London After Midnight (1927) :
Brief Review -
It's difficult to judge a lost and reconstructed film, and TCM put me through a tough job. Nevertheless, it's an experience to review a tranquil movie. Despite mixed reviews from contemporary critics, London After Midnight emerged as the biggest hit for Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. Both being giants in their fields, the magic was inevitable. London After Midnight is a smoky flick for today, or for anyone who hasn't seen it in theatres since then. It's sad that one of the most sought-after lost films was burned. TCM's reconstruction is not a motion picture at all. The stills and intertitles can give you an idea of the story, the characters, the settings, and the screenplay, but they don't make a "movie". It is tough to judge such a film because you don't see actors acting; you don't feel the tension, the atmosphere, or anything else that's not moving. It becomes soulless, but still. I'd like to talk about the script and the storytelling. I won't talk about acting, assuming that Lon Chaney must have done the best job, just like he was doing in almost every film at the time, and that Browning must have done fine work, just like he was doing back then. There will be a lot of assumptions here, but that won't reflect on my final ratings. So, it's a bang-on script with thrilling suspense and some frightening horror images. The killer's identity is pretty suspenseful, and you'd be surprised to know the way it unfolds. That hypnotism trick is mesmerising for its time and the way it is used as the main element to solve a murder mystery. The bats and those horrendous eyes will scare the hell outta you. But sadly, these are just images, and motion would have definitely felt more frightening. Browning's guts to go against mainstream formulas does the trick again, and nobody could have used Chaney better than him.
RATING - 6/10*
By - #samthebestest.
It's difficult to judge a lost and reconstructed film, and TCM put me through a tough job. Nevertheless, it's an experience to review a tranquil movie. Despite mixed reviews from contemporary critics, London After Midnight emerged as the biggest hit for Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. Both being giants in their fields, the magic was inevitable. London After Midnight is a smoky flick for today, or for anyone who hasn't seen it in theatres since then. It's sad that one of the most sought-after lost films was burned. TCM's reconstruction is not a motion picture at all. The stills and intertitles can give you an idea of the story, the characters, the settings, and the screenplay, but they don't make a "movie". It is tough to judge such a film because you don't see actors acting; you don't feel the tension, the atmosphere, or anything else that's not moving. It becomes soulless, but still. I'd like to talk about the script and the storytelling. I won't talk about acting, assuming that Lon Chaney must have done the best job, just like he was doing in almost every film at the time, and that Browning must have done fine work, just like he was doing back then. There will be a lot of assumptions here, but that won't reflect on my final ratings. So, it's a bang-on script with thrilling suspense and some frightening horror images. The killer's identity is pretty suspenseful, and you'd be surprised to know the way it unfolds. That hypnotism trick is mesmerising for its time and the way it is used as the main element to solve a murder mystery. The bats and those horrendous eyes will scare the hell outta you. But sadly, these are just images, and motion would have definitely felt more frightening. Browning's guts to go against mainstream formulas does the trick again, and nobody could have used Chaney better than him.
RATING - 6/10*
By - #samthebestest.