Doktor John's greatest 1930s and 1940s horror movies
Doktor John's thoroughly researched, carefully selected and finely aged best horror movies of all time.
Not a matter of opinion, but totally authoritative.
Not subject to challenge, amendment, addition or deletion by lesser authorities.
Not a matter of opinion, but totally authoritative.
Not subject to challenge, amendment, addition or deletion by lesser authorities.
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30 titles
- DirectorJames WhaleStarsColin CliveMae ClarkeBoris KarloffDr Henry Frankenstein is obsessed with assembling a living being from parts of several exhumed corpses.Early talking cinema, based upon Mary Shelley's classic novel which proved to be the most profound, most imitated and universal theme of unintended consequences and science gone awry ever written. Her book was itself based upon the fantastically prophetic Greek myth of Prometheus, who brought destruction upon himself by defying the gods to bring fire as a gift to mankind.
- DirectorTod BrowningKarl FreundStarsBela LugosiHelen ChandlerDavid MannersTransylvanian vampire Count Dracula bends a naive real estate agent to his will, then takes up residence at a London estate where he sleeps in his coffin by day and searches for potential victims by night.Bela Lugosi creates his own version of Bram Stoker's immortal villain in this cinematic reprise of the Broadway play, an abbreviated but powerful adaptation of a much more complex book. A cautionary tale for English little girls to not romanticize about tall dark strangers from exotic lands who may have very different values. Really. That's what it's about!
- DirectorKarl FreundStarsBoris KarloffZita JohannDavid MannersA resurrected Egyptian mummy searches Cairo for the girl he believes to be his long-lost princess.Love is supposedly eternal, especially sacrilegious, forbidden love and especially when it is sustained by the curse of ancient Egyptian god Amon-Ra. Karloff, coming off his triumphant portrayal of the monster creates a bizarre persona in the form of ancient Egyptian mummy Imhotep come to life in the 20th century. Inspired by the "curse" of Tutankhamen.
- DirectorJames WhaleStarsBoris KarloffElsa LanchesterColin CliveMary Shelley reveals the main characters of her novel survived: Baron Henry Frankenstein, goaded by an even madder scientist, builds his monster a mate.A very intelligent, complicated sequel that attempts to incorporate issues from the book that were omitted or glossed over in the 1931 original, including Mary Shelly's talking monster. Features an introductory scene with Elsa Lanchester as the author herself (the same actress seen later in the title role) and her literary circle including husband Percy Shelly, Lord Byron and Polidori. This is the only time in the series in which the monster speaks. Only Karloff could pull it off.
- DirectorGeorge WaggnerStarsClaude RainsWarren WilliamLon Chaney Jr.Larry Talbot returns to his father's castle in Wales and meets a beautiful woman. One fateful night, Talbot escorts her to a local carnival where they meet a mysterious gypsy fortune teller.Lon Chaney Jr's masterful bringing to life of a legendary folk-monster by careless involvement with gypsies. As a transplanted American, Lawrence Talbot has no concept of these archaic European superstitions, but that does nothing to prevent his being overtaken by them.
- DirectorJames WhaleStarsClaude RainsGloria StuartWilliam HarriganA scientist finds a way of becoming invisible, but in doing so, he becomes murderously insane.Scientific discovery of invisibility confers power---and madness---upon a researcher who wields his affliciton as a weapon to wreak havoc and seek revenge. Is madness a side-effect of the chemical he uses? Or does the power itself make him a mad megalomaniac? Once again, science is portrayed as dangerous and too often the tool of immoral men.
- DirectorLambert HillyerStarsOtto KrugerGloria HoldenMarguerite ChurchillWhen Countess Marya Zaleska appears in London, mysterious events occur that lead Dr. Von Helsing to believe that the Countess must be a vampire.Lurid tale of Dracula's heiress, an exotically beautiful, voracious female with intents to trap her psychiatrist, to whom she is attracted, into a living death as a fellow vampire, luring him back to Transylvania. Her lurking manservant is her accomplice ennabling her in unspeakable crime.
- DirectorEdgar G. UlmerStarsBoris KarloffBela LugosiDavid MannersAmerican honeymooners in Hungary become trapped in the home of a Satan-worshipping priest when the bride is taken there for medical help following a road accident.The ultimate melodrama, incredibly simple, yet astoundingly complex. The horrors of World War I live on for a recently released prisoner of war, psychiatrist Bela Lugosi (in a sympathetic role) as he becomes engaged in a life-or-death revenge match with sadistic former fellow-officer and deserter from the war, Boris Karloff as the feline-esque embodiment of evil.
- DirectorStuart WalkerStarsHenry HullWarner OlandValerie HobsonAfter botanist Wilfred Glendon travels to Tibet in search of a rare flower, the Mariphasa, he returns to a London haunted by murders that can only be the work of bloodthirsty werewolves.A botanist (Henry Hull) travels to the Himalayas to find a rare flower that (like the werewolf) blooms in full moonlight. There's a wonderful performance by Warner Oland as his nemesis, Dr. Yogami, some stylized fight scenes and early "trick"-cinematography scenes when Henry Hull undergoes transformation into a wolf. The theme of a rational man reduced to beast is classic, to be sure.
