My Best Horror Movies-1930's
by RCMerchant | created - 02 Mar 2011 | updated - 02 Mar 2011 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Dracula (1931)
Passed | 75 min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Transylvanian 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.
Directors: Tod Browning, Karl Freund | Stars: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye
Votes: 58,677
2. The Unholy Three (1930)
Passed | 72 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
Professor Echo, a ventriloquist, forms a burglary ring. He disguises himself as an elderly pet store owner selling talking birds to the wealthy, using his skills to make the birds seem to talk while casing the homes for robberies.
Director: Jack Conway | Stars: Lon Chaney, Lila Lee, Elliott Nugent, Harry Earles
Votes: 1,405
3. Frankenstein (1931)
Passed | 70 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Dr Henry Frankenstein is obsessed with assembling a living being from parts of several exhumed corpses.
Director: James Whale | Stars: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff, John Boles
Votes: 79,771
4. Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)
Passed | 61 min | Crime, Horror, Mystery
A mad scientist seeks to mingle human blood with that of an ape, and resorts to kidnapping women for his experiments.
Director: Robert Florey | Stars: Bela Lugosi, Sidney Fox, Leon Ames, Bert Roach
Votes: 5,265
5. Vampyr (1932)
Not Rated | 75 min | Fantasy, Horror
A drifter obsessed with the supernatural stumbles upon an inn where a severely ill adolescent girl is slowly becoming a vampire.
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer | Stars: Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel, Sybille Schmitz
Votes: 20,536
6. The Mummy (1932)
Approved | 73 min | Fantasy, Horror
A resurrected Egyptian mummy searches Cairo for the girl he believes to be his long-lost princess.
Director: Karl Freund | Stars: Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Arthur Byron
Votes: 30,160
7. White Zombie (1932)
Passed | 69 min | Horror
A 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.
Director: Victor Halperin | Stars: Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, Joseph Cawthorn, Robert Frazer
Votes: 11,665
8. Murders in the Zoo (1933)
Passed | 62 min | Crime, Horror
A monomaniacal zoologist is pathologically jealous of his beautiful but unfaithful wife Evelyn and will not stop short of murder to keep her.
Director: A. Edward Sutherland | Stars: Charles Ruggles, Lionel Atwill, Gail Patrick, Randolph Scott
Votes: 1,785
9. King Kong (1933)
Passed | 100 min | Adventure, Horror
A film crew goes to a tropical island for a location shoot, where they capture a colossal ape who takes a shine to their blonde starlet, and bring him back to New York City.
Directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack | Stars: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Frank Reicher
Votes: 91,031 | Gross: $10.00M
10. The Black Cat (1934)
Not Rated | 65 min | Crime, Horror, Romance
American 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.
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer | Stars: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Julie Bishop
Votes: 13,007 | Gross: $0.51M
11. The Raven (1935)
Approved | 61 min | Crime, Horror
A brilliant surgeon with a morbid obsession for instruments of torture grows dangerously obsessed with a young socialite whose life he's saved.
Director: Lew Landers | Stars: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lester Matthews, Irene Ware
Votes: 6,654
12. The Old Dark House (1932)
Passed | 72 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Seeking shelter from a storm, five travelers are in for a bizarre and terrifying night when they stumble upon the Femm family estate.
Director: James Whale | Stars: Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart
Votes: 13,112 | Gross: $0.03M
13. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Not Rated | 75 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Mary Shelley reveals the main characters of her novel survived: Baron Henry Frankenstein, goaded by an even madder scientist, builds his monster a mate.
Director: James Whale | Stars: Boris Karloff, Elsa Lanchester, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson
Votes: 53,299 | Gross: $4.36M
14. Son of Frankenstein (1939)
Approved | 99 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Returning 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.
Director: Rowland V. Lee | Stars: Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill
Votes: 11,708
15. Freaks (1932)
Not Rated | 64 min | Drama, Horror
A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.
