Adventure Films

Universal's ambitious silent adaptation of Jules Verne's novel, directed by Stuart Paton and produced by Carl Laemmle. Allen Holubar plays Captain Nemo, who stalks the seas in his submarine Nautilus seeking revenge against the man who destroyed his family, while a French professor and his companions are taken captive aboard the vessel. The production pioneered genuine underwater photography using the Williamson brothers' submarine tube, shot on location in the Bahamas, and was one of the most expensive films of its era at roughly half a million dollars. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Science Fiction · Silent

Allan Dwan's A Modern Musketeer is a brisk Douglas Fairbanks comedy from the peak of his silent years, built on the short story "D'Artagnan of Kansas" by Eugene P. Lyle Jr. Fairbanks plays Ned Thacker, a Kansas boy raised on The Three Musketeers who dreams of chivalric adventure and gets more than he bargained for on a trip out west, where he single-handedly tangles with a bandit, rescues a damsel, and leapt from moving cars with the boundless energy that made Fairbanks a star. Produced by Fairbanks's own company and distributed by Artcraft, the film features an early appearance by ZaSu Pitts and cinematography by Victor Fleming, who would later direct The Wizard of Oz. As a 1917 release the film is securely in the United States public domain.

Adventure · Comedy · Silent

A Trip to the Moon (original French title: Le Voyage dans la Lune) is a 1902 French silent film directed by Georges Melies. Widely regarded as the first science fiction film, it follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a bullet-shaped capsule, encounter the Selenites (lunar inhabitants), and return to Earth. The film features Melies's most iconic image — the rocket landing in the Moon's eye — and pioneered numerous special effects techniques including superimposition, dissolves, and hand-painted color. The film is in the public domain.

Fantasy · Sci-Fi · Adventure

A bookseller and his bumbling assistant get tangled up with a diamond-hunting expedition to Africa, where they are pursued by lions, cannibals, and a rival explorer. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello star in one of their most popular vehicles. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Adventure

A documentary-style expedition film combining genuine footage from Paul L. Hoefler's 14-month, 14,000-mile trek across Africa with staged scenes filmed in Los Angeles, narrated by Lowell Thomas. Directed by Walter Futter, the film was a surprise hit that captured the sounds and sights of African wildlife and tribal cultures. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Documentary · Adventure

A 1975 American Western film directed by Earl Bellamy. When the eldest daughter of a pioneer family is kidnapped by a mysterious Native American warrior, her teenage brother Sam Sutter (Stewart Petersen) sets out to rescue her. Along the way, he encounters a wise but alcoholic trapper named Russian (Richard Boone) who agrees to help him track down the unknown tribe. Their perilous journey into the remote Red Rock region of Utah brings them face to face with Chief Cut Tongue (Henry Wilcoxon), whose solution to the situation is treacherous — Sam must sacrifice his own life by passing the test of "Crooked Sky" and shield his sister from an executioner's arrow. The film is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Western · Adventure · Family

American Aristocracy is a 1916 silent comedy-adventure directed by Lloyd Ingraham for the Fine Arts Film Company, with a story by Anita Loos and Douglas Fairbanks in the lead. Fairbanks plays Cassius Lee, a young entomologist and all-round egalitarian who tangles with a piratical arms smuggler while trying to win the heart of a rich man's daughter. The film gently satirizes American social climbing and the cult of European-style aristocracy, with Fairbanks doing his own stunts and radiating the athletic good humor that defined his early features. Produced under the Triangle banner, it is preserved at George Eastman House and is in the public domain.

Adventure · Comedy · Silent

A group of stranded swindlers in an Italian port wait for a ship to East Africa, where they plan to corner the uranium market. Humphrey Bogart leads an international cast through John Huston's sly parody of the caper films he helped invent, with a script shaped by Truman Capote. The film lapsed into the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Crime · Adventure

A sequel to Herbert Brenon's 1926 hit Beau Geste, this pre-Code adventure sends an American (Lester Vail) into the French Foreign Legion to rescue his boyhood friend John Geste (Ralph Forbes, reprising his silent role). Filmed on location in the Sonoran Desert and on the RKO lot, the picture adapts P.C. Wren's novel with a Max Steiner score and early all-dialogue location recording. Loretta Young and Irene Rich round out the cast. The film is marked public domain on its Internet Archive item.

Adventure · Romance · War

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

One of the first features shot in CinemaScope, this Twentieth Century-Fox adventure drops a Romeo-and-Juliet romance into the sponge-diving wars of Tarpon Springs, Florida. Robert Wagner plays Tony Petrakis, son of a Greek sponge-boat captain (Gilbert Roland), who falls for Gwyneth Rhys (Terry Moore), daughter of the rival clan led by Richard Boone. Directed by Robert D. Webb, the film is remembered less for its melodrama than for Edward Cronjager's Oscar-nominated underwater cinematography and a shimmering early score by Bernard Herrmann. Shot on location in Florida and the Bahamas, it entered the public domain in the United States after its copyright was not renewed.

