Action Films

A 1965 science fiction compilation film produced for American television from installments of the Japanese Super Giant film series by Shintoho. Starman (Ken Utsui), the steel-bodied champion of the Emerald Planet's Peace Council, comes to Earth to stop the alien Meropolitans, whose agents have infiltrated the planet and plan to destroy it with a super-weapon. The original Japanese films were edited and dubbed by Walter Manley Enterprises for American syndication, with the hero renamed from Super Giant — the same treatment that produced Attack from Space and Evil Brain from Outer Space. The film is in the public domain.

Sci-Fi · Action

A 1965 science fiction compilation film produced for American television from two installments of the Japanese Super Giant film series by Shintoho. The superhero Starman (Ken Utsui), a steel-bodied being created by the Peace Council of the Emerald Planet, is sent to Earth to protect it from belligerent aliens from the Sapphire Galaxy. The Sapphireans kidnap Dr. Yamanaka and force him to use his spaceship against Earth, and it falls to Starman to save the scientist, his family, and the planet. The original Japanese films were edited and dubbed by Walter Manley Enterprises for American syndication, with Starman's character renamed from Super Giant.

Sci-Fi · Action

One of the great silent epics, adapted from Lew Wallace's novel. A Jewish prince in Roman-occupied Jerusalem is falsely accused of treason by his childhood friend, now a Roman tribune, and condemned to the galleys. He survives, is adopted by a Roman consul, and returns to confront his betrayer in a chariot race that remains one of the most famous sequences ever filmed. Fred Niblo directed on a scale that was staggering even by 1920s standards: thousands of extras, a full-size Roman arena, and a naval battle staged with real ships. Ramon Novarro is the prince and Francis X. Bushman the villainous Messala. The film saved MGM from financial trouble and remained the studio's top earner for decades. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Drama · Action · Silent

Superman races to protect a train carrying a billion dollars in defense bonds from a gang of saboteurs who bomb the tracks, wreck a bridge, and commandeer the locomotive. The third of the Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Action · Sci-Fi

A 1953 feature film edited from the 1939 Universal serial Buck Rogers, re-released for theatrical distribution. A 20th-century pilot named Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe) and his young friend Buddy Wade awaken from 500 years in suspended animation to find the world has been taken over by the outlaw army of Killer Kane. Buck joins the hidden resistance forces to defeat Kane and restore freedom. The original serial was directed by Saul A. Goodkind and Ford Beebe. The film entered the public domain via non-renewal of its copyright.

Sci-Fi · Action · Adventure

A bookish high school graduate gives a graduation speech condemning athletics, which costs him the girl, who prefers the jock. Ronald follows her to college and tries to win her back by joining every sports team on campus, failing at baseball, track, and rowing in a string of set pieces built around his total lack of athletic ability. When the girl is threatened by the school bully, Ronald finally gets to act instead of fumble, sprinting and pole-vaulting across campus in a rescue that reuses every sport he failed at earlier. James W. Horne directed, with Keaton producing and doing his own stunts, including the pole vault into a second-story window. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Action · Silent

The hard-driving boss of a Montana railroad and his top engineer clash over a woman and the brutal demands of keeping the line open through the mountains. Louis Wolheim, Robert Armstrong, and Jean Arthur star in this early-sound railroad drama, filmed partly on location. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Action

Chapter one, "The Spider Strikes," of the 15-chapter Republic serial. Plainclothes detective Dick Tracy hunts the masked criminal mastermind known as the Spider, who has kidnapped his brother and threatened the city. Ralph Byrd stars as Chester Gould's square-jawed hero in the first Dick Tracy screen serial. The serial entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Action · Crime · Adventure

The second of RKO's four Dick Tracy features, based on Chester Gould's comic strip. A bald, thick-necked ex-convict called Cueball strangles a diamond courier with a shoelace and goes hunting for the rest of the stolen stones, leaving a trail of bodies across the city. Dick Tracy and his girlfriend Tess Trueheart work the case from opposite ends, she going undercover as a diamond broker to draw the killer out. Morgan Conway plays Tracy as a placid, square-jawed straight arrow, and Dick Wessel's Cueball is an effectively brutal heavy. The film is a tight, cheap, well-paced B-mystery that clocks in at just over an hour. Released in 1946, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Crime · Mystery · Action

