The Last Warning
Director: Paul Leni
Year: 1928
Rating: 6.0
This silent film directed by Paul Leni was an attempt
to follow up on his hit The Cat and Canary (later remade as a Bob Hope vehicle)
with its mix of suspense and comedy. Unfortunately, it misses on both targets
and it comes across as a misshapen film that can't decide which direction
to go in. It has some nifty moments but they don't really meld together well.
Paul Leni had come over from Germany at the invitation of Universal and Carl
Laemmle (whose face is on the opening Universal logo). Leni had apparently
been an expressionistic stylist in Germany but am not sure he was able to
fully utilize that in Hollywood. The four films he made here before his very
early death from sepsis were the two mentioned plus The Man Who Laughs which
is considered a classic and The Chinese Parrott, a lost Charlie Chan film.
One of the things I love about silent films is the use of close-ups of expressive
faces with well applied make-up to accentuate the expressions. Silent films
used this much more than talkies because they needed the actors to show emotions
since they have no words to speak. This film perhaps goes a bit overboard
with this film technique as it becomes a fuselage of close-ups of people
looking terrified. Even for a silent film the acting feels ratcheted up to
level five. Out of five. In particular, the romantic hero played by John
Boles, whose eyes look like they are permanently in wide open surprise or
fear.
On the plus side is some fine cinematography and a nice creepy set full of
hidden passageways, dark corridors and more cobwebs than in a spider's nest.
In the opening credits there is a great montage of Broadway neon lights,
dancers, long legs and black face all swirling together to create a mood
of festive fun. The film opens up on a Broadway play in mid performance and
the leading man dies when he reaches for a candle and falls to the floor.
Whereupon the camera peers upwards at all the people in box seats looking
downward - a nice shot. Two bull detectives show up to start asking questions
and put the body in a room not to be disturbed. When the coroner shows up,
the body has disappeared. The finale is fine too as the masked killer evades
capture by using ropes, hidden doorways and hatches, leaping from balcony
to balcony - creating a near comic and yet wonderfully thought out set piece.
The theater shuts down for years until a producer (Montague Love) opens the
theater and brings back the same cast and staff to put on the same play.
Why? I have no idea? Why doesn't he first clean up the theater? I have no
idea. But somebody doesn't want that to happen and all sorts of things go
wrong. In the cast also is Laura La Plante as the leading lady - just saw
her in Show Boat a while back - a top actress at Universal and who starred
in The Cat and the Canary. Slim Summerville plays the electrician. The rest
of the cast I don't know though the strange old lady (Carrie Daumery) is
vaguely familiar and was in many films as uncredited. The film was remade
in 1939 as a B film, The House of Fear.