- DirectorLew LandersStarsBoris KarloffBela LugosiLester MatthewsA brilliant surgeon with a morbid obsession for instruments of torture grows dangerously obsessed with a young socialite whose life he's saved.A "great" neurosurgeon and even greater megalomaniac, Dr Vollin, takes a fancy to a a beautiful dancer half his age. Frustrated and rebuked by her father, the doctor (Bela Lugosi) decides to show them how the torture chamber in his little Edgar Allen Poe basement works.
- DirectorRowland V. LeeStarsBoris KarloffBasil RathboneBela LugosiReturning to the ancestral castle long after the death of the monster, the son of Dr. Frankenstein meets a mad shepherd who is hiding the comatose creature. To clear the family name, he revives the creature and tries to rehabilitate him.Basil Rathbone puts on a Shakespearean-quality performance as the next generation of the Frankenstein family, out to restore honor to the family name, but is manipulated by an evil-intentioned Igor and by his own mad lust for scientific power. Lionel Atwill as the police inspector is memorable.
- DirectorErle C. KentonStarsCedric HardwickeLon Chaney Jr.Ralph BellamyDr. Frankenstein's plans to replace the brain of his monster are hijacked by his scheming and malevolent assistant Ygor.Lon Chaney Jr takes a turn as the monster, once again under the control of vicious Igor, as the pair tries to force another Frankenstein heir to do their bidding, which involves a whole lot of brain-swapping surgery. Sir Cedric Hardwick is the aristocratic Dr Frankenstein Jr in this case, and he has a laboratory complete with sleeping-gas chambers that are used to subdue the unruly.
- DirectorRoy William NeillStarsLon Chaney Jr.Ilona MasseyPatric KnowlesThe resurrected Wolf Man, seeking a cure for his malady, enlists the aid of a mad scientist, who claims he will not only rid the Wolf Man of his nocturnal metamorphosis, but also revive the frozen body of Frankenstein's inhuman creation.Bela Lugosi at last lands the role of the Frankenstein Monster in this thrilling but flawed masterpiece featuring Lawrence Talbot on his quest to get cured of being The Wolfman, accompanied by Maleva the gypsy woman. Lugosi plays the monster like he is blind, a consequence of the ending of The Ghost of Frankenstein, but it's never mentioned and gets basically overlooked in the script. Has a wonderful musical number celebrating the wine harvest with a fun scene of the monster running amok!
- DirectorLew LandersStarsBela LugosiFrieda InescortNina FochWhen an errant bomb unearths the coffin of a vampire during the London Blitz, a gravedigger unknowingly reanimates the monster by removing the stake from his heartLugosi reprises the role of the Count which he immortalized, but because of copyright issues pressed by Bram Stoker's heirs, he is named Armand Tesla instead of Dracula. There's much human and semi-human pathos in this well-made World War II vampire tale with a number of interesting twists.Highly recommended for those who didn't get enough of the Transylvanian Count in the original.
- DirectorErle C. KentonStarsBoris KarloffLon Chaney Jr.J. Carrol NaishA deranged scientist escapes from prison and recruits Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man to get revenge on his behalf.Wouldn't you love to ride around the central European countryside in a sideshow wagon containing horrible curiosities, accompanied by a servile hunch-back, a friendly Wolfman and a beautiful gypsy girl? You could, if you were Dr. Nieman (Boris Karloff) and you pretended you could cure their ailments once you got to the controls at the ruins of castle Frankenstein.
- DirectorErle C. KentonStarsOnslow StevensJohn CarradineLon Chaney Jr.The Wolf Man and Count Dracula beg Dr. Edelman to cure them of their killing instincts but Dracula schemes to seduce the doctor's nurse.A nice doctor with intentions of straightening up a hunch-backed nurse and curing a reluctant Wolfman goes bad when he gets contaminated by Dracula (John Carradine) in this multi-monster romp that ends the Universal Frankenstein/Wolfman/Dracula series.
- DirectorCharles BartonWalter LantzStarsBud AbbottLou CostelloLon Chaney Jr.The Wolf Man tries to warn a dimwitted porter that Dracula wants his brain for Frankenstein monster's body.The name says it all!
- DirectorJacques TourneurStarsFrances DeeTom ConwayJames EllisonA nurse is hired to care for the wife of a sugar plantation owner, who has been acting strangely, on a Caribbean island.The best Val Lewton masterpiece. A take-off on Jane Eyre, set in a voodoo-haunted Caribbean plantation where zombies, both white and black, stalk the innocent and lurk in those dark shadows in which Lewton loved to strand his heroines.
