London After Midnight (film)

Roger Balfour is found dead in his London home one night. Burke, a representative of Scotland Yard, after questioning everyone present, declares the death a suicide despite objection from Balfour's neighbour and close friend, Sir James Hamlin. Five years later, strange lights are seen within the now-forsaken Balfour mansion. The new tenants are two vampiric figures of a man in a beaver-felt top hat with long hair and sharp teeth, and a silent pale woman wearing long robes. This prompts the baronet, Sir James, to call Burke in once again. Burke discovers that Hamlin and the others there (Balfour's daughter, Lucille; his butler, Williams; and Hamlin's nephew, Arthur Hibbs) had been the only other persons in the Balfour home when he died. After noticing the new lease to the Balfour mansion bears the exact same signature as the deceased Roger Balfour's, Burke remains skeptical about the existence of the undead, and, along with Sir James, exhumes Roger Balfour's tomb to find it empty. After a series of grisly events—including the maid Miss Smithson's eccentric recollection of encountering the Man in the Beaver Hat manifesting in a bedroom, the vampire girl flying down like a bat from the ceiling of the Balfour mansion, and witnessing the living corpse of Roger Balfour—Burke reveals to Lucille that he now believes her father to have been murdered. After precautions are taken to protect Lucille's bedroom from vampires, the girl is taken to the Balfour mansion. Sir James is instructed to venture to the mansion, where he encounters the Man in the Beaver Hat (revealed to be Burke) and is hypnotized into thinking it is five years earlier. Within the mansion, the events leading up to Balfour's death are recreated and re-enacted and all secretly watch as Sir James kills Roger Balfour and fakes his suicide so as to ultimately marry Balfour's daughter Lucille, against the deceased's wishes. Once apprehended, Burke lifts the trance and identifies Sir James as the killer. ==Cast==

• Lon Chaney as Professor / Inspector Edward C. Burke / The Man In The Beaver Hat • Marceline Day as Lucille Balfour • Claude King as Roger Balfour / The Stranger • Polly Moran as Miss Smithson, The New Maid • Conrad Nagel as Arthur Hibbs • Edna Tichenor as The Bat Girl • Henry B. Walthall as Sir James Hamlin • Percy Williams as Williams, Balfour's Butler • Andy MacLennan as Bat Girl's Assistant • Jules Cowles as The Gardener • Allan Cavan as The Estate Agent ==Production==

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. The story was an original work by Tod Browning, with Waldemar Young, who had previously worked with Browning on The Unholy Three and The Unknown, as the scenario writer. Young was previously employed as a journalist in San Francisco, during which time he covered several famous murder investigations, a distinction which saw him lauded as knowing "mystery from actual experience." In adding an authenticity to both Chaney's character and the atmosphere within the haunted house scenes, bats, armadillos, and owls were used. , bat pose, in London After Midnight When London After Midnight premiered at the Miller Theater in Missouri, set musicians Sam Feinburg and Jack Feinburg had to prepare melodies to go with the film's supernatural elements. The musicians used ''Ase's Todd and Eritoken by Greig, Dramatic Andante by Rappe, the Fire Music'' from Wagner's The Valkyrie along with other unlisted aspects of Savino, Zimonek and Puccini. ==Release==

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released London After Midnight theatrically in the United States on December 3, 1927. ==Reception==

Box office According to MGM records London After Midnight earned $721,000 in theater rentals from the United States and Canada and an additional $283,000 from foreign rentals, giving the studio a profit of $540,000. A positive review ran in The Film Daily, calling it "a story certain to disturb the nervous system of the more sensitive picture patrons. Thrills and weird doings in profusion. Probably a trifle too spooky for the timid soul. If they 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." Marc Bowman of The Oregonian praised the film as "as nerve-wringing a piece of screen fiction as has been seen in these parts for many moons," noting Chaney's makeup as "bizarre" and "striking." The Warren Tribune noted that Lon Chaney is "present in nearly every scene, in a dual role that tests his skill to no small degree." The review highlighted that this subdues Chaney's prominence and allows the plot to be better communicated, but it also causes the film to "not rank among his best productions." A review by The Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted: "It is pleasant to report also that there is none of the usual stupid comedy relief in London After Midnight to mar its sinister and creepy scheme. That ought to make it the outstanding mystery film of the year." Motion Picture Magazine wrote, "Lon Chaney is back in a get-up which would make any sensitive girl quiver and quake on a dark night, but which doesn't require any contortions or self-torture. This is a dark, foul mystery play, which has certain elements as horrid as anyone could ask... you sit through it in a sort of daze." Photoplay enthused, "The disguise that [Chaney] uses while ferreting out the murderer is as gruesome as any he has ever worn... The suspense is marvelously sustained. Chaney plays a dual role, and when conventionally clad, is a little less convincing than usual. In the other role, perfect!" ==Preservation==

Loss of materials The last known copy of the film was destroyed in the 1965 MGM vault fire, along with hundreds of other rare early films, making it one of the most sought-after lost silent films. Film historians William K. Everson and David Bradley claim they saw the film in the early 1950s, and an MGM vault inventory from 1955 shows the print being stored in Vault #7. Historian Jon C. Mirsalis opined, It is reported by some that small fragments or the entire film itself exists in private collections. Theatrical poster In 2014, the only contemporary poster known to exist for the film was sold to Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett, who bought it anonymously for $478,000. It was the most valuable poster ever sold at public auction until 2017, when a Dracula (1931) poster sold for $525,800. (A poster for The Mummy (1932) held the previous record, selling for $453,500 in 1997.) The poster was displayed in an exhibition of his collection at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. ==Related works==

Remake Tod Browning remade the film as a sound film in 1935. This film, called Mark of the Vampire, starred Lionel Barrymore and Bela Lugosi in the roles Lon Chaney had performed in London After Midnight. Reconstructions and novelizations A novelization of the film was written and published in 1928 by Marie Coolidge-Rask. Since 2023 there have been numerous reconstructions using A.I. to turn the still images into movements. Audio dramatization In September 2023, it was announced that a full-cast audio drama would be recorded, a collaboration between the independent audio production companies AudioMarvels, Pocket Universe Productions and Monkey Basket Entertainment, adapted from the original film script. The cast includes Art Malik as Detective Burke, and Dan Starkey as Sir James Hamlin. The production was released the following month through the show’s website, on Bandcamp, and as part of the fiction podcast Midnight Matinees. The work has received overwhelmingly positive reviews. ==In popular culture==

• Director Jennifer Kent has stated that images of Lon Chaney's character inspired the look of the titular character in The Babadook. • Episodes 5 and 6 of series 3 of Whitechapel featured a killer obsessed with London After Midnight who owned a surviving copy. • The theatrical poster for the 2021 horror film The Black Phone has been compared to Chaney’s image from the Browning film. ==See also==