Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

     This is kind of a double "What If". What if An American Werewolf in London  was made in the 1940s and what if the Universal monster series went a different direction. Since this is the time of Sherlock Holmes in Washington , The Falcon in San Francisco  and The Saint in London , I figure the movie would be called The Wolf Man in London . The original Mummy movie had Boris Karloff as Imhotep but the 1940 sequel had Tom Tyler as the mummy Kharis. The main characters were Steve Banning and Babe Hanson, played by Dick Foran and Wallace Ford, searching for the lost tomb of Princess Ananka. The sequel to that film, The Mummy's Tomb , took place 30 years later (1970?). I imagined the Jack and David characters from An American Werewolf in London  being Steve and babe from The Mummy's Hand . Lon Chaney Jr. would have a small part as Larry Talbot passing the curse to Steve. Since Universal horror movies reused actors in different roles, Claude Rains, who played ...

           Most of my favorite silent movie actors are the comedians but I also love Douglas Fairbanks (Sr.) for adventure and Lon Chaney (Sr.) for pathos. Although mostly known as a horror actor for the make-up he designed and wore as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame  and as the Phantom of Opera he played a variety of roles. Having been raised by deaf parents he could express so much without a word, which helped in silent films.      He made ten films with the great director Tod Browning ( Dracula and Freaks ). One of them is the subject of this blog. London After Midnight  may well be the most famous lost film. Surprisingly a copy of it still exited in 1965 when the vault it was in at MGM went up in flames. No actual footage is known to exist. I imagined what if this movie still exited and Phantom of the Opera  had been lost. A reconstruction was made based on the script and the existing photos from the film.   ...