Not so much a silent movie as a silent slideshow, the reconstructed London After Midnight is nonetheless not the purely academic exercise you might expect. Though it'll be of interest mainly to the rather die-hard film buff, it's an intriguing and appealing film that would surely be beloved by fans of the old Universal horror movies … that is, were it, like, a movie. Actually, the reconstruction does a pretty good job of evoking movement by using tasteful, unobtrusive zooms and pans, although in some spots it's kind of hilarious that they need to use the same photo of a particular character, so the character's reaction remains the same no matter what happens. The plot seems like a rather by-the-numbers vampire story, nicely "eerie," but a surprising twist toward the end—surprising, that is, in the same way that the end of an average "Scooby-Doo" episode is—makes it seem better than average for this era. Lon Chaney is fantastic as "The Man With the Beaver Hat" … despite that un-catchy name, his look is so startling he'd surely be remembered along the lines of Karloff's Frankenstein, Lugosi's Dracula, and his own Phantom of the Opera … again, were this an actual movie. If a real print were to surface, it would be a major event. Until then (or perhaps never), London After Midnight remains one of the best arguments for film preservation.
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