London After Midnight

[Blackbird Jack]

This film was recently brought to my attention, touted as a "lost" horror classic starring the legendary, brilliant Lon Chaney Sr.

Have any of you horroraholics out there seen it? Mind telling me what it's about, and what you thought?

[Dr Bloodworth]

Well, AFAIK, no-one's seen it. It is truly lost. I think all we have are a few stills and I think the script exists somewhere.

[Shoon VII]

a collection (boxed set) of Chaneys work as released recently on DVD. that film went unfinished, but i understand that clips of it might be on this boxed set. check bn.com under films and you might be able to glean more info.

[Wiccy of the Fraternity]

All that remains of the movie for general release are a smattering of clips and stills. I did hear once of a surviving copy kept under lock and key in a museum somewhere, but I regard that largely as an urban myth among vampire movie fans.

[Brandi]

Performing a bit of thread necromancy here: if you've seen the film Mark of the Vampire with Bela Lugosi, that film is effectively a sound remake of London After Midnight. I'm not sure if the plot, which goes for a fakeout approach, would appeal now, but as a lost Chaney film any extant print would probably cause a large media stir (and a HUGE one among horror fans).

[Kelliack]

The remake was indeed Mark of the Vampire, about three years ago Turner Classic Movies put out a stills version of the silent film, London After Midnight. Using new title cards, they told the story using the suprisingly large number of stills availbale. TUrner did it before, using stills to help rebuild the lost silent classic Greed.

[Brandi]

I have a book of the stills storyboarded. I'd be curious to see the TCM production (we didn't get that channel when they aired it) but even a minute or two of actual moving footage would be better still to convey Chaney's use of body language (especially since this makeup looked to immobilize his face pretty well!).

[Kelliack]

They will probably re-run it in October, when they run all of their other silent horror classics. Or they might put it on when they usually run their silents, 12:00 on a Sunday night.

Still in October TCM is the best channel for watching horror films.
AMC used to be good, but now they're horrible.
Independant Film Channel, I would also recommend, last year they showed all of those Dario Argento films.