Adventure · Drama

A young American sailor falls for a Polynesian princess on a South Seas island, ignoring warnings that she is destined to be sacrificed to a volcano god. Dolores del Río and Joel McCrea star in King Vidor's pre-Code romance, filmed on location in Hawaii. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Romance · Drama

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

One of Paramount's 1930s B-series about the British adventurer Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, adapted from the novels by H.C. "Sapper" McNeile. Days before his long-delayed wedding, Drummond learns that his friend Colonel Nielson of Scotland Yard has been kidnapped and flown to a remote African compound. Drummond, his fiancée Phyllis, and his sidekick Algy follow, uncovering a plot to extract defense secrets from the colonel. John Howard plays Drummond as a breezy, unflappable gentleman hero, and Heather Angel is the fiancée who refuses to be left behind. The picture is a brisk, hour-long programmer of the old dark-house-in-the-bush variety. Released in 1938, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Mystery · Adventure · Crime

Another entry in Paramount's Bulldog Drummond series, based on the McNeile novel "Temple Tower." Drummond is finally preparing to marry Phyllis at his ancestral country house when an absent-minded professor arrives with a story about a hidden treasure, and a murderer named Henry Seaton turns up to complicate the wedding plans. The plot winds through secret passages and a string of killings around the estate, with Colonel Nielson and Algy along for the chase. John Howard and Heather Angel continue their easy chemistry, and Leo G. Carroll plays the villain. Released in 1939, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Mystery · Adventure · Crime

The notorious pirate Captain Kidd is hired by the king to escort a treasure ship from India, while secretly plotting to seize the cargo, and a convict pressed into his crew works to expose him. Charles Laughton reprises his swaggering villain. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · History

Chang is a remarkable early documentary feature from the team who would later make King Kong. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack traveled to the jungles of northern Siam, now Thailand, to film a real farming family's struggle against the wilderness. Kru, his wife, and their children battle a leopard, a tiger, and a herd of elephants that destroys their home. The film is staged in places, but the danger and the animals are real, and the result has the grip of an adventure story. Chang was nominated for an Academy Award and is now a forgotten gem. It entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2023.

Documentary · Adventure · Drama · Silent

A fire drives a wolf pack out of the mountains and into the desert, where they threaten local ranchers. The pack leader, Lobo, is actually a half-breed dog, and when he is wounded during a chase he is found and nursed back to health by a prospector named Dave Weston. The two become loyal companions, and Lobo helps Dave protect his borax claim from a scheming claim jumper. Rin Tin Tin, the German Shepherd who was one of Warner Bros.' biggest box-office draws in the 1920s, is the star, and the film is a good showcase for his athleticism and screen presence. Selected for the National Film Registry in 2004. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Western · Silent

A 1977 Italian science fiction film directed by Alfonso Brescia (credited as Al Bradley), originally titled Anno Zero - Guerra Nello Spazio. A strange signal arrives on Earth disturbing all communications. Captain Alex Hamilton (John Richardson) is sent with his spaceship and crew beyond the Solar System to find the source. They reach an unknown planet where a giant robot has enslaved a population of humanoids by taking their psychic energies. The crew pledges to help the inhabitants escape their enslavement and destroy the computer. The film is a low-budget Italian space opera typical of the post-Star Wars exploitation boom.

Sci-Fi · Adventure

The seventeenth-century swordsman and poet Cyrano, self-conscious about his enormous nose, loves the beautiful Roxane but helps a handsome but inarticulate rival woo her with his words. Jose Ferrer won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance · Adventure

A 1956 American Western co-directed by Albert C. Gannaway and Ismael Rodríguez, shot in Mexico and released through Republic Pictures. Bruce Bennett stars as Daniel Boone, leading a wagon train of settlers into Kentucky while fending off Shawnee warriors stirred up by the French renegade Simon Girty. Lon Chaney Jr. plays the Shawnee chief Blackfish, and country singer Faron Young appears as a settler — one of several Gannaway productions to cast Nashville stars. The film is in the public domain after its copyright went unrenewed, and it has been a fixture of budget western compilations ever since.

Western · Adventure

Ralph Byrd, then riding high as the screen's Dick Tracy, stars as Tony Bronson, a pilot whose plane is hijacked mid-flight over the Caribbean by a gang after the payroll he's carrying. When the plane goes down on a remote island, Bronson has to outwit the hijackers with help from a stranded showgirl troupe. Directed by William Beaudine — the famously tireless "One Shot" of Poverty Row — Desperate Cargo is a brisk PRC programmer that packs a hijacking, a crash, and a jungle standoff into barely an hour. The film's copyright was never renewed, placing it in the public domain.