Director: Tod Browning | Stars: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates
Votes: 50,639 | Gross: $0.63M
16. Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)
Passed | 77 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
The disappearance of people and corpses leads a reporter to a wax museum and a sinister sculptor.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh
Votes: 6,831
17. Doctor X (1932)
Unrated | 76 min | Comedy, Crime, Horror
A wisecracking New York reporter intrudes on a research scientist's quest to unmask The Moon Killer.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Lee Tracy, Preston Foster
Votes: 4,266 | Gross: $0.88M
18. Island of Lost Souls (1932)
Passed | 70 min | Film-Noir, Horror, Sci-Fi
A 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.
Director: Erle C. Kenton | Stars: Charles Laughton, Bela Lugosi, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams
Votes: 10,911
19. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
Passed | 98 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
Dr. Jekyll faces horrible consequences when he lets his dark side run wild with a potion that transforms him into the animalistic Mr. Hyde.
Director: Rouben Mamoulian | Stars: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart, Holmes Herbert
Votes: 15,820 | Gross: $2.79M
20. The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)
G | 68 min | Adventure, Horror, Sci-Fi
Englishmen race to find the tomb of Genghis Khan before the sinister Fu Manchu does.
Directors: Charles Brabin, Charles Vidor | Stars: Boris Karloff, Lewis Stone, Karen Morley, Charles Starrett
Votes: 3,714 | Gross: $0.82M
21. Dracula's Daughter (1936)
Unrated | 71 min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror
When Countess Marya Zaleska appears in London, mysterious events occur that lead Dr. Von Helsing to believe that the Countess must be a vampire.
Director: Lambert Hillyer | Stars: Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden, Marguerite Churchill, Edward Van Sloan
Votes: 8,020
22. Mad Love (1935)
Passed | 68 min | Horror, Romance, Sci-Fi
In Paris, a demented surgeon's obsession with a British actress leads him to secretly replace her concert-pianist husband's mangled hands with those of a guillotined murderer with a gift for knife-throwing.
Director: Karl Freund | Stars: Peter Lorre, Frances Drake, Colin Clive, Ted Healy
Votes: 5,879 | Gross: $0.37M
23. The Devil-Doll (1936)
Passed | 78 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
An escaped convict uses miniaturized humans to wreak vengeance on those who framed him.
Director: Tod Browning | Stars: Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan, Frank Lawton, Rafaela Ottiano
Votes: 4,963
24. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Passed | 116 min | Drama, Romance
In 15th-century France, a gypsy girl is framed for murder by the infatuated Chief Justice, and only the deformed bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral can save her.
Director: William Dieterle | Stars: Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara, Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell
Votes: 12,287 | Gross: $3.27M
25. The Human Monster (1939)
Approved | 73 min | Drama, Horror
Insurance agent-physician collects on policies of men murdered by a disfigured resident of the home for the blind where he acts as doctor-on-call.
Director: Walter Summers | Stars: Bela Lugosi, Hugh Williams, Greta Gynt, Edmon Ryan
Votes: 1,530
26. The Walking Dead (1936)
Passed | 66 min | Crime, Drama, Horror
After hapless pianist and ex-con John Elman is framed for murder, he is resurrected by a scientist after his execution.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Boris Karloff, Ricardo Cortez, Edmund Gwenn, Marguerite Churchill
Votes: 3,089
27. Mark of the Vampire (1935)
Passed | 60 min | Horror, Mystery
When a nobleman is murdered, a professor of the occult blames vampires, but not all is what it seems.
Director: Tod Browning | Stars: Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill
Votes: 5,583
28. The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
PG-13 | 63 min | Action, Adventure, Horror
A psychotic big game hunter deliberately strands a luxury yacht on a remote island, where he begins to hunt its passengers for sport.
Directors: Irving Pichel, Ernest B. Schoedsack | Stars: Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Leslie Banks, Robert Armstrong
Votes: 14,020 | Gross: $0.97M
29. The Vampire Bat (1933)
Passed | 65 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
When corpses drained of blood begin to show up in a European village, vampirism is suspected to be responsible.
Director: Frank R. Strayer | Stars: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Melvyn Douglas, Maude Eburne
Votes: 3,050
30. The Invisible Man (1933)
TV-PG | 71 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
A scientist finds a way of becoming invisible, but in doing so, he becomes murderously insane.
Director: James Whale | Stars: Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan, Henry Travers
Votes: 39,986
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