Fantasy Films

A 1913 British silent science fiction film directed by J. Wallett Waller, based on the play by Richard Ganthony. According to the British Film Institute, it is the first British science-fiction film. A Martian named Ramiel is sentenced to visit Earth to cure Horace Parker, a wealthy and selfish young man. The Martian shows him poverty and suffering on the streets, and after rescuing a soldier's wife from a fire, Parker reforms and regains the esteem of his community. The play was previously filmed in 1903 and remade again in 1921.

Sci-Fi · Fantasy · Comedy

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

The Soviet Union's first science fiction spectacle, directed by Yakov Protazanov for Mezhrabpom-Rus and adapted from Alexei Tolstoy's novel. In post-revolutionary Moscow, engineer Los builds a rocket and flies to Mars, where he falls for the planet's queen, Aelita (Yuliya Solntseva), and helps spark a Martian proletarian uprising. The film's lasting fame rests on its astonishing constructivist design — Alexandra Exter's geometric Martian costumes and sets look like nothing else in silent cinema — while its Earthbound scenes offer a wry portrait of life under the New Economic Policy. Released in the United States as Revolt of the Robots. A 1924 production, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Science Fiction · Drama · Fantasy · Silent

Olive Oyl writes a screenplay in which Popeye plays Aladdin, who uses a magic lamp and his spinach-fueled strength to