The following interview with critic Imogen Sara Smith was recorded in 2023.

Directed by Rouben Mamoulian • 1931 • United States
Starring Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart

Stylish camerawork, innovative special effects, and plenty of startling pre-Code touches make this the definitive screen adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic classic, directed with ty...

Directed by Archie Mayo • 1931 • United States
Starring John Barrymore, Marian Marsh, Donald Crisp

In a performance noted for both its unrestrained intensity and troubling antisemitic overtones, John Barrymore plays the titular hypnotist, who uses his powers of mind control to turn an artist’s m...

Directed by Tod Browning • 1932 • United States
Starring Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Roscoe Ates

“One of us, one of us!” One of the most shocking films of the pre-Code era, Tod Browning’s classic of the macabre was condemned as an “outrageous onslaught upon the feelings, the senses, the brains, a...

Directed by Erle C. Kenton • 1932 • United States
Starring Charles Laughton, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams

A twisted treasure from Hollywood’s pre-Code horror heyday, ISLAND OF LOST SOULS is a cautionary tale of science run amok, adapted from H. G. Wells’s novel “The Island of Dr. Moreau.” In one o...

Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel • 1932 • United States
Starring Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Leslie Banks

One of the best and most literate movies from the great days of horror, THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME stars Leslie Banks as a big-game hunter with a taste for the world’s most exotic ...

Directed by Robert Florey • 1932 • United States
Starring Bela Lugosi, Leon Ames, Sidney Fox

Shockingly sordid even by the grisly standards of pre-Code horror, this (very) loose adaptation of the story by Edgar Allan Poe casts a memorably fiendish Bela Lugosi as the Parisian mad scientist Dr. Mi...

Directed by James Whale • 1932 • United States
Starring Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton

Director James Whale (FRANKENSTEIN) turned J. B. Priestley’s novel “Benighted” into a nerve-jangling tale that became the template for all spooky-house chillers to come. Stranded travelers stu...

Directed by George Archainbaud • 1932 • United States
Starring Irene Dunne, Ricardo Cortez, Jill Esmond

Shortly before shedding her “exotic vamp” persona and reinventing herself as THE THIN MAN’s Nora Charles, Myrna Loy terrified and terrorized as the murderous mesmerist Ursula Georgi in this pr...

Directed by A. Edward Sutherland • 1933 • United States
Starring Charles Ruggles, Lionel Atwill, Gail Patrick

Startlingly perverse even by pre-Code standards, this grisly tale of murder and madness stars an unforgettably maniacal Lionel Atwill as wealthy zoologist Eric Gorman, who becomes jealou...

Directed by Michael Curtiz • 1933 • United States
Starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell

Bodies are mysteriously disappearing all over town, and a new wax museum has just opened. Is there a connection? But of course! In this macabre horror classic, Fay Wray stars as the intended next v...

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer • 1934 • United States
Starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners

Horror legends Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi were paired together for the first time in this astonishingly perverse sadomasochistic shocker from cult director Edgar G. Ulmer. While on their honey...

Directed by Lew Landers • 1935 • United States
Starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lester Matthews

Following their success in THE BLACK CAT, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi reteamed for this grisly tale of torture, plastic surgery, and morbid obsession inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe poem of the ...