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Midnight Faces

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Midnight Faces
Directed byBennett Cohen
Written byBennett Cohen
Produced byOtto K. Schreier
StarringRalph Bushman
Kathryn McGuire
Jack Perrin
CinematographyKing D. Gray
Edited byFred Bain
Distributed byGoodwill Pictures
Release date
  • March 25, 1926 (1926-03-25)
Running time
53 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguagesSilent film
English intertitles

Midnight Faces (1926) is a silent film starring Francis X. Bushman, Jr. and Jack Perrin. The film is an 'old dark house' murder mystery in the same genre as One Exciting Night (1922), The Ghost Breaker (1922), The Bat (1926) and The Cat and the Canary (1927).[2]

Critic Christopher Workman called it "a thoroughly unmemorable entry in the run of old dark house horror comedies" handled with an "absence of style, atmosphere and wit ... Even at less than an hour, the film drags interminably."[3] Conversely, Jonathan Rigby, in his book American Gothic, noted that the film "works some interesting variations on the standard clichés" and that "as rip-offs go, Midnight Faces is unusually engaging and intelligent."[4]

Cast

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Plot

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Lynn Claymore inherits an estate in a Florida swamp from an uncle he never knew. His lawyer Richard Mason accompanies him to the property. A strange Chinese man is seen wandering the grounds at night, and a man in a cape is spotted skulking down the corridors by Claymore's clichéd "fraidy-cat" black manservant Trohelius. Then a young woman named Mary Bronson shows up, asking to be allowed in to escape an assailant with a knife who she says was stalking her.

References

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  1. ^ Workman, Christopher; Howarth, Troy (2016). "Tome of Terror: Horror Films of the Silent Era". Midnight Marquee Press. p.302. ISBN 978-1936168-68-2.
  2. ^ The AFI Catalog of Feature Films: Midnight Faces
    - Midnight Faces at silentera.com
  3. ^ Workman, Christopher; Howarth, Troy (2016). "Tome of Terror: Horror Films of the Silent Era". Midnight Marquee Press. p. 302. ISBN 978-1936168-68-2.
  4. ^ Jonathan Rigby, American Gothic: Six Decades of Classic Horror Cinema, Signum Books 2017 (revised edition), p.51.
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