THE LAST WARNING (1929)

On Broadway ("the electric highway of happiness," we are told in a title card), actor John Woodford, for whom the theater is named, is starring in a play called The Snare; as he reaches behind his back to grab a candlestick to fend off an attacker, he drops dead on stage. When the cops arrive, a complicated offstage situation is brought to light: Mike, the stage manager, overheard a quarrel in the dressing room of leading lady Doris Terry (Laura La Plante) between Woodford and director Richard Quayle (John Boles). It turns out that she was not only dating both men, but also seeing fellow actor Harvey Carleton (Roy D'Arcy) as well.  When the coroner arrives, Woodford's body is nowhere to be found. No one is charged and the ensuing scandal makes Doris break things off with all her admirers and head to Europe, and the Bunce brothers, who own the theater, close it down. Five years later, producer Arthur McHugh (Montagu Love), a close friend of Woodford's, reopens the theater and gets the original cast and crew of The Snare together to perform it again, apparently hoping to solve the cold case. Carleton takes Woodford's role, and flirtatious newcomer Evelynda Hendon joins the cast. Even the Bunces show up. The mood in the old dark theater is spooky, and tension builds when notes begin appearing like, "Let the dead sleep!" Carleton's script contains a scrawled message, "I warn you, death plays this part!" Stage manager Mike reports seeing Woodford's ghost, and we see a short caped figure creeping about the place. Will this recreation reveal the killer, or lead to more deaths?

This late-period silent film is a nice little gem, directed with wit and style by Paul Leni, known more for his similarly flashy THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927). The acting belongs mostly to the school of exaggerated facial expressions, though Montagu Love as McHugh comes off as surprisingly subtle and modern in his acting style. Boles is also good—he is best known now as Dr. Frankenstein's friend in the Boris Karloff FRANKENSTEIN. The mystery is a bit muddled, and the motive behind the murder isn't given a very logical explanation. But this is definitely one to watch for visual style: roaming camerawork and unusual camera angles crop up with frequency; there are interesting montages, and spooky shots in the dark. One of my favorite moments is of elderly actress Barbara (Carrie Daumery, pictured, appearing like a ghost, shrouded in cobwebs. This is essentially an old-dark-house thriller set in a theater, so we get secret passages and grasping hands and, as noted above, someone sneaking around in disguise. Though the theater set is fairly plain, the exterior makes it look like the monstrous Moloch figure in METROPOLIS. If you have any tolerance for silent films and like spooky thrillers, you’ll love this. Apparently Universal restored this for a silent film festival in 2016, but they have not yet released it on DVD; my copy, from Grapevine Video, is well-worn and a little splicy, and may be missing a few chunks of narrative, but it's quite watchable. [DVD]