following year and largely destroyed that artform and the box of tricks it used for everyone but Alfred Hitchcock, at least until Citizen Kane came along. I always like to imagine what might have happened if sound had not been introduced for another 15 or twenty years; what visual magic and ways of imparting story through image might have been achieved.

In summation, then: not the most compelling or meaningful story but one full of energy, movement and endless inventiveness. A great delight for the eyes.

7½/10.

German director Paul Leni (1885-1929), almost a century after his death, is finally getting the recognition he deserves. His 4 most important films are now available on home video with the last two in quality Blu-Ray/DVD editions from Flicker Alley. For the record the films are 1) WAXWORKS (made in Germany in 1924) and the 3 surviving Hollywood films, THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927), THE MAN WHO LAUGHS (1928), and THE LAST WARNING (1929). A fourth Hollywood film, the early Charlie Chan mystery THE CHINESE PARROT, is still considered lost.

While these movies had been around awhile for people to see, they were usually in substandard, low budget VHS editions. With the dawn of the 21st century came DVD versions of the first 3 films which allowed these movies to be viewed as they should be with restored visuals, correct running speed, and a proper soundtrack. This confirmed what only still photos had shown before, that Leni was a master of settings, lighting, and cinematography and provided the blueprint for the classic Universal horror films of the 1930s.

THE LAST WARNING was meant to cash in on the huge success of THE CAT AND THE CANARY. Instead of an old dark house, it's an old dark theater which gives Leni the opportunity to indulge in a number of stylistic tricks borrowed from German Expressionism and especially F. W. Murnau. 2 of the performers, Montague Love and Mack Swain, even bear a striking resemblance to Emil Jannings. Laura La Plante is back as the heroine along with a masked killer whose identity is not revealed until the final 10 minutes.

THE LAST WARNING's weakest element is its storyline. It's a pretty good mystery until the final revelation which really doesn't make a whole lot of sense but then its the visual flair that matters the most to us today. Thanks to Universal's new 4K restoration that flair positively jumps out at us from the film's opening Broadway montage to the finale shot from the killer's POV as he swings on a rope. The restoration is a composite print taken from 2 different sources. There are a few rough places but overall it looks great for a 90 year old film.

It takes more than a visual restoration to make a silent film successful. It also needs a music score to accompany the visuals in such a way as to enhance them. In the previous two reviews for this release, one reviewer loved the score while the other positively hated it. While I agree with the latter that the Flicker Alley Mary Pickford scores are rather inappropriate, I lean more toward the former in that, while not finding the score as great as he says, I found nothing objectionable as this movie is light entertainment not a heavy drama.

In summary I find this, along with FA's simultaneous release of Paul Leni's THE MAN WHO LAUGHS, to be another triumph for Flicker Alley. In addition to the best looking prints that we have ever seen, both releases come with numerous extras including a short video documentary on director Leni along with a 24 page booklet full of photos and background info. Now if FA can only persuade Universal to do a 4K restoration on the the original 1925 release of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, the Universal silent horror collection would be complete...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.