A sequel to The Mark of Zorro (1920), with Douglas Fairbanks now playing Don Cesar, the son of the original Zorro, in Spain rather than California. Framed for the murder of a rival archduke, he fakes his death and returns to clear his name and win back the woman he loves. Fairbanks produced and starred, and Donald Crisp directed while also playing Don Cesar's father. The swordplay is elaborate even by Fairbanks's standards, and the film leans into the swashbuckling spectacle that made him the action star of the silent era. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Action · Romance · Silent

A 1971 American biographical film starring George Hamilton as motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel. Directed by Marvin J. Chomsky and co-written by John Milius, the film depicts Knievel reflecting on major events in his life — particularly his relationship with his wife Linda (Sue Lyon) — through a flashback narrative leading up to a big jump. Much of the film was shot in Knievel's hometown of Butte, Montana, with actual stunt footage intercut with staged scenes. The film ends with Knievel completing his February 1971 jump at the Ontario Motor Speedway and riding toward the Grand Canyon, referencing a planned jump that never materialized. Although the film bears a copyright statement, it was never registered for copyright, placing it in the public domain.

Action · Biography · Drama

A 1965 science fiction compilation film produced for American television from three installments of the Japanese Super Giant film series. The evil genius Balazar from the planet Zemar has been assassinated, but his prodigiously overdeveloped brain has been preserved and now seeks universal conquest, starting with Earth. The High Council of the Emerald Planet sends Starman (Ken Utsui) to defeat Balazar's followers, who are using nuclear weapons and unleashing monsters with deadly diseases. Three self-contained Japanese stories were edited into a single 78-minute film by Walter Manley Enterprises, resulting in what has been called "an alternately mind-blowing and mind-numbing adventure" of nonstop chases, captures, rescues, and fight scenes.

Sci-Fi · Action

A 1940 American 12-chapter science fiction serial from Universal Pictures, co-directed by Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor, and the last of the three Universal Flash Gordon serials. A mysterious plague called the Purple Death ravages the Earth. Dr. Zarkov discovers a ship from planet Mongo seeding the atmosphere with dust — Ming the Merciless is up to his old tricks. Flash, Dale, and Zarkov return to Mongo to stop Ming, encountering the Rock People and the Arborians along the way. Buster Crabbe reprises his role as Flash, with Carol Hughes replacing Jean Rogers as Dale Arden. The serial entered the public domain via non-renewal of its copyright.

Sci-Fi · Action · Adventure

Richard Arlen stars as Jim Clark, a pilot running a small airline service out of Los Angeles, with Jean Parker as the stewardess torn between him and a smooth-talking passenger. That passenger is a spy who has stolen a secret military navigation device, and when his escape is bungled he hijacks the airliner mid-flight. The plane goes down in the wilderness, leaving the survivors stranded as a forest fire closes in. One of the early "Dollar Bills" from Pine-Thomas Productions, Paramount's B-picture unit, Flying Blind is a compact wartime aviation thriller released just months before Pearl Harbor. Its copyright was never renewed, placing it in the public domain.

Action · Adventure · Drama

A broke wanderer hops a freight train west and lands a job on a ranch where he is hopeless at everything, until he forms a bond with a dairy cow named Brown Eyes. When the herd is shipped to market, Friendless goes along to protect his companion, and the climax turns into a stampede through downtown Los Angeles as hundreds of cattle thunder through city streets and department stores. The sequence is an enormous practical stunt staged in real streets with a real herd. Keaton wrote, directed, and starred, and the film is unusually warm for him, built around a man and a cow rather than a romance. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Action · Adventure · Silent

Haldane of the Secret Service is a 1923 silent serial-style adventure produced by and starring Harry Houdini, directed by Burton King for the Houdini Picture Corporation and distributed by Famous Players-Lasky. Houdini plays Heath Haldane, a government agent who infiltrates a vicious gang of counterfeiters to rescue a captive agent and smash the ring. As in his other film vehicles, the picture was built around Houdini's escapes and physical stunts, though the acting is stiff and the plot is thin. It was the last feature Houdini made before returning to the stage. As a 1923 work, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2019.

Mystery · Action · Silent

A 1957 American South Seas adventure directed by Lee Sholem and Elmo Williams, starring Jon Hall — who also produced and narrated — alongside John Carradine, Peter Lorre, and Mike Mazurki. Captain Jim Knight sails the South Sea Islands and discovers a criminal gang that has seized a small island, forcing the native pearl divers to work beyond safe limits. After Knight captures the gang, they escape en route to Tahiti and a corrupt French magistrate joins them when a native boy locates a sunken ship carrying a Burmese king's treasure. The film was compiled from Knight of the South Seas, an unsold 1955 television pilot, and gave Hall ample opportunity to show off the underwater diving footage he loved. It is in the public domain.

