AllMovie

According to an oft-told tale, a young man disappeared without a trace during the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Decades later, Alexander Woolcott penned a story for the New Yorker, "The Most Maddening Story in the World", which itself became the genesis for a 1947 novel and a 1951 British film, both entitled So Long at the Fair. And just like the later and much better-known Dirk Bogarde thriller, The Midnight Warning's main attraction is its confounding mystery. Spencer Gordon Bennet, in one of his infrequent departures from serials, does a fine job directing a ramshackle cast of B-movie regulars that includes the confusingly named William "Stage" Boyd (a moniker given lest anyone should mistake him for the handsome silver-haired matinee idol of the same name) and, in a rare non-villainous performance, Hooper Atchley. Leading lady Claudia Dell, according to Bennet, was so inexperienced that she actually knocked herself unconscious performing a fall in the quite scary mortuary sequence. The traumatic episode remains clearly visible in the film.