Adventure · Crime · Thriller

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 half of Fritz Lang's Nibelungenlied adaptation, picking up after Siegfried's murder. Kriemhild marries the Hun king Etzel (Attila) to gather an army, then engineers a massacre of the Burgundians at his court. Where the first film was a myth of heroism, this one is a study of grief hardening into vengeance, ending in a burning hall strewn with bodies. Lang's staging of the climactic siege, with Huns setting the hall alight and Burgundians choosing death, is one of the most violent images in silent cinema. The two films together were meant as a national epic for Weimar Germany, and their ambivalence about loyalty, honor, and revenge has been read and re-read through every German crisis since. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Fantasy · Adventure · Drama · Silent

The first half of Fritz Lang's two-part adaptation of the medieval Nibelungenlied, written with his wife Thea von Harbou. Siegfried of Xanten forges a magic sword, slays a dragon, bathes in its blood to become invulnerable, and travels to Worms to woo the Burgundian princess Kriemhild. Lang stages the legend on a monumental scale, with carved forests, a mechanical dragon, and geometric compositions that turn myth into architecture. The film was a prestige production for UFA, meant to assert German cinema's ambition after the First World War, and its visual grandeur has influenced fantasy filmmaking ever since. The story continues in the companion film, Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Fantasy · Adventure · Drama · Silent

John Barrymore at the peak of his matinee-idol powers, swashbuckling through Borgia-era Italy as the legendary lover. Directed by Alan Crosland for Warner Bros., it's a lavish silent spectacle — duels, dungeons, and Lucrezia Borgia herself — but its place in history is technical: Don Juan was the first feature released with a synchronized Vitaphone musical score and sound effects, the experiment that led directly to The Jazz Singer a year later. Mary Astor and a young Myrna Loy are among the women pursued through its nearly two hours. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Romance · Silent

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 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

Flight is a 1929 pre-Code aviation adventure directed by Frank Capra for Columbia Pictures, dedicated to the United States Marine Corps and made with their full cooperation. Jack Holt plays Panama Williams, a hard-boiled Marine gunnery sergeant and pilot stationed in Nicaragua, where he and a hotshot young corporal (Ralph Graves) fly missions against the rebel leader Sandino and rivalry over a nurse (Lila Lee). Columbia built a complete flying field at North Island in San Diego and shot the aerial sequences from real planes without process photography, and Holt's plane actually crashed during filming. Capra wrote the dialogue from a story by Graves, and the film was advertised as the "first all-talking aviation epic." As a 1929 release whose copyright was not renewed, the film is in the public domain.

Adventure · War

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

A Van Beuren Aesop's Fables short directed by Vernon Stallings, featuring Cubby Bear as Robin Hood. Cubby swoops in to rescue a princess from an arranged marriage to a sheriff whose face, she observes, looks like a cellar door. The cartoon spoofs the Robin Hood legend with a Friar performing the wedding, a parrot providing comic commentary, and a musical medley of original tunes about the days of Robin Hood. Released February 23, 1934, the short is one of the later Cubby Bear cartoons as the character's career wound down ahead of Van Beuren's shift to color Rainbow Parade films. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Short · Comedy · Adventure

Fleischer Studios' second animated feature, an adaptation of Jonathan Swift's tale of a shipwrecked sailor who washes ashore in Lilliput, a kingdom of tiny people at war with their neighbors. Made to compete with Disney's Snow White, it was only the second American animated feature ever released. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Adventure · Family

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

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 silent Oz fantasy written and produced by L. Frank Baum and directed by J. Farrell MacDonald for Baum's own Oz Film Manufacturing Company. Violet MacMillan plays Dorothy, who wanders into the Land of Oz and joins the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion in a quest to free Princess Gloria from the wicked King Krewl and the witch Mombi. The film draws on incidents from several Baum Oz books and is one of only three surviving features from his short-lived studio. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Fantasy · Adventure · Silent

The first feature-length film with an entirely Indigenous cast, depicting the world of the Kwakwaka'wakw peoples of British Columbia's Central Coast. Written and directed by photographer Edward S. Curtis, the film blends authentic representations of Kwakwaka'wakw culture with a melodramatic narrative of love, war, and sorcery. A landmark of early cinema, restored and re-edited in the 1970s as In the Land of the War Canoes. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Documentary · Adventure

Alfred Hitchcock's last British film before leaving for Hollywood. Orphaned Mary Yelland (Maureen O'Hara, in her first major role) arrives at a lonely Cornish coaching inn run by her brutal uncle Joss (Leslie Banks) — headquarters of a gang that wrecks ships on the rocks and murders the survivors. Charles Laughton, who also produced, plays the local squire Sir Humphrey Pengallan with deliberate, scenery-chewing menace. Adapted from Daphne du Maurier's novel, the production was famously contentious — Laughton reshaped scenes around himself — but the wreckers' coast, the inn, and O'Hara's debut charisma carry it. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Crime · Adventure · Drama

The man-cub Mowgli, raised by wolves in the Indian jungle, is drawn back toward the human village even as he battles the tiger Shere Khan and the cunning serpent Kaa. Sabu stars in Zoltan Korda's lavish Technicolor adaptation of Kipling's stories, filmed in India with real wildlife. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Family · Fantasy