Adventure · Action

Howard Hughes produced and directed this World War I aviation epic, spending three years and a fortune on it and reshooting much of it for sound after The Jazz Singer changed the industry. The story follows two brothers, Roy and Monte, who join the Royal Flying Corps and fall for the same woman, with Jean Harlow making her debut as the platinum blonde who comes between them. The film is best remembered for its airborne sequences, staged with real aircraft and real danger; several pilots died during production. The Zeppelin climax, shot in early two-color Technicolor, is a spectacle of its era. Published in 1930, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

War · Drama · Action

A 1964 Italian sword-and-sandal film directed by Domenico Paolella, starring Peter Lupus (credited as Rock Stevens) as Hercules. Hercules journeys to Babylon to rescue Asparia, the queen of the Hellenes, who has been enslaved along with her people by the three tyrannical siblings who rule the twin cities of Babylon and Nineveh. One of the tyrants, Taneal (Helga Liné), schemes to use Hercules for her own purposes, while King Phaleg of Assyria manipulates the hero into helping him seize Asparia. The film liberally uses stock footage from the biblical epic Sodom and Gomorrah (1962) for its climactic destruction of Babylon.

Action · Adventure · Fantasy

A 15-chapter Columbia cliffhanger serial directed by James W. Horne, with Chapter 1 titled "Chaotic Greek." Jack Holt plays a Secret Service agent infiltrating a gang of counterfeiters who have kidnapped the government's best engraver to produce undetectable phony money. Evelyn Brent co-stars as his undercover partner Kay Drew. Holt, Columbia's longest-tenured star, was effectively demoted to serials by studio head Harry Cohn, but the production retained a feature-film crew under producer Larry Darmour. The serial is in the public domain.

Action · Crime

One of the Zane Grey westerns Henry Hathaway directed for Paramount in the early 1930s, back when Randolph Scott was still playing B-leads in buckskin. Scott is Dale, a mountain man who overhears saloonkeeper Beasley's scheme to grab a rancher's land and kidnap his daughter — so Dale kidnaps her first, dragging the enraged but safe heiress (Verna Hillie) into the hills while he untangles the plot. Harry Carey steals scenes as a philosophical crook. Handsomely shot around Big Bear and considerably better made than the poverty-row oaters of the same year. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Western · Action

A 1940 American mystery film directed by Howard Bretherton and released by Monogram Pictures. The film stars John 'Dusty' King as Val Lennon and Marjorie Reynolds as Joan Marshall, who find themselves aboard the Midnight Limited, a train where a mysterious crime unfolds. George Cleveland plays Professor Van Dillon. The film is a classic Poverty Row mystery, typical of Monogram's low-budget output of the era. The film is in the public domain.

Mystery · Crime · Action

Willie McKay travels south to claim his inheritance, unaware that his family has been locked in a generations-long feud with the Canfields. On the journey he meets and falls for Virginia Canfield, and is invited to the Canfield home, where the men want to kill him but southern hospitality forbids them from shooting a guest under their own roof. Willie stretches his stay as long as he can, then escapes into a chase that moves to a river, where he dangles from a rope over a waterfall and swings to rescue Virginia from the rapids. The falls and cliff stunts were done for real. Keaton's own father, Joe Keaton, plays the train engineer, and his wife Natalie Talmadge plays the lead. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Action · Romance · Silent

A reckless test pilot and his mechanic brother clash over a woman and the dangerous new aircraft they are developing for the war effort. Richard Arlen and Jean Parker star in this brisk PRC aviation programmer. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Action · War

Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckles through twelfth-century England as the Earl of Huntingdon turned outlaw, scaling walls and leaping from battlements to win Maid Marian from the usurping Prince John. Allan Dwan directed this lavish silent epic, built around one of the largest sets ever constructed. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Romance · Action

A small-town clerk moves to the city to make his fortune and tells his sweetheart back home he is a success. When she visits, he has to keep up the act, and to earn real money he arranges a publicity stunt in which a friend will climb the outside of the department store. The friend is chased off by a policeman, so the clerk does the climb himself, floor by floor, dodging pigeons, a collapsing ledge, a flagpole, and finally a clock that leaves him hanging from its hands high above the street. The climb is the most famous image in silent comedy. Harold Lloyd produced the film, Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor directed, and real buildings on real streets were used with carefully placed platforms just out of frame. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Action · Silent

