London After Midnight

[chainsaw midget]

I suppose I could have just put this in the thread about what movies you've watched recently, but I felt this was a well know enough movie to warrant it's own thread. 

Now before I get going and people get their hopes up to much, I did NOT watch the actual movie.  I watched the Turner Classic Movies restoration, which uses the original script and a LOT of movie stills to retell the picture.  It's honestly more of a slideshow than a real movie. 

I have to say, as a story ... it really doesn't make a lot of sense.  It's basically reverse Scooby Doo where the good guy disguises himself as a monster to catch the bad guy.  And for some reason, he waits five years and hires multiple actors to do this. 

It's a famous lost movie, and I feel that if it were found, people would be disappointed by what they see. 

HOWEVER... Lon Chaney's Vampire character (referred to in the subtitles as "the Man in the Beaver Hat") just has such an awesome and iconic look to him.  It's a shame we can't see that in action, even if the plot he's in doesn't really work. 

As I watched the Turner Classic Movie restoration, the thing had no sound.  No music in the background.  Nothing. 

I just played some background music from the Resident Evil games, and that worked quite well for establishing mood, and if recommend that if you are going to watch it, you should probably do something similar. 

[Rev. Powell]

Yeah, I've watched that. Pretty unremarkable. The stills tell the whole story.

[M.10rda]

Same here.
The "remarkable" thing about LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT is that, as recently as the the mid-to-late 80s, I insist this film was not "lost". Okay, my insistence is a bit extravagant, but. My Dad used to order free catalogs for movies on 8mm (yes) and VHS/BETA... back in the day when you could purchase them directly from a wholesaler for some fee. There were hundreds of 8mm prints you could buy, probably some 16mm too. We never ordered any - he just knew I liked reading about old movies and these catalogs had synopsis of all the films and cast info, running times, etc.

LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT used to show up in these catalogs!

I recall no hyperbole in the description to the effect of "This is the last known surviving copy of this film!" or "This is a short recreation using stills or anything." They were selling complete movies. No one seemed to care about LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT specifically - except me, 'cause I thought the synopsis sounded awesome, and probably the promo image of Chaney. But I didn't ever order a copy of it - or of anything else. (I remember one catalog made a HUGE deal out of the silent film SPARROWS... which has survived and I've seen it.)

Anyway... on occasion I've fallen down the internet rabbit hole on LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT. One thing it seems no one has tried to do is search "the archives" of old movie wholesalers....... though I imagine this is because those places all went out of business 35+ years ago around the advent of Blockbuster and maybe literally threw out or destroyed all their stock.  But FWIW, LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT was A Thing that still existed in our lifetimes....... 

[RCMerchant]

^ I hate to tell you this, but LONDON AFTER MIDINGHT's last known surving print was destroyed in a nitrate fire at MGM in 1965. No known print has seen the light of day since. It has NEVER- even before 1965- been available in 8mm and most certainly not VHS or BETA. Perhaps you are thinking of another "London" or Chaney film. but I can state  on my mother's grave it was not LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT. It hasn't even been publicly shown since 1927! Being silent films went out of favor a few years after it's release.

[Trevor]

^ I hate to tell you this, but LONDON AFTER MIDINGHT's last known surving print was destroyed in a nitrate fire at MGM in 1965. No known print has seen the light of day since. It has NEVER- even before 1965- been available in 8mm and most certainly not VHS or BETA. Perhaps you are thinking of another "London" or Chaney film. but I can state  on my mother's grave it was not LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT. It hasn't even been publicly shown since 1927! Being silent films went out of favor a few years after it's release.

Reminds me of all the early silent films in South Africa which were destroyed through complete ignorance and stupidity 🙄😳

[Rev. Powell]

^ I hate to tell you this, but LONDON AFTER MIDINGHT's last known surving print was destroyed in a nitrate fire at MGM in 1965. No known print has seen the light of day since. It has NEVER- even before 1965- been available in 8mm and most certainly not VHS or BETA. Perhaps you are thinking of another "London" or Chaney film. but I can state  on my mother's grave it was not LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT. It hasn't even been publicly shown since 1927! Being silent films went out of favor a few years after it's release.