A wily Baghdad beggar, through a single day's reversals of fortune, rises to wealth and engineers his daughter's marriage to a prince, only for fate to snatch it all back. Otis Skinner recreates his famed stage role of Hajj in this silent adaptation of Edward Knoblock's play. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance · Adventure

Maurice Tourneur's atmospheric adaptation of R.D. Blackmore's 1869 novel, set in 17th-century Exmoor, England. Madge Bellamy stars as Lorna Doone, a young woman raised by a clan of outlaw Doones who falls in love with John Ridd (John Bowers), a farmer's son whose father was murdered by the Doones. Tourneur, one of the great visual poets of silent cinema, brought a painterly sensibility to the moors and the romance, creating one of the most admired literary adaptations of the era. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Adventure · Silent

A Monogram aviation melodrama built around the era's fascination with record-breaking balloon ascents. Army pilots Tom "Soapy" Cooper (William Cagney, James's brother) and Richard "Woody" Wood (Edward J. Nugent) are inseparable in the air but rivals on the ground, both courting Evelyn Worthington (June Collyer), daughter of their commanding officer. When a high-altitude balloon mission goes wrong, the feud must give way to survival miles above the earth. Typical of Monogram's brisk B-pictures, it pads its stock footage with pre-Code barracks banter and a genuinely tense stratospheric climax. The film's copyright was not renewed; it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Drama · Romance

John Gilbert stars as Edmond Dantès in this Fox Film Corporation adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's classic novel of wrongful imprisonment and revenge. Directed by Emmett J. Flynn, the film follows Dantès from his betrayal by jealous rivals, through years of solitary confinement in the Château d'If, to his transformation into the Count of Monte Cristo and his methodical vengeance against those who destroyed his life. Estelle Taylor plays Mercedes, the woman he loves. Long thought lost, a print surfaced in the Czech Republic and the film has been restored. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Adventure · Silent

Douglas Fairbanks's final starring film sends the great swashbuckler out on a high note. Yachting playboy Steve Drexel accepts a bet that he can't survive alone on a deserted South Seas island with nothing but his dog — then proceeds to build a radio, a waterslide, and an elegant treetop penthouse out of salvaged wreckage and sheer ingenuity. When a fleeing dancer (Maria Alba) washes ashore and is dubbed "Saturday," the wager becomes a romance. Made when Fairbanks was nearing fifty, the film still showcases the effortless athletic charm that defined silent-era adventure, now with sound-era wisecracks. Released through United Artists, the company he co-founded, its copyright was not renewed. It is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Comedy · Romance

Ozzie of the Mounted is a 1928 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon directed by Walt Disney. Oswald appears as a Canadian Mountie on patrol, pursuing a wanted outlaw through the wilderness. The short features the slapstick humor and visual gags characteristic of Disney's Oswald period. As a 1928 work, the film entered the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2024.

Animation · Comedy · Adventure

The first film adaptation of J.M. Barrie's play, made with Barrie's blessing and his personal choice of Betty Bronson for the title role. Herbert Brenon's production preserves the stage business, including an animal impersonator as the Darling family's dog Nana and the crocodile, and the famous moment when the audience is asked to clap if they believe in fairies. Ernest Torrence's Captain Hook set the template for every screen Hook to follow, and the film's success helped convince a young Walt Disney that Peter Pan was worth adapting himself. Long thought lost, a copy was recovered by film historian James Card in the 1950s. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Fantasy · Adventure · Family · Silent

Popeye the Sailor Meets Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp is a 1939 two-reel Popeye cartoon from Fleischer Studios, distributed by Paramount Pictures. The longest of the Fleischer Popeye specials at approximately 21 minutes, the short features Olive Oyl as a storyteller recounting the tale of Aladdin, with Popeye as the hero and Bluto as the villain. The cartoon was produced in Technicolor and features elaborate set pieces and musical numbers. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Fantasy · Adventure

The first feature-length animated film made in China, produced by the Wan brothers at Shanghai's Xinhua Film Company in the middle of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Drawn with rotoscoped movement in a style openly inspired by Disney's Snow White, it adapts an episode of Journey to the West: the Monkey King and his companions are halted by the Mountain of Flames, and only the magic fan of the reluctant Princess Iron Fan can quench the fire. Made under brutal wartime conditions, the film doubled as a patriotic allegory of united resistance, and its influence reached Japan, where a young Osamu Tezuka credited it with inspiring his own career in animation. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Fantasy · Adventure

Jungle pulp from Screen Guild Pictures. Jean Preston (Patricia Morison) flies to Africa to find her missing fiancé, last seen hunting ivory on a safari that vanished into forbidden territory. With safari guide Gary Lambert (Robert Lowery) and comic-relief cook Gabby (J. Edward Bromberg), she penetrates the jungle realm of Zita, the Amazon queen — a white goddess ruling a tribe that traffics in enslaved men. Cheap, fast, and unabashedly lurid, it is Poverty Row adventure filmmaking at its most shameless, padded with stock wildlife footage. Its copyright was not renewed; it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Romance

