The Last Warning (1928 film)

"BROADWAY, ELECTRIC HIGHWAY OF HAPPINESS.... STREET OF NIGHT CLUBS, THEATRES, LAUGHTER." In a Broadway theatre production of a play entitled The Snare, one of the actors, John Woodford, inexplicably dies during a stage performance, and his body disappears. Few clues exist as to what caused his death, aside from several drops of liquid found that resembled chloroform. Rumors of a love triangle between Woodford and two cast members circulate as a possible motive for his death. Five years after the theater's closure, producer Arthur McHugh decides to solve the mystery by again staging the play with the remaining cast and re-enacting Woodford's murder. During rehearsals in the abandoned theater, strange occurrences plague the cast, including ominous noises, falling scenery, and an unexplained fire. Doris, the lead actress, has her purse stolen from her dressing room by an unseen assailant; Mike Brody, the stage manager, reportedly receives a telegram warning him to drop out of the play, signed by John Woodford, and the theater's new owner, Arthur McHugh, also receives a visit from Woodford's ghost. The production continues, and during the final rehearsal, Harvey Carleton inexplicably disappears from the stage during a blackout. Doris spots a mysterious masked figure in a theater box in addition to a man resembling John Woodford, but both disappear. Behind a picture hanging on the stage, a lever is discovered which opens a trap door, where the cast find Harvey incoherent. Arthur and Richard Quayle, another cast member, venture inside, where they discover a tunnel that leads to Doris's dressing room. Arthur has police officers appointed at the theater for the show's opening the following night. During the performance, an electrical wire charged to 400 volts is discovered connected to a candlestick onstage, and Arthur lunges at Richard to prevent him from touching it during the final scene. The unseen masked assailant is discovered hiding inside a grandfather clock onstage, but he drops through a trap door in the floor just after shooting one of the police officers. The assailant scales the theater and throws a mannequin resembling John Woodford onto the stage. He then begins swinging from a rope, but is brought back down by a stagehand who cuts it. The masked assailant is discovered to be Brody, who caused Woodford's death via electrocution and had been behind the "hauntings" to prevent the theater from being used. ==Cast==

Screenplay and filming The film was envisioned as a companion piece to director Leni's earlier The Cat and the Canary, due to that film's great popularity. Universal assigned Leni to the project under the assumption that his previous success would yield significant box-office results. It is based on the 1922 play of the same name by Thomas F. Fallon, which ran for 238 performances from October 24, 1922, until May 1923 at the Klaw Theatre. Fallon's play was in turn based on the story House of Fear by Wadsworth Camp, the father of writer Madeleine L'Engle. Casting Laura La Plante, a former teenage actress who had previously starred in Leni's The Cat and the Canary, was given top-billing in her role as Doris Terry, though her part in the film is considerably less involved than in the former. Film historian John Soister characterizes La Plante's role as that of an ingénue, consisting primarily of reactions to "assorted assaults, visions, and set-ups." The film marked La Plante's first talking picture. and was located in Universal City, California. ==Release==

According to the American Film Institute, and Manhattan, Kansas. The film was marketed as a successor to producer Leni's previous film The Cat and the Canary, attributed to producer Laemmle's "discriminating supervision." It is often considered one of the last part-talkies produced by Universal Studios. The film features a brief minute or two of synchronized dialogue, as well as screams, cries, and other sound effects. These scenes have since been lost. Martin Dickstein of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described the film as being "related with such vagueness that the picture fail[s] to hold together," but praised Leni's "propitious use of 'the camera angle,' and it is through this inventive maneuvering of the lens that the picture achieves at least a visual significance." A critic from the Los Angeles Times similarly found the cinematography "highly interesting" and the plot "lost in a maze of double and triple exposures," adding that there "is a decided lack of spontaneity in the sound sequences." The majority of the criticism surrounding the film had to do with its integration of sound. Irene Thirer of the New York Daily News, who felt the film "should never have been a talkie," elaborating that the dialogue episodes "retard the action" and "are not well done." The Montana Standard noted that the film "presents many thrills" and was widely enjoyed by the audiences at the film's premiere in Butte. A critic from the Hartford Courant alternately felt that, "as a talking picture, the film retains all the chill values of the play, with its eerie noises, screams, fright-fraught dialogue and general noise and excitement," but conceded that "it decidedly is not the scary kind of mystery play that the average person would find too startling." Sid Silverman, writing for Variety, noted the use of sound effects as "multiple, continuous, and in detail," and that the film included "enough screams to stimulate the average film mob into sticking through it." Hall also criticized the film's use of sound, writing: "There are too many outbursts of shrieking, merely to prove the effect of the audible screen, to cause any spine-chilling among those watching this production." while the Billings Gazette deemed it "the greatest mystery picture ever filmed." Photoplay was less laudatory, noting: "This could have been a gorgeous mystery story, but it's an obvious cross between The Phantom of the Opera and The Terror, with none of their consistency or power." ;Retrospective In a retrospective assessment, author and film critic Leonard Maltin awarded the film two and a half out of four stars, commending its camerawork and direction, but criticizing the film's story as "silly." Commenting on the finale, film historian Graham Petrie notes that Leni and cinematographer Hal Mohr "handle the camera with the utmost possible freedom, culminating in a scene in which the camera swings on a rope with the villain from one part of the theater to another. Along the way, Leni revels in the shadows, cobwebs, tilted angles, subtly distorted perspectives, ominously confined spaces, and clutching hands that had by now become his trademark." Petrie, who classifies it as a thriller film rather than a mystery, emphasizes that its stylistic and visual elements supersede narrative plausibility and characterization. 2016 restoration In 2016, a print of the cut-down edited silent version underwent digital film restoration by Universal Pictures, sourced from both the Cinémathèque Française print, as well as another print of the edited silent version featuring the original English title cards owned by the Packard Humanities Institute Collection of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. It was again screened in September 2016 at Cinecon Classic Film Festival in Los Angeles. This restored edition of the film had its home media premiere in a Blu-ray and DVD combination set by Flicker Alley in 2019. ==Other adaptations==

The Last Warning was re-made in 1939 by Joe May under the title The House of Fear. Universal made another movie titled The Last Warning in 1938, but it has no connection to the Leni film. ==See also==