London After Midnight

So anyway you know that song off what's-her-name Patsy Cline going I keep on walking after midnight so darling hold me tight don't make me cry over you or something that the point is I did cry and it was over this movie was really stupid when and you wouldn't expect the stupid movie to come from the great actor Lon Chaney that you love so much the person you love so much whom you love so much especially for his great scary movie performances and you do expect the best out of such a fellow yes sir you want to be excited to be blown away by by excitement it's incredible that this movie was incredibly stupid and why for God's sake with your try to put together a movie which was Burgers wasn't worth it I don't understand it may be the descendants of Chaney said hey we want this movie to be fine and okay you have a new vampire thing going on at the deception game but it's not clearly don't you know it's a whole big problem because you don't see it the end what really happened because you don't it's not a reason that you said okay and you know I need some paperwork from the internet to understand really what happened to her it was really all stupid and most of it was boring my partner fell asleep and so did I and I would have loved to make love to my partner but I didn't the fortunately I watch this stupid movie it was meant to be scary movie with only scary thing about it was indeed the performance of the guy of Lon Chaney himself but it wasn't so interesting the movie wasn't great only interesting part was the with the teeth and the tooth and the everything of the main character who was also let us be serious here the bad guy yes let us just see it the way it was and that is all that I have to say about this movie I would rather see all the other movies of those brown and then this one I really did not like it and maybe it would have made a difference if you really side before the burning but then again what foreign idiots only keeps all the copies together at the same place to burn it onto your stupid m*********** an idiot so it doesn't make sense

When I learned that "London after Midnight" was going to be on, I thought it was the actual film, and was very eager to see it. At first I was slightly disappointed when I saw pictures instead of action. However, my disappointment was quickly gone. In essence, the restoration was a "silent film" but had no motion. The "still acting" was masterful, and it was so easy to understand the characters. The script and sets were great, the timing between the "shots" was good, particularly when different angles of a subject were changed rapidly. I am a Lon Chaney fan, and his close-ups are masterpieces. He truly stole the show, although it had a good cast. Chaney was unrecognizeable in his unsettling vampire makeup, and it helped make his performance as the vampire more potent. Coupled with his performance as the highly intelligent, take-charge Inspector Burke, he's truly a winner.

I am curious to see the actual film, but I am greatly impressed with the restoration TCM did. They tried to get the restoration as much like the film as possible, and because of that, it is a godsend.

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.

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.

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.