A Closer Look At “London After Midnight” (1927)
It’s probably the most famous, most sought-after lost silent film of all time: London After Midnight (1927), starring the screen legend Lon Chaney and directed by the macabre-minded Tod Browning. Despite constant attempts to track it down, it remains stubbornly elusive–in spite of the classic film community’s annual April Fool’s Day gags claiming, “It’s resurfaced at last!”
But even though no footage currently exists, you might be surprised to know that the original 1927 continuity script survives in full–giving us a shot-by-shot view of precisely what the film is like. When we examine this script along with surviving stills and reviews, we find that London After Midnight was perhaps less of a horror film and more of a convoluted murder mystery drama. Still, it remains tantalizing to imagine the Gothic atmosphere and imagery that we might never get to experience.
Nicknamed the “Edgar Allan Poe” of classic cinema, Tod Browning was certainly the right fit for this ghoulish story. A veteran of carnivals and circuses, he started performing in films in the mid-1910s and soon became a director. Specializing in crime films and mystery stories, he had a deep interest in the macabre and enjoyed revolving his plots around “freakish” characters. Happily, the multi-talented Lon Chaney had both the acting and the makeup skills to bring such twisted characters to life, and he would make a number of classic dramas with Browning.
After the release of The Unknown (1927), Browning worked with scenario writer Waldemar Young to craft an original murder mystery story revolving around vampires. The cast would include Chaney, the beautiful Marceline Day (who would soon costar with Buster Keaton in 1929’s The Cameraman), the dignified Henry B. Walthall, clean-cut Conrad Nagel and slapstick comedienne Polly Moran. It was filmed at MGM Studios and Culver City for the approximate cost of $152,000.00.
Apparently, a lot of creativity went into the spooky atmosphere. Scenes in and around the Balfour mansion included owls and armadillos–much like Browning would use in Dracula (1931)–as well as bats. Chaney’s eye-popping makeup was achieved by holding back his eyelids with wires fitted around his eye sockets. The mouthpiece he wore with its signature sharp teeth was painfully uncomfortable and he only kept it in a few minutes at a time. His character’s long-ish hair, beaver hat, and lantern-carrying evidently made such an impression that similar-looking “crypt keeper” costumes are common around Halloween today.
So, what was the plot of London After Midnight?A rough summary: Roger Balfour is found dead in his London mansion of a gunshot wound, and Inspector Burke of Scotland Yard investigates the death and declares it a suicide. But Sir James Hamlin, the executor of Balfour’s estate who lives next door, says the man wasn’t suicidal. Hamlin takes in Balfour’s teenaged daughter Lucille, who grows up to be a lovely young woman.
The Balfour house sits abandoned for five years and then two strange renters move in: the freakish “Man in the Beaver Hat,” and his ghoul-like companion the “Bat Girl.” Hamlin suspects the two were involved in Balfour’s death and brings Inspector Burke back on the case. Soon creepy events start happening: Balfour’s body disappears from its tomb, the maid is frightened by the Man in the Beaver Hat, Burke sees a ghoulish figure trying to enter his room and wounds it with a gunshot, and the undead Balfour himself is somehow spotted inside the mansion.
Burke believes hypnosis can make murder suspects relive past events, and tries putting the suspects into a trance. Then Lucy is kidnapped and whisked off to the spooky mansion. Burke sends Hamlin to the house and the mysterious Man in the Beaver Hat puts him into a trance. This turn of events actually winds up solving the mystery of Balfour’s death–and we learn just who the spooky tenants are, too.
This doesn’t cover all the details of the confusing plot, which was frequently criticized at the time. In their review, the New Yorker wrote: “…It strives too hard to create effect. Mr. Browning can create pictorial terrors and Lon Chaney can get himself up in a completely repulsive manner, but both their efforts are wasted when the story makes no sense.” Variety wrote similarly: “Young, Browning and Chaney have made a good combination in the past but the story on which this production is based is not of the quality that results in broken house records.” However, not all the reviews were lukewarm. The Film Daily’s review just might make your longing for this film to turn up even stronger: “If [sensitive patrons] don’t get the creeps from flashes of grimy bats swooping around, cobweb-bedecked mystery chambers and the grotesque inhabitants of the haunted house, then they’ve passed the third degree.”
London After Midnight was clearly part of the “eerie mansion” mystery movie trend of the 1920s, other examples being The Bat (1926), The Gorilla (1927) and The Cat and the Canary (1927). These types of films abound with murder mysteries and mansions haunted by ghouls. Interestingly enough, in the U.S. silent films supernatural explanations were never involved. Maybe this served to keep from offending religious groups, or maybe “actual” ghosts were deemed too scary.
London After Midnight’s box office is thought to be over $1,000,000–not bad for its budget. And then it seemed to drop out of sight. One print was known to have existed in the MGM vaults until 1965. The last people who viewed it were likely historians David Bradley and William K. Everson, who watched it in the early 1950s (they said that much of the film revolved around Burke’s detective scenes and Polly Moran’s comic relief). Sadly, in August of 1965 the storage vault caught on fire, completely annihilating the print and many others.
But in spite of that abrupt end the memory of this strange Browning film stayed alive, mainly through the efforts of Forrest J. Ackerman, the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland. Ackerman featured stills from London After Midnight in several issues, helping it to achieve the status of the Holy Grail of Lost Silents ever since. In more recent years, books on silent horror have covered the film and Turner Classic Movies featured a reconstructed version using the existing continuity and surviving stills. And fans and historians continue to hold onto hope that in the not-too-distant future, footage of Chaney in that startling makeup will somehow, someday make it back to the big screen.
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–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub
You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.
Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.
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