Two vaudevillians on the run from shotgun weddings ship out to the South Seas, where they rescue and then compete for a beautiful island princess. The sixth of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby "Road" pictures and the only one made in Technicolor. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Adventure · Romance

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

Robin Hood Makes Good is a 1939 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Chuck Jones for Leon Schlesinger Productions. Three young animals play at being Robin Hood and his Merry Men, but when a real fox villain appears, they discover that pretend heroics are very different from the real thing. The short is an early Chuck Jones work, showing his developing storytelling sensibility. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy · Adventure

A young lawyer in pre-Revolutionary France vows vengeance on the aristocrat who killed his friend in a duel, becoming a roving commedia player and then a master fencer as the Revolution engulfs them all. Ramon Novarro and Alice Terry star in Rex Ingram's celebrated silent swashbuckler. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Romance · History

An early Roger Corman quickie shot in Hawaii for American International Pictures. Two brothers on the run after a robbery — wanted man Chris (Bill Cord) and his younger brother Jim (Don Durant) — are shipwrecked on a remote island colony of pearl-diving women, whose queenly keeper (Lisa Montell) answers to a shark god with a taste for human sacrifice. Barely over an hour long, it's a shaggy tropical pulp adventure typical of Corman's late-50s output. The film is in the public domain.

Adventure · Drama

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

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 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

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 Buster Keaton short co-directed with Edward F. Cline. Keaton plays a young man who wanders into a balloon and accidentally launches himself into the sky. He crash-lands in the wilderness, where he encounters a young woman and demonstrates his survival skills—or lack thereof. The film features a series of inventive gags involving canoes, fishing, and campfire cooking, all executed with Keaton's trademark deadpan precision. Though one of his lesser-known shorts, The Balloonatic showcases Keaton's ability to find comedy in any setting, from the sky to the rapids. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent · Adventure

A loose, swashbuckling portrait of the 15th-century French poet Francois Villon, played by John Barrymore at the height of his stage and screen fame. Villon is a tavern brawler and versifier who runs afoul of King Louis XI, played by the German actor Conrad Veidt in a Hollywood sojourn between Caligari and his later work in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari's shadow. The production was lavish, with sets by William Cameron Menzies and an estimated million-dollar budget. The only surviving domestic print was found years later in Barrymore's own former mansion by its next occupant, Edgar Bergen, and donated to the American Film Institute. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2023.

Adventure · Drama · Silent

The Big Cat is a 1949 outdoor adventure directed by Phil Karlson and set in the Utah canyon country during the Great Depression. A young man (Lon McCallister) returns to his mother's birthplace in the high country and finds the community terrorized by a marauding mountain lion and by a bitter feud between two families. Preston Foster and Forrest Tucker play the older men at odds, and Peggy Ann Garner is the girl between them. Karlson, later known for his tough 1950s noir, brings real tension to the wilderness scenes and the climactic hunt. The film was released by United Artists and is in the public domain.

Adventure · Drama

A wagon-train epic shot on location across seven states, The Big Trail follows a party of settlers from the Mississippi to the Pacific Northwest, led by the young scout Breck Coleman. Raoul Walsh shot the film in Fox's experimental 70mm Grandeur process, and the wide frame gives the landscapes and the wagon-train set pieces a scale the standard 35mm version could not match. The film is John Wayne's first leading role, at 23; he plays the kind of plainspoken, decent hero he would spend the rest of his career refining. Tyrone Power Sr., in his final film, plays the villain. The film's widescreen version was little-seen at the time and the picture flopped, but it survives as a landmark of early sound spectacle. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Western · Adventure

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

A Scottish officer ordered to the Western Front instead deserts into India's Khyber Pass on a secret mission to quell a tribal uprising, torn between duty and the beguiling princess who may be friend or foe. Victor McLaglen and Myrna Loy star in John Ford's first sound film. The 1929 film entered the public domain on January 1, 2025.

Adventure · War

A loose adaptation of Pushkin's novel Dubrovsky, with Valentino as a Cossack lieutenant who catches the eye of Catherine the Great, rejects her, and goes on the run. When a corrupt nobleman seizes his father's lands and kills the old man, Vladimir dons a black mask and becomes the Black Eagle, a Robin Hood figure, then infiltrates the nobleman's household as a French tutor and falls for his daughter. Clarence Brown directs with a light, fleet touch, and George Barnes's cinematography includes a celebrated extended tracking shot across a banquet table. Vilma Banky is the love interest and Louise Dresser a memorably imperious Czarina. Valentino, in his first United Artists picture, gets to swashbuckle in the Fairbanks mode and romance in his own, and the balance suits him. Published in 1925, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Romance · Adventure · Silent

A swaggering gaucho leader in the Argentine Andes falls for a mountain girl, but his head is turned by a woman known as the Miracle Girl of a mountain shrine. Misunderstanding her spiritual hold over him, the mountain girl betrays him to the authorities, and the Gaucho must escape to save the shrine and the priest who sheltered him. Douglas Fairbanks produced, wrote, and starred, and his then-wife Mary Pickford appears in a cameo as the Virgin Mary. The film was shot at the height of Fairbanks's box-office clout, with lavish sets and a budget to match, though he chose to film it in black and white rather than the Technicolor of The Black Pirate. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2023.