From Chainsaw's original post: "I did NOT watch the actual movie.  I watched the Turner Classic Movies restoration, which uses the original script and a LOT of movie stills to retell the picture.  It's honestly more of a slideshow than a real movie." 

[M.10rda]

I think RCM was setting me straight, not Chainsaw.

I defer to you, RC! I didn't claim I saw LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT on 8MM or VHS....... I only claimed that catalogues used to advertise it for sale!

Who knows what you'd receive if you actually ordered it from them.......          ...Guess I'll never find out.......

[Rev. Powell]

I think RCM was setting me straight, not Chainsaw.

I defer to you, RC! I didn't claim I saw LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT on 8MM or VHS....... I only claimed that catalogues used to advertise it for sale!

Who knows what you'd receive if you actually ordered it from them.......          ...Guess I'll never find out.......

In that case,  I hate to tell you this, but LONDON AFTER MIDINGHT's last known surviving print was destroyed in a nitrate fire at MGM in 1965. 

[M.10rda]

So I am told! 

[M.10rda]

I am sitting around idly, not working on vacation (though I could, I suppose) while my family squabbles amongst each other and I stay out of it. Thus I started Googling again and found this very interesting page:
https://filmint.nu/london-after-midnight-gary-d-rhodes/

>>>...I can add various occasions from the 1980s to the present when collectors and historians have personally told me rumors of prints, tucked inside an American refrigerator, or perhaps stored in an old building in Korea. It survived in the form of footage from a coming attraction trailer, or as a fragment, or in an abbreviated 9.5mm format, or even in complete 35mm form, with one person confidently assuring me that Stanley Kubrick kept a copy in his personal vault.

So, this is probably what I think I saw in the 80s: an ad for "a coming attraction trailer, or... a fragment, or... an abbreviated 9.5mm format". I maintain that even an 8mm trailer would be a major find, in the 80s and definitely today, as no moving images from the film seem to have survived into 2026. Yes, the complete film was probably lost in '65 (or '67, as some websites claim) but some trailer reels may have survived for another 20+ years. I wish we had those today!

Additional credence to my aging recollections are provided by the following paragraph:

>>> In the 1970s, Hollywood agent Don Marlowe ran advertisements offering the lost print of Bela Lugosi's test footage for Frankenstein (1931) for sale. In the 21st century, more than one story has been told about the rediscovery of F.W. Murnau's 4 Devils (Fox, 1928). Neither film is known to exist. And yet many of us retain hope that they might, in part because we are optimists, and in part because major rediscoveries continue to be made around the world.

There's also this remotely feasible account (reflecting my print sightings) from someone named "Sid Terror"  :   >>>Terror claimed that in 1988, he worked for a cinema delivery service in Los Angeles. While at a "massive film storage facility" owned by Turner (who had acquired MGM's catalog), he asked a worker about London after Midnight, referencing its original title, The Hypnotist. The worker gave him the "section, row, and shelf number" of its location. While the nitrate print was incomplete, it was indeed London after Midnight, Terror insisted. Once he examined the reels, Terror was "positive." He "may have even wept a little." I sure would.

[M.10rda]

Jackpot!

This is definitely proof of the kind of thing I saw in my youth:
https://www.michaelgebert.com/lam/lam3.html 

This website claims LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT was only advertised for sale in this 1973 catalog - but I wasn't alive or reading in 1973.  Mail-order catalogs like this were still in business in the mid-to-late 80s and maybe just reprinting similar or identical copy 10-15 years later... 'cause this is pretty close to what I remember.

Note though that the '73 catalogue advertises "dramatic short subjects" - not explicitly "complete feature films". I never worked w/ 8mm celluloid and I don't know offhand how many minutes roughly 1300 feet of 8mm would be when projected at 24 fpm. So, maybe this catalogue wasn't even technically claiming to sell the complete movie - but if it was any amount of LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, again, that's pretty damn significant!!!

Here's another photo of a catalogue reputedly from 1998!
https://www.michaelgebert.com/lam/lam5.html

Now, here's the frustrating thing about Michael Gebert's website... dude presents the images at the two pages above, then... concludes like RCM that the film was lost in the mid-60s. Okay, I accept that... but that doesn't address what the heck those vendors were selling in the 70s through the 90s! Even if it was a collection of scenes or just a trailer or something... where is that stuff???