THE LAST WARNING (1928) Laura La Plante, Montagu Love & Roy D'Arcy | Horror | B&W | Vintage Cinema

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The Last Warning is a 1928 sound part-talkie American mystery film directed by Paul Leni, and starring Laura La Plante, Montagu Love, and Margaret Livingston. In addition to sequences with audible dialogue or talking sequences, the film features a synchronized musical score and sound effects along with English intertitles. The film apparently only survives in a cut-down edited silent version which was made for theaters that had not yet converted to sound. The soundtrack for the sound version, which was also released on sound-on-disc format, survives in private hands on Vitaphone type discs.

The Last Warning was also one of the very last part-talkie films Universal made, with roughly sixty feet of talking sequences added (only a minute or two). Its plot follows a New York producer's attempt to re-stage a play five years after one of the original cast members was murdered in the theater. The film is based on the 1922 Broadway melodrama of the same name by Thomas F. Fallon, which in turn was based on the story House of Fear by Wadsworth Camp, the father of the writer Madeleine L'Engle.

Response by critics to The Last Warning varied, with many praising its performances and cinematography, though several commented on its incoherent plot, and others criticized its integration of sound, feeling it presented optimally as a silent film. In 2016, Universal Pictures selected it for film restoration, using elements from two different prints owned by the Packard Humanities Institute and the Cinémathèque Française.

Synopsis

"BROADWAY, ELECTRIC HIGHWAY OF HAPPINESS.... STREET OF NIGHT CLUBS, THEATRES, LAUGHTER." In a Broadway theatre production of a play entitled The Snare, one of the actors, John Woodford, inexplicably dies during a stage performance, and his body disappears. Few clues exist as to what caused his death, aside from several drops of liquid found that resembled chloroform. Rumors of a love triangle between Woodford and two cast members circulate as a possible motive for his death.

Five years after the theater's closure, producer Arthur McHugh decides to solve the mystery by again staging the play with the remaining cast and re-enacting Woodford's murder. During rehearsals in the abandoned theater, strange occurrences plague the cast, including ominous noises, falling scenery, and an unexplained fire. Doris, the lead actress, has her purse stolen from her dressing room by an unseen assailant; Mike Brody, the stage manager, reportedly receives a telegram warning him to drop out of the play, signed by John Woodford, and the theater's new owner, Arthur McHugh, also receives a visit from Woodford's ghost.

The production continues, and during the final rehearsal, Harvey Carleton inexplicably disappears from the stage during a blackout. Doris spots a mysterious masked figure in a theater box in addition to a man resembling John Woodford, but both disappear. Behind a picture hanging on the stage, a lever is discovered which opens a trap door, where the cast find Harvey incoherent. Arthur and Richard Quayle, another cast member, venture inside, where they discover a tunnel that leads to Doris's dressing room.

Arthur has police officers appointed at the theater for the show's opening the following night. During the performance, an electrical wire charged to 400 volts is discovered connected to a candlestick onstage, and Arthur lunges at Richard to prevent him from touching it during the final scene. The unseen masked assailant is discovered hiding inside a grandfather clock onstage, but he drops through a trap door in the floor just after shooting one of the police officers. The assailant scales the theater and throws a mannequin resembling John Woodford onto the stage. He then begins swinging from a rope, but is brought back down by a stagehand who cuts it.

Cast& Crew

Laura La Plante as Doris Terry
Montagu Love as Arthur McHugh
Roy D'Arcy as Harvey Carleton
Margaret Livingston as Evelynda Hendon
John Boles as Richard Quayle
Bert Roach as Mike Brody
Mack Swain as Robert Bunce
Burr McIntosh as Josiah Bunce
Mme. Carrie Daumery as Barbara Morgan
'Slim' Summerville as Tommy Wall
'Buddy' Phelps as 'Buddy'
Torben Meyer as Gene
D'Arcy Corrigan as John Woodford
Tom O'Brien as First Detective
Fred Kelsey as Second Detective

Directed by: Paul Leni
Screenplay by: Alfred A. Cohn, Robert F. Hill, J. G. Hawks, Tom Reed
Based on: Play by Thomas F. Fallon and novel by Wadsworth Camp
Produced by: Carl Laemmle Jr. (associate producer)
Cinematography: Hal Mohr (uncredited)
Edited by: Robert Carlisle (uncredited)
Production Companies: Carl Laemmle presents, A Paul Leni Production
Distributed by: Universal Pictures Corp.
Release Date: December 25, 1928
Running Time: 87 minutes
Country: United States
Languages: Sound (Part-Talkie), English Intertitles