Adventure · Drama · Silent

Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp heads to the Klondike during the gold rush and finds himself stranded in a remote cabin through a blizzard, starving alongside a towering prospector named Big Jim McKay. The famous sequence of Chaplin boiling and eating his boot, twirling the laces like spaghetti, began here. The film follows the prospector into a frontier town, where he falls for a dance-hall girl named Georgia and tries, mostly badly, to win her regard. Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, scored, and starred, and the production was enormous: a full Alaskan town built on a Hollywood backlot, real location work in the Sierra Nevada, and a shoot that ran more than a year. The result is the film Chaplin said he most wanted to be remembered by. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Adventure · 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

John Carradine, whose entire role consists of narrating from a chair and never meeting the rest of the cast, sends four scientists down in a diving bell that snaps its cable and sinks into a subterranean cavern — a glowing "petrified world" where the survivors bicker, pair off, and dodge stock footage until they find a volcanic vent to ride back to the surface. Made by Jerry Warren, one of the true minors of 1950s exploitation, from a script padded out around underwater footage shot in Santa Catalina's real submarine gardens. It is exactly as slow and threadbare as that sounds, which is why it remains a fixture of public domain sci-fi collections and late-night movie marathons. The film is in the public domain.

Sci-Fi · Horror · Adventure

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

The Kid Brother is a 1927 silent comedy feature directed by Ted Wilde for the Harold Lloyd Corporation, distributed by Paramount Pictures. Harold Lloyd stars as Harold Hickory, the milquetoast youngest son of a tough sheriff, who gets his chance to prove himself when a traveling medicine show brings con artists to town. The film features some of Lloyd's most thrilling climactic set pieces, including a suspended-from-a-tower sequence. Widely regarded as one of Lloyd's best features. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Adventure

James Fenimore Cooper's novel as a sweeping silent epic, shot in the California mountains standing in for 1757 upstate New York. Wallace Beery is the vengeful Huron Magua, Albert Roscoe the scout Hawkeye, and Barbara Bedford the kidnapped Cora, with Harry Lorraine as the Mohican Chingachgook. Maurice Tourneur began the picture but was injured when a car drove off a cliff, and his assistant Clarence Brown — later the director of Garbo's finest films — finished it, earning his first screen credit. Regularly ranked among the best silent adaptations of American literature, it was restored by the Library of Congress. Published in 1920, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Drama · Silent

A 1920 American silent adventure romance film directed by Wesley Ruggles, starring Louise Glaum and House Peters. British secret agent John Culbertson (Peters) leads a safari from Bajuma to the kingdom of M'tela in Africa. Bound by oath to prevent him from reaching it is Madame (Glaum), a secret agent of a rival government known as "the Leopard Woman." When their safaris meet in the desert, Madame is forced to accept Culbertson's aid and unwittingly falls in love with him. After he scorns her, she orders her servant Chaké (Noble Johnson) to kill him — but when the attempt fails, she is secretly relieved. Based on the 1916 novel by Stewart Edward White, with location shooting in Palm Springs, California.

Adventure · Romance

An expedition led by the bombastic Professor Challenger ventures to a remote South American plateau where dinosaurs still roam. The film adapts Arthur Conan Doyle's novel and is most remembered today for Willis O'Brien's stop-motion animation, a direct ancestor of his work on King Kong (1933). The brontosaurus rampaging through London at the climax is the sequence everyone cites. Wallace Beery glowers his way through the lead, and the supporting cast includes Bessie Love and Lewis Stone. The effects were astonishing for 1925 and remain a key milestone in the history of visual effects. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Fantasy · Sci-Fi · Silent

The first screen appearance of Zorro, and the film that turned Douglas Fairbanks from a modern comedian into the swashbuckler who defined an era. Based on Johnston McCulley's 1919 story "The Curse of Capistrano," it follows Don Diego Vega, a foppish aristocrat newly returned to old California, who dons a mask and cape at night to fight the corrupt oppressors of the common people and court the lovely Lolita Pulido. Fairbanks's athleticism is the engine of the picture: he leaps over rooftops, fences with whip-crack speed, and carves his signature "Z" into the scenery. The masked-avenger template it set would echo through every costumed hero to follow. Produced by Fairbanks's own company, it was the first picture released through United Artists. Published in 1920, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Romance · Adventure · Silent

The original screen adaptation of Richard Connell's 1924 short story, directed by Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack for RKO. Famed big game hunter Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea) is shipwrecked on a remote island ruled by the urbane Russian Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks), who has grown bored with stalking animals and now hunts the shipwrecked sailors who wash ashore. Zaroff offers Rainsford a deal: survive three days as prey in the jungle, and he goes free. Fay Wray, fresh off King Kong (shot on the same RKO jungle sets), plays a fellow captive. The film's influence on the survival-horror genre is immeasurable, and its central premise has been remade and riffed on endlessly. The film is in the public domain.

