A great many films are mourned for vanishing without a trace, especially ones that didn’t survive the Silent Era. However, perhaps no other from that period the hands of fate rendered unavailable has amassed the kind of reputation London After Midnight has. Due to its legend, age, and status, it almost has a forbidden-fruit quality that might make its most desperate seekers wish they could procure a lone remaining print from a foreign black market.
And why not? The spooky picture starred the inimitable Lon Chaney under one of his strangest and most celebrated DIY make-up jobs. The kit of tricks that gave The Man his Thousand Faces is still renowned today even though most people who beheld its magic in his prime aren’t around to brag. Lost to time or not, Chaney with his big eyes, jagged razor teeth, wild hair, and top hat is so recognizable 100 years after the design debuted that you can still find it on $10-$20 shirts.
London After Midnight is also special because it is one of Chaney’s most well-known collaborations with director Tod Browning. Browning’s star would fade after the ambitious and scandalous Freaks ruined his career, but in the late 1920s, he was at the top of his game and nearly ready to break into the sound era with some serious teeth belonging to a certain Transylvanian Count. When it came time to make Dracula, Browning had Chaney in mind before the actor’s untimely death from cancer.
Before that in 1927, Browning would hit the primer on vampires with Chaney in a murder mystery at the heart of London that would normally summon Sherlock Holmes. Without giving too much away, two vampiric wraiths – a pale woman and Chaney’s hat man – appear to be the new tenants of an estate someone died in five years ago, allegedly by suicide. It’s a suspenseful story though not your typical supernatural parable.
To avoid spoiling anything, I’ll leave my description there. However, despite the courtesy I’m showing, seeing the mystery unfold for yourself proves difficult (although not impossible as you’ll soon find out). The last known copy of London After Midnight went up in smoke in a 1965 fire that engulfed MGM’s Vault 7. In a cruel twist of fate, this happened three years after Browning’s death following decades in obscurity.
That appears to be the sad (and unfortunate) end to the story, but only for those who don’t dig deeper and ask the right questions. Much like Laurence Fishburne was memed to death for asking when he played Morpheus, what if I told you there was another way to see London After Midnight; that there is another version of it out there you can watch right now? And that it stars a bigger cinema icon than Lon Chaney?
In 1935, Browning remade his gothic horror picture as Mark of the Vampire and tapped Bela Lugosi, who recently made his name as Dracula in the most iconic of portrayals and was at the height of his fame, to play the title being, but with a twist. Lugosi didn’t come alone either as he co-starred alongside fellow genre stalwarts Lionel Atwill and Lionel Barrymore (Drew’s great-uncle).
The setup, the story, and the payoff (which, again, I’ll spare spoiling) are the same and so is the choice of filming in black and white (although that goes without saying). The only real difference is Mark was made with three things in mind: contemporary audiences, their ingrained taste for talkies, and their liking of the macabre style only the team of Browing and Lugosi could deliver at that point.
The cast is also even more of an ensemble than London and didn’t require any actors to pull double duty as Lon Chaney did for the latter years before. Moreover, it might surprise you to learn some people prefer the sound version more and say, based on accounts of people who saw its more notorious silent forebear, you’re not missing much.
Arguably, London After Midnight coasts on a grandiose reputation derived from Lon Chaney’s impressively garish makeup and the fact the film is ‘missing’ to put it nicely. You yourself might find out you prefer Mark of the Vampire, but you have to see it first. It can be found lingering in the shadows on Hulu and elsewhere.
If that won’t do for classier cinephiles, Turner Classic Movies shows it every year for Halloween, which is fast approaching. Pro tip: should you have YouTube TV, look up “Mark of the Vampire“ in your search bar. It’s probably DVR’d for you already.