A young broker learns he will inherit seven million dollars only if he is married by seven o'clock that evening. His proposal to his longtime sweetheart goes badly, so his business partner puts an ad in the paper, and soon hundreds of would-be brides in wedding veils descend on the church. Jimmie spends the second half of the film running for his life through the city, chased by the brides and then by a cascading avalanche of boulders that he dodges down a hillside in one of the great chase sequences in silent comedy. Keaton reportedly disliked the play the film was based on but bought it anyway, then let his gag men rework it. The boulder chase grew organically from a handful of rocks into the famous stampede.

Comedy · Action · Romance · Silent

A projectionist who dreams of being a detective is framed for a theft he did not commit and banished by his rival. Back in the booth he falls asleep and walks into the film on screen, becoming the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Jr. The movie inside the movie is a parade of stunts, including a famous sequence where Keaton rides on the handlebars of a motorcycle through traffic, unaware the driver has fallen off. The scene where the screen keeps cutting to new locations while Keaton stays in place was one of the earliest jokes about editing itself. Keaton wrote, directed, and performed his own stunts, and broke his neck on the water-tower gag without realizing it for years.

Comedy · Action · Silent

A steamboat captain's effete college son comes home to a Mississippi river town and falls for the daughter of his father's business rival. Willie tries to live up to the image of the rough riverman his father wants, with little success, until a cyclone tears through the town. The storm sequence is the film's centerpiece, with buildings collapsing around Keaton, and it contains the most famous single shot in silent comedy: the full facade of a house drops over him and he survives only because he is standing exactly where an open window in the wall passes around his body. The real clearance was a matter of inches. Keaton's deadpan expression never changes throughout. This was his last independent production before moving to MGM.

Comedy · Action · Silent

Destruction, Inc. is a 1942 Superman animated short, the tenth in the Paramount series and the second made by Famous Studios after the Fleischer brothers' reorganization. Saboteurs infiltrate the Metropolis Munitions Works, murdering the elderly night watchman and planting explosives throughout the plant. Lois Lane follows the story undercover and is captured by the gang, leaving Superman to stop the destruction and rescue her before the whole works goes up. Released on Christmas Day 1942, the short leans hard into wartime sabotage paranoia. I. Sparber directs, with Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander voicing Superman and Lois. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Action · Adventure

Electric Earthquake is a 1942 Superman animated short from Fleischer Studios, distributed by Paramount Pictures. A Native American villain uses an electric ray device to threaten Manhattan with earthquakes, demanding the return of the island to his people. Superman must stop the destruction and save the city. The Fleischer Superman cartoons were noted for their art deco style, cinematic animation, and mature storytelling. The film is in the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Action · Sci-Fi

Lois Lane's plane is shot down over Africa and she's captured by a German force occupying a jungle temple, where they use the natives' drums to signal strikes on Allied convoys. Superman follows her trail and turns the drums' own warning system against the occupiers. The fifteenth of the Paramount Superman cartoons, made by Famous Studios after the Fleischer brothers' departure, and the series' most direct piece of wartime propaganda. It is in the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Action · War

Terror on the Midway is a 1942 Superman animated short from Fleischer Studios, distributed by Paramount Pictures. When a circus gorilla breaks loose, panic erupts at the carnival. Lois Lane is trapped in the chaos, and Superman must subdue the rampaging beast. This was the last Superman cartoon produced by Fleischer Studios before the studio was reorganized as Famous Studios. The film is in the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Action · Adventure

The Arctic Giant is a 1942 Superman animated short from Fleischer Studios, distributed by Paramount Pictures. An expedition to the Arctic uncovers a frozen Tyrannosaurus Rex, which thaws and rampages through Metropolis. Superman must stop the prehistoric creature before it destroys the city. The cartoon is notable for its dinosaur sequence, which predates similar scenes in later films by decades. The film is in the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Action · Sci-Fi

The Magnetic Telescope is a 1942 Superman animated short from Fleischer Studios, distributed by Paramount Pictures. A scientist invents a magnetic telescope that can attract meteors from space, but the device goes out of control and threatens Metropolis with a catastrophic comet impact. Superman must destroy the deadly projectile before it hits the city. The film is in the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Action · Sci-Fi