Adventure · Horror · Thriller

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 1929 American part-talkie science fiction film directed by Lucien Hubbard, based on Jules Verne's 1874 novel. Photographed largely in two-color Technicolor, the film follows Count Andre Dakkar (Lionel Barrymore), a benevolent scientist who has built a submarine on his volcanic island near the kingdom of Hetvia. When the despotic Baron Falon overruns the island, Dakkar's daughter Sonia and her fiancé Nicolai Roget pilot the submarine on its maiden voyage. Pursued by Falon in a second submarine, both craft dive to the ocean floor and discover a strange land populated by dragons, giant squid, and an undiscovered humanoid race. The film was a lavish MGM production budgeted at over $1 million, with additional direction by Maurice Tourneur and Benjamin Christensen.

Sci-Fi · Adventure · Fantasy

A faithful collie named Shep treks across the wilderness to find the man who framed her master for murder in a gold-mining camp. The last of MGM's Lassie feature films, sometimes retitled Lassie's Adventures in the Gold Rush. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Family · Adventure · Western

L. Frank Baum's own Oz Film Manufacturing Company produced this feature-length adaptation of his 1913 novel, making it the first Oz film shot at real feature length. Ojo and his uncle Unc Nunkie journey to gather the ingredients that will restore the Patchwork Girl's victims to life, joined by Scraps herself — the life-sized doll brought to life by the Powder of Life — along with the Woozy and a young Dorothy. Pierre Couderc, a French acrobat billed as "the Marvelous Couderc," plays Scraps with full-body contortions that remain the film's chief marvel, and Violet MacMillan plays Ojo. A fascinating glimpse of Baum attempting to film his own creation before Hollywood got there. Published in 1914, it is in the public domain.

Fantasy · Adventure · 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

James Cruze, who had scored a hit with The Covered Wagon (1923), returned to the frontier epic with this story of the Pony Express and the riders who carried mail across the West. The plot follows a rider framed for murder and the woman who believes him, set against the backdrop of the short-lived but legendary mail service. Wallace Beery plays a villain, Ricardo Cortez the accused rider, and Betty Compson the woman who helps clear him. Cruze stages the riding sequences with the same eye for scale that made his westerns spectacles. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Western · Adventure · Silent

An English traveler who happens to resemble the king of Ruritania is pressed into impersonating the monarch when the real ruler is kidnapped by his treacherous half-brother, and falls in love with the queen-to-be. Lewis Stone and Alice Terry star in Rex Ingram's lavish silent adaptation of Anthony Hope's novel. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Romance

Frank Lloyd's lavish silent adaptation of Rafael Sabatini's pirate novel, one of the most expensive films of its day. Four full-scale sixteenth-century ships were built for the production, and the action ranges from Cornish manors to slave galleys to the deck of a Moorish pirate fleet. Milton Sills plays an English nobleman betrayed by his half-brother, sold into slavery, and reborn as the pirate captain known as the Sea Hawk, who returns to harry the Spanish and avenge himself. The film was a huge hit and set the visual template for Hollywood swashbucklers that the later Errol Flynn version would build on. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Adventure · Romance · Silent

A rough Bering Sea skipper rescues a young woman from a shipwreck and comes to regard her as a daughter, until a returning sweetheart and a rival sealing schooner test his hardened heart. Hobart Bosworth stars in this early Arctic adventure. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Drama

Based on E.M. Hull's bestselling 1919 novel, The Sheik made Rudolph Valentino a star almost overnight. Agnes Ayres plays Lady Diana Mayo, a headstrong Englishwoman who insists on traveling alone into the Algerian desert, only to be abducted by Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, a desert chief who falls in love with his captive. The film is a silent romantic adventure of the desert-romance school, all tents and horses and yearning close-ups, and it struck a nerve with 1921 audiences that few films before or since have matched. Valentino's dark, smoldering presence became a cultural phenomenon. The portrayal has not aged well in every respect, but the film's place in cinema history is secure as the picture that defined a new kind of leading man. It was published in 1921 and is in the public domain in the United States.

Romance · Adventure · Silent

An RKO pre-Code adventure drama adapted from Rex Beach's 1909 novel, directed by George Archainbaud. Joel McCrea plays Boyd Emerson, a young man who heads to Alaska to make his fortune in the salmon fisheries and finds himself squeezed between ruthless cannery interests and two very different women — society girl Mildred Wayland (Jean Arthur) and Cherry Malotte (Evelyn Brent), the worldly saloon keeper who truly loves him. Louis Wolheim is memorable as George Balt, the rough-edged fisherman who becomes Boyd's loyal ally. Shot partly on location in Alaska, it was an early talkie showcase for McCrea on his way to stardom. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 1958 after its copyright was not renewed.

