London After Midnight

This is a toy based on something that doesn't exist. At least, it doesn't exist anymore: London After Midnight was a 1927 silent film starring Lon Chaney (Senior) as a detective investigating a murder in the city. The film had some pseudo-supernatural elements, and audiences loved it, setting the stage for Universal to get into actual horror a few years later. Unfortunately, the only known surviving copy of the film was destroyed in the 1965 MGM vault fire, meaning it is, as of now, lost forever. We have a full transcript of the finished film and some stills and publicity photos, so it's possible to get the gist of things, but the full experience is gone. When Roger Balfour is found dead in his home, the case is ruled a suicide. Balfour's daughter, Lucille, stays with their next door neighbor, James Hamlin, and his nephew Arthur Hibbs. Five years later, a mysterious couple move into the abandonned Balfour estate, and the lease seems to have been signed by the deceased Balfour himself. Inspector Edward Burke of Scotland Yard, the detective who investigated the death five years ago, is brought in once again. Hamlin's maid insists the strange new residents are vampires, especially when it's discovered that Balfour's body is missing from its tomb. Preventative measures are taken, but the vampires seem to overcome them and young miss Lucy is stolen away in the night. The Shyamalanian tweest to the movie is (spoiler alert!) that Inspector Burke is the vampire - he never believed Balfour's death was suicide, and so set up a whole elaborate ruse to trick the real killer into revealing himself. (This doesn't make a ton of sense in the film as-is, because Balfour died of a gunshot wound; the novel upon which the script was based, The Hypnotist, had the original death staged to look like a vampire bite.) Lon Chaney was billed as The Man of a Thousand Faces, but this figure only includes three, and they're all the vampire. The vampire, incidentally, goes unnamed in the film: he's only ever referred to as "the Man in the Beaver Hat"; the woman who serves as his concubine/sidekick is only "the Bat Girl." And thus some fans have nicknamed the pair of them "Hattie and Battie"! Even in unmoving still images, Chaney's vampire makeup is oustandingly creepy. He's got stringy hair, bulging eyes with deep bags beneath them, and a hideous rictus grin that displays rows of jagged fangs. Allegedly Chaney made those himself from animal teeth, but they hurt so much to wear he could only do so for a few minutes at a time. Of course, if he's anything like his son when it comes to exaggerating a tale, who knows if that's true or not? The "beaver" hat that gives this character his name refers not to a shape, but to a material - like, today, almost a century after the film was made, saying "a beaver hat" sounds more like a Davy Crockett coonskin cap than a normal piece of headwear, but what it actually is is a top hat made from beaver fur. The hat is a separate piece, and can be worn on any of the three heads. His clothes are, to be honest, not very interesting. He's just wearing typical evening dress, not even as fancy as Dracula's tux. He does wear an inverness coat, so between this and the upcoming Hammer Horror Peter Cushing VanHelsing, you could be well on your way to a decent Sherlock Holmes custom. The set includes two versions of the coat's shawl, one in molded plastic and the other done in softgoods, to maintain the arms' full range of motion. Nice looking out, NECA! There are no surprises in the articulation - The Man in the Beaver Hat has swivel/hinge ankles, swivel/hinge knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, a balljointed waist, swivel/hinge wrists, swivel/hinge elbows, swivel/hinge shoulders, a balljointeed neck, and a barbell head. Since he spent most of his time crouching like a weird little goblin, you'll want to use all that, too: at 5'7", Lon Senior wasn't the tower of beef his son was, but as this character he ended up being shorter than everyone else on set because of the way he carried himself. After all, if Burke is trying to operate in disguise, being an entirely different height is a great first step. The only time the Man in the Beaver Hat stood up straight was when he was menacing the maid, Miss Smithson. In that scene, he stood upright, raised his arms above his head, and revealed a cape that looked like bat wings (a look that, decades later, would inspire part of Gene Simmons' Kiss costume). NECA's included that version of his cape, as well - it's made from translucent black plastic, and has rings that slip over the neck and wrists thanks to the miracle of swappable bodyparts. It's made from a surprisingly flexible plastic, so he's not locked into a single pose while wearing it. In colored promotional shots from the time, the vampire's face is a palid blue, just like it is on this toy, and they often gave him red eyes. The bare hands match the faces. One thing that doesn't feel right, though, is the hair: in the surviving stills, at least, it was light gray, nearly silver or even white, but NECA has opted to make it much darker. That means we lose the contrast between his hair and all of his black clothing, alas. But still, we really must praise the work done on the skin; for once, a human figure who's supposed to look like a corpse, unlike all the ones we've gotten recently from several different companies where that was just a case of bad color choice at the time of production. Beyond all the clothing, the heads, and the hands, the figure's only accessory is a lantern he briefly carries. It's not much, but there honestly isn't much else they could have given him. Perhaps the anti-vampire measures the household undertook, a pair of crossed swords in a wreath of tuberoses (this movie's version of crosses and garlic)? Or a head that isn't Chaney, representing the actor the scheme used as a stand-in whenever Inspector Burke and the Man in the Beaver Hat needed to be seen at the same time? The armadillo from NECA's Dracula Accessory Set, since the creature's inclusion in that film was a reference to this one? The lantern's fine, but it's not much. A major part of the allure of London After Midnight is the fact that it's lost. It may have been the most successful film Lon Chaney and Tod Browning made together, but it was barely even a footnote by the time it burned up in that fire - you can tell, because otherwise they'd have had more than one copy of it. The Man in the Beaver Hat has been a design inspiration many times over, be it as the Mr. Hyde who tangled with Bugs Bunny, the Haunted Mansion's Hatbox Ghost, print ads for WGN's 1970s Creature Features show, MST3K's Inspector, the killer from The Black Phone, or even everybody's favorite gay icon, the Babadook. This isn't a character, it's a look, and the toy duplicates that look well. -- 06/08/25 What accessories would you have included with this figure? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.