In perusing Film Spectator for 1928, I found this review of “London After Midnight,” one of the most intriguing of the lost silent movies.
Oh dear:
“The whole thing is too utterly silly to warrant detailed criticism…. There is about one reel of story embellished by six reels of utter rot.”
ladailymirror.com 
Browning remade the film eight years later as the talkie “Mark of the Vampire.” There, Bela Lugosi replaced Chaney’s peculiar interpretation of a vampire (who apparently duck-walked in a manner something between Groucho Marx and Chuck Berry) with a straightforward approach straight out of the Browning/Lugosi “Dracula” (which had originally been cast with Chaney as the lead).
20% of “Mark’s” running time was slashed when MGM re-released it, but even at 61 minutes the film feels padded, given that the whole thing is built around endless atmosphere leading to an unsatisfying twist ending.
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Wonder what this reviewer thought of Tod Browning’s “Freaks”
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Tod Brownings twisted atmospherics were a fine cure for straight and stuffy America.
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Sounds like a review written by a conservative critic too caught up in logic and preconceived notions. The vampires are obviously part of the atmosphere and Browning’s uniquely twisted vision, yet this critic can’t even understand why they are there. And a character needs to conform to ” the common man’s notion of reality.” Just makes me want to see the film more when it was knocked by critics like this..
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