Drama · Adventure · Romance

A writer, injured on an African safari and waiting to find out if his leg will be amputated, drifts in and out of fevered memories of the women and adventures he let slip away. Gregory Peck stars in this loose adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Adventure · Romance

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

Valentino's final film, released two weeks after his death from peritonitis at thirty-one. He plays a double role: the aging Sheik Ahmed and his hot-blooded son, who falls for Yasmin, a dancing girl, and is tricked by a band of outlaws into believing she betrayed him. The younger Ahmed abducts her in revenge, and the story plays out as a compressed echo of the first film, sharper and a little harder. Vilma Banky is a strong match for Valentino, and the desert photography has a clean, harsh beauty. The film was selected for the National Film Registry in 2003. Long held under copyright by the Copyright Term Extension Act, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2022, and is now freely watchable.

Romance · Adventure · Silent

A silent romantic fantasy-adventure on a scale that still startles. Douglas Fairbanks plays a thief of Bagdad who, on a whim, sneaks into the Caliph's palace, steals an apple, and falls in love with the Princess. To win her he must best rival princes in a quest across a world of magic: a flying horse, a six-armed statue, an underwater kingdom, a monstrous spider, an invisibility powder. Raoul Walsh directs from a scenario Fairbanks co-wrote under a pseudonym, and the production design draws on the illustrations of Edmund Dulac to build an Arabian Nights dreamscape out of lumber, paint, and ingenuity. Anna May Wong is a standout as the treacherous Mongol slave. The film's influence on the fantasy genre is hard to overstate. Published in 1924, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Romance · Fantasy · Adventure · Silent

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

Leif Eriksson leads a Viking expedition to the North American coast, where love and rivalry divide the Norsemen against the skraelings they encounter. Pauline Starke and Donald Crisp star in this early Technicolor sound feature. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Drama

The White Gorilla is a 1945 jungle adventure written and directed by Harry L. Fraser and produced by Louis Weiss. Ray Corrigan plays Steve Collins, a white explorer in the African jungle who recounts the story of a lost silent expedition and its encounter with a legendary white gorilla. The film was made by re-editing Fraser's own 1927 silent serial Perils of the Jungle, starring the silent-screen Tarzan Frank Merrill, and adding new sound footage as a framing device. The result is a curious hybrid in which roughly half the running time is vintage silent footage projected at sound speed, with Corrigan narrating the action in flashback. The film is in the public domain.

Adventure · Jungle

A silent-era, very loose adaptation of L. Frank Baum's Oz books, written, directed by, and starring Larry Semon as the Scarecrow. The plot barely resembles the familiar 1939 film: a tyrannical wizard rules Oz, a farmhand disguised as a scarecrow helps a deposed princess, and Oliver Hardy (before his partnership with Stan Laurel) plays the Tin Woodsman. Semon stuffs the film with his trademark gag-heavy, slapstick style, and the result is a curious artifact more than a classic, but it is the earliest surviving feature-length Oz adaptation. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Fantasy · Comedy · Adventure · Silent

A 1923 American silent romantic adventure film produced and distributed by Warner Bros., directed by Sidney Franklin. Based on Willard Mack's 1917 Broadway play, Lenore Ulric reprises her stage role as Rose Bocion, known as "Tiger Rose," an orphan raised at a Canadian Northwest trading post. The story follows a love triangle involving a Mountie (Forrest Stanley), a surveyor (Theodore von Eltz), and Rose, set against the rugged wilderness. The film was one of Warner Bros.' early collaborations with Broadway producer David Belasco. The story was later remade in 1929 by George Fitzmaurice.

Drama · Adventure · Romance

Two Weeks to Live is a 1943 American comedy film directed by Malcolm St. Clair, produced by Jack Wm. Votion Productions and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. The third film in the "Lum and Abner" series, it stars radio comedians Chester Lauck and Norris Goff as their fictional characters Lum Edwards and Abner Peabody. When Abner is mistakenly diagnosed as having only two weeks to live, Lum gets the idea that they can make a fortune by having Abner perform dangerous stunts. The film is in the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Adventure

A 1968 American science fiction film directed by Peter Bogdanovich (credited as Derek Thomas) for producer Roger Corman. The film is a re-edit of the 1962 Soviet science fiction film Planeta Bur (Planet of Storms) by Pavel Klushantsev, with new English-dubbed footage and additional scenes starring Mamie Van Doren as Moana, leader of a band of blond Venusian women. Astronauts landing on Venus encounter dangerous prehistoric creatures and unknowingly kill a pterosaur-like creature that is worshipped as a god by the Venusian women. In revenge, the women attempt to kill the astronauts, who eventually make an emergency blast off from Venus — leaving behind their damaged robot, which the women adopt as their new god. Bogdanovich also narrated the film. The Venusian women do not appear in the original Soviet film.

Sci-Fi · Adventure

The headstrong Princess Mary Tudor, sister of King Henry VIII, is betrothed to the aged King of France but falls for the dashing Captain Charles Brandon, and risks throne and life to follow her heart. Marion Davies stars in this lavish Hearst-produced silent costume romance. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Romance · History · Adventure