The Mechanical Monsters is the second of the Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons, released by Paramount in November 1941. A mad inventor sends an army of flying robots to loot Metropolis — banks, jewel houses, anything they can carry — and captures Lois Lane when she stows away inside one of the machines. Superman battles the mechanical army and flies to the inventor's lair to save her from a vat of molten metal. The robot designs influenced decades of animation, from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow to a famous homage in The Iron Giant. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Action · Adventure

Lois Lane is taken prisoner by a race of bird-men living in caverns beneath the earth after a mining expedition discovers their hidden world, and Superman has to burrow down to rescue her before she is thrown to a lake of lava. The last of the seventeen Fleischer/Famous Studios Superman shorts and one of the strangest — directed by Seymour Kneitel with Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander voicing Superman and Lois. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Action · Adventure

Volcano is a 1942 Superman animated short from Fleischer Studios, distributed by Paramount Pictures. When a dormant volcano on a populated island begins erupting, Superman must save the inhabitants from the lava and ash. The cartoon features spectacular destruction sequences and showcases the Fleischers' talent for cinematic action animation. The film is in the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Action · Adventure

A 1921 silent Western directed by Charles Bartlett and produced by Neal Hart Productions. Corporal Jack Borden of the Northwest Mounted Police trails the man who killed his partner to New York City, where the killer is selling worthless stock in a gold mine. With the help of Blanche Hall, Borden locates the man in a Bowery dive, but he escapes back to Canada. Along the way, Borden discovers that Blanche and his sweetheart Milly are long-separated sisters and brings about a reconciliation. The film stars Neal Hart and Violet Palmer. The film is in the public domain.

Western · Action · Silent

Tarzan returns to his jungle estate to find his home pillaged and his wife abducted by a band of Arab slavers, and sets out across the wilderness with a golden lion at his side to rescue her. James Pierce stars as the ape-man, with Boris Karloff in a supporting role. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Action

The orphaned son of marooned English aristocrats is raised by apes in the African jungle and grows into the powerful Tarzan, who discovers his human heritage when a party of explorers arrives. Elmo Lincoln stars in the first screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Action

A nobleman's son vows revenge after pirates murder his father, so he infiltrates the pirate band to destroy it from within. Douglas Fairbanks produced, starred in, and drove this swashbuckler, performing his own stunts including the famous slide down a sail on the point of a knife. The film is one of the earliest feature-length pictures shot entirely in two-strip Technicolor, and the limited red-and-green palette gives it a storybook look unlike anything else from the silent era. Fairbanks pushed the budget to roughly $1.3 million, an enormous sum at the time, which limited the profit even though the picture was a hit. The Black Pirate is a landmark of color filmmaking and one of the great action spectacles of the 1920s. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2022.

Adventure · Action · Silent

Howard Hawks' World War I aviation drama follows a Royal Flying Corps squadron on the Western Front, where pilots are sent on near-suicidal dawn patrols and the survivors drink to forget. Richard Barthelmess plays Dick Courtney, an ace who chafes under the cautious command of Major Brand (Neil Hamilton); when Courtney is promoted to command the squadron himself, he learns the burden of sending men to their deaths. Hawks, a former flight instructor, flew in the film himself as a German pilot. The aerial sequences, shot by Ernest Haller, were considered state of the art and were later re-edited into the 1938 remake. The film won the Academy Award for Best Story. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

War · Drama · Action

A 1955 American crime drama produced by Roger Corman and co-directed by John Ireland and Edward Sampson. Ireland stars as Frank Webster, a man framed for murder who breaks out of jail and takes a rich woman's Jaguar at gunpoint, with the woman, Connie Adair (Dorothy Malone), still inside. As she tries to escape numerous times, the two soon develop feelings for each other and enter a road race that ends in Mexico. Made on a budget of just $50,000, the film was one of Corman's early productions and was distributed by American Releasing Corporation, the precursor to American International Pictures. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama · Action

Johnnie Gray is a railroad engineer in the South who is turned down for service when the Civil War breaks out because he is more useful driving trains than fighting. His sweetheart thinks he is a coward. Union spies steal his locomotive, The General, with Annabelle on board, and Johnnie gives chase in another engine. The chase runs in both directions and is built almost entirely from real trains, real track, and real stunts, with no miniatures. The famous shot of a locomotive plunging into a river was a single take with a real engine, and the wreckage sat in the river for years. The film was a commercial disappointment on release but is now regarded as one of the greatest comedies ever made. Buster Keaton produced, directed, and starred, and performed his own stunts.