- DirectorLewis AllenStarsRay MillandRuth HusseyDonald CrispA composer and his sister discover that the reason they are able to purchase a beautiful gothic seacoast mansion very cheaply is the house's unsavory past.Scary stuff about a creepy haunting with relief at the end. Not an entry in the Universal series, but a stand-out classic on its own.
- DirectorRouben MamoulianStarsFredric MarchMiriam HopkinsRose HobartDr. Jekyll faces horrible consequences when he lets his dark side run wild with a potion that transforms him into the animalistic Mr. Hyde.Robert Louis Stevenson's nightmare of the bestial in man making its overt bid for take-over of the civilized gentleman fits right in with Freud's theories of the Id, the Ego and the Superego. A chemical concoction knocks out the Superego (Dr. Jekyll) and allows the Id to assume control as Mr. Hyde. This version is superior because itwas filmed before the strict Code of censorship stifled adult themes in motion pictures.
- DirectorFord BeebeStarsBela LugosiLionel AtwillLeif EricksonKurt Ingston, a rich recluse, invites the doctors who left him a hopeless cripple to his desolate mansion in the swamps as one by one they meet horrible deaths.Well-intentioned Eastern mysticism gets exploited to serve the vengeful purposes of a maniacal murderer at a misty, isolated estate.
- DirectorSam NewfieldStarsJ. Carrol NaishRalph MorganTala BirellA mad scientist injects his enemies with an acromegaly virus, causing them to become hideously deformed.A vicious and imaginative doctor (J. Carroll Naish) gets the idea that if he can inflict the disfiguring malady acromegaly on a victim, he can get the victim to do whatever he wants, even allowing him to take the victim's daughter. Strange concept but it almost works.
- DirectorVictor HalperinStarsBela LugosiMadge BellamyJoseph CawthornA young man turns to a witch doctor to lure the woman he loves away from her fiancé, but instead turns her into a zombie slave.Lugosi is very much in his element rendering a stiff, histrionic performance as a monstrously evil, manipulative master of zombies with lust and revenge his motivations ...and his undoing.
- DirectorRobert WiseStarsBoris KarloffBela LugosiHenry DaniellA ruthless doctor and his young prize student find themselves continually harassed by their murderous supplier of illegal cadavers.Karloff and Lugosi in an adaptation of the true history of unscrupulous grave-robbing physicians, eager to perform dissections in order to learn anatomy and rehearse the operations they intended to perform. And sometimes they needed to resort to even more illegal means to get a fresh cadaver...
- DirectorMark RobsonStarsBoris KarloffEllen DrewMarc CramerOn a Greek island during the 1912 war, several people are trapped by quarantine for the plague. If that isn't enough worry, one of the people, a superstitious old peasant woman, suspects one young girl of being a vampiric kind of demon called a vorvolaka.The plague is the villain in this one, and Karloff its nemesis. But there ware incredibly scary scenes that draw upon Poe and the obsession with premature burial. Don't watch alone or at night.
- DirectorEdward DmytrykStarsBoris KarloffAnne RevereAmanda DuffScientist becomes obsessed with the idea of communicating with his dead wife.Poor Boris Karloff, like so many well-intentioned survivors wishes to communicate with a lost spouse. This is the basis of the Spiritualism that was popular in the late 19th century. But in this story, Karloff uses "modern" technology, employing those unseen electromagnetic waves that were still a mystery to much of the public in the early half of the 20th century, and the still more mysterious brainwaves that were just being discovered.
- DirectorFrank R. StrayerStarsLionel AtwillFay WrayMelvyn DouglasWhen corpses drained of blood begin to show up in a European village, vampirism is suspected to be responsible.A nice, creepy story with the wonderful Lionel Atwill and with Dwight Frye (Renfield in Dracula) hamming it up mercilessly. Abounds with silly, almost intentionally over-the-top cliches about vampires, villagers, skeptical investigators, fainting-prone old crones. Fun to watch if you can get a remastered version.
- DirectorMichael CurtizStarsLionel AtwillFay WrayGlenda FarrellThe disappearance of people and corpses leads a reporter to a wax museum and a sinister sculptor.
- DirectorErle C. KentonStarsCharles LaughtonBela LugosiRichard ArlenA mad doctor conducts ghastly genetic experiments on a remote island in the South Seas, much to the fear and disgust of the shipwrecked sailor who finds himself trapped there.H.G. Wells had Darwinian evolution a little confused with surgical body-modification, but Charles Laughton's magnificent performance as the sadistic Dr. Moreau and Bela Lugosi's "Sayer of the Law" are memorable, as is that of the mysterious Panther Woman.
- DirectorIrving PichelErnest B. SchoedsackStarsJoel McCreaFay WrayLeslie BanksA psychotic big game hunter deliberately strands a luxury yacht on a remote island, where he begins to hunt its passengers for sport.Joel McCray and Faye Wray (King Kong's girlfriend) are trapped in a nightmare situation with a sadist whose recreation is hunting.