London After Midnight is a 1927 silent horror/mystery film written by Tod Browning and starring Lon Chaney. The film is an adaptation of The Hypnotist, written by Browning as well. The film cost $151,666.14 to produce, and grossed $1,004,000. Chaney’s real-life make-up case can be seen in the last scene of the film sitting on a table, the only time it ever appeared in a film. It is also one of the last major films to star Lon Chaney before his death on August 26, 1930.
Lon Chaney’s makeup for the film included sharpened teeth and the hypnotic eye effect, achieved with special wire fittings which he wore like monocles. Based on surviving accounts, he purposefully gave the “vampire” character an absurd quality, because it was the film’s Scotland Yard detective character, also played by Chaney, in a disguise. Surviving stills show this was the only time Chaney used his famous makeup case as an on-screen prop.
For decades, the mystique of Lon Chaney’s 1927 mystery-thriller, London After Midnight, has pondered the minds of horror buffs, silent film enthusiasts and film collectors alike. Before Dracula (1931), before Mark of the Vampire (1935), London After Midnight was America’s first cinematic delve into the notion of vampirism by incorporating elements of author Bram Stoker’s original novel (Dracula) while careful to sidestep the outright supernatural, as was the style for American “horror” films of the 1920s.
The only known copy of London After Midnight was in possession of MGM Studio, however it was likely destroyed in an explosion. The Evening Vanguard—a local newspaper in Venice, California—reported on August 11, 1965 that the day before there was an explosion on MGM Lot 1, which resulted in the destruction of a concrete film storage vault. The concrete roof of the building collapsed in the ensuing fire, however nobody is believed to have been killed or injured. Unfortunately the Evening Vanguard states that “No estimate of the loss was available.”
It is firmly believed that the last complete copy of the film was destroyed by the fire in 1965. Countless nitrate frames, production stills, pieces of interstitial material and a complete script have, however, survived. Any efforts to find a complete version of the film have proven to be unsuccessful.
A reconstruction of the film was assembled by Rick Schmidlin, a well-known filmmaker and film archivist, using over 200 still shots and a complete script. The film/slideshow is accompanied by an entirely original score from composer Robert Israel. This reconstruction was aired on the television station Turner Classic Movies on August 15, 2002 as part of their tribute to Lon Chaney. The reconstruction is also included on the Lon Chaney Collection DVD set.
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