Comedy · Action · Silent

Chapter one, "The Wrecker," of the twelve-chapter Mascot serial. Pilot Larry Baker hunts the masked saboteur called the Wrecker, who caused the train crash that killed his father and now threatens the Hurricane Express. John Wayne stars in this early sound cliffhanger. The serial entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Action · Adventure · Crime

Douglas Fairbanks' sequel to his 1921 hit The Three Musketeers, and the last of his great swashbucklers. He plays D'Artagnan, racing to protect the rightful King of France from the schemes of Cardinal Richelieu and the masked prisoner who may hold the secret of the throne. The Iron Mask is a part-talkie, one of the few films in which Fairbanks spoke on camera, and his farewell to the silent action hero he had defined for a decade. The stunts are fewer than in his earlier pictures, and the tone is darker, with a tragic ending that surprised audiences used to seeing him win. Allan Dwan directed, and the production was mounted with Fairbanks' usual ambition. Published in 1929, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.

Adventure · Action · Silent

Clark Kent and Lois Lane investigate the mysterious death of an Egyptologist at the Metropolis Museum, where Superman must battle the undead guards of an ancient king. An Izzy Sparber-directed Superman cartoon from Famous Studios. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Action · Adventure

A spoiled rich man and the woman who turned down his proposal end up alone together on an abandoned ocean liner drifting out to sea. Neither can cook, open a can, or manage the simplest chore, and the comedy comes from watching two helpless people improvise a household on an enormous scale, rigging kitchen gadgets with ropes and pulleys. When the ship drifts near a cannibal island, Rollo has to fend off boarders in a deep-sea diving suit, and the famous underwater sequences were filmed in a real tank with Keaton inside the heavy gear. The ship was a real decommissioned passenger liner the production bought for the shoot. Keaton co-directed with Donald Crisp and performed his own stunts.

Comedy · Action · Silent

A 15-chapter Columbia cliffhanger serial based on Lee Falk's comic strip, with Chapter 1 titled "The Sign of the Skull." Tom Tyler plays Geoffrey Prescott, who inherits the mantle of The Phantom—the legendary "Ghost Who Walks"—and races against a foreign agent and a treasure hunter to find the Lost City of Zoloz. Jeanne Bates co-stars as Diana Palmer. Directed by B. Reeves Eason, the serial is a faithful early screen translation of the comic character and is in the public domain.

Action · Adventure

The fifteen-chapter serial follows Jack Clayton, son of Tarzan and Jane, as he comes of age in the jungle and journeys to America to rescue a kidnapped friend before returning to Africa to claim his birthright as Korak the killer. The serial entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Action

A 1974 Japanese martial arts film directed by Shigehiro Ozawa and starring Sonny Chiba as Takuma Tsurugi, a mercenary karate master. When both the Yakuza and the Mafia plot to kidnap the daughter of a deceased oil magnate, Tsurugi is hired by each side — but when neither will meet his price, he switches sides to protect the heiress. The film was released in the United States by New Line Cinema and became one of the distributor's first commercial successes. It is notable as the first film to receive an X-rating in the US solely for violence, thanks to Chiba's brutally realistic karate techniques. The film spawned multiple sequels and cemented Chiba's status as an international martial arts icon.

Action · Crime · Thriller

The young swordsman d'Artagnan arrives in Paris and joins the King's Musketeers, pledging all for one against the scheming Cardinal Richelieu and the treacherous Milady. Douglas Fairbanks stars in this lavish silent swashbuckler. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Romance · Action

A 1934 Universal science fiction serial directed by Lew Landers, spanning 12 chapters. Stanley Stanfield (Onslow Stevens) invents the Vanishing Ray, a wearable device that renders the user invisible — though his shadow remains visible. He seeks the help of Professor Carl Van Dorn to eliminate this side effect, but his plans to finance the invention by selling inherited bonds bring him into conflict with Wade Barnett (Walter Miller), the corrupt businessman who hounded Stanley's father to his death. When a struggle at the stockbroker's office ends in accidental death, Stanley is accused of murder and must use his invisibility device to clear his name and expose Barnett. The serial features what is believed to be the first appearance of a hand-held ray gun in film, along with robots and a "Destroying Ray." Added as the full 12-chapter serial (Chapter 1: "Accused of Murder").

Sci-Fi · Action · Adventure