The Last Warning

An actor dies on stage during a performance and the theatre is closed. Five years later a producer decides to reopen it. What is more, he will stage the same play with what remains of the same cast. As soon as rehearsals begin, strange things happen: the lights go out, scenery falls, and somebody moves about in the dark. Paul Leni's silent film is taken as German expressionism carried into American cinema: shadow, a moving camera, odd angles. Laura La Plante takes the lead. Leni had used the same pattern before in The Cat and the Canary. The film came in the year sound arrived, and both a silent and a sound version were prepared.