NitrateVille.com

Hi all --

I'm very interested in the work of Paul Leni, and I was wondering if any of you knew if The Last Warning is considered to be a lost film or not. I know that a clip of it appeared in Brownlow's Universal Horror, but I'm not able to find out too much about the availability of this film. Any info is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your help,

Aaron

According to Silent Era this film does exist. They have no other information on where the print may be.

A 16mm copy was shown at Syracuse Cinefest a few years ago. Sometime before that a now defunct video outfit called Moonlight Video was selling a so-so bootleg copy on vhs. DVD-rs probably made from that copy- turn up on E Bay from time to time.
Henry Nicolella

Yes, I've seen it on both 16mm (at Cinevent) and bootleg video (not sure of source, honestly). Here's what I wrote on AMS after the Cinevent screening:

THE LAST WARNING (***)-- Paul Leni's last is a weaker, more improbable
retread of THE CAT AND THE CANARY set in a New York theater (as the
notes pointed out, a much less convincing setting for gothic scares
than a remote manor house), but it's so full of bravura camerawork
that you hardly notice it's junk food. I often tell people who whine
about LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT being lost that this is the best you could
hope for from a similar plot-- and odds are Browning didn't deliver
anything near what Leni does here.

Besides the truly horrendous dupes floating around, there is an original "Universal Show -at-Home" 16mm print that survives (AFAIK, it may be the only one). Formerly in the John Hampton collection, it's now at UCLA. Show-at-Home prints were generally excellent quality, although I haven't seen the print and have no idea as to its condition. I've never heard of it surviving in 35mm, which is true of many films that only exist thanks to "Show-at-Home" prints (including Chaney's HUNCHBACK).

According to a late '20s catalogue, THE CHINESE PARROT (another Leni film, Universal 1927) was also available as a Show-at-Home print. Presently considered lost, it's certainly possible that one of these 16mm prints has survived, as yet undiscovered.

I have a reasonably good dupe, and The Last Warning is a very effective film. It has some slack parts but the visual atmosphere helps to cover them up. Essentially it's a mystery dressed up as a horror film. Excellent cast- even John Boles does well.

Eric Stott

Universal has in its vault an excellent 35mm separate picture and track fine grain master on the "goat gland" part talking version. Now, whether any of us will live to see them do something with it is another question completely.