Return to Babylon

Premise

Photographed with a hand-cranked camera and scored with music of the roaring twenties, this silent film strings together the lives of the most famous and infamous stars of the 1920s, including Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, Lupe Vélez, Fatty Arbuckle, and William Desmond Taylor.

Background

Return to Babylon features locations in and around Hollywood, California, including the original home of Rudolph Valentino, Falcon Lair, as well as the Norma Talmadge estate, the Canfield-Moreno Estate, and the Magic Castle in the Hollywood Hills.

The feature was shot using 19 rolls of 16mm film supposedly found sitting on a sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.

Reports of paranormal activity

The film's marketing played up the notion that the film was haunted. Media releases and interviews stated that the actors faces can be seen "morphing" into grotesque shapes in certain shots. There were reports of actors having elongated and webbed fingers, full bodied apparitions, seeing the faces of dead actors manifest in shots, and shadows resembling demons or skeletons. Many of the cast and crew had confirmed many of these reports and stated they experienced odd events during production, with Jennifer Tilly in particular describing feeling "watched" and "touched" by unseen forces during filming.

Release

The film was released 11 August 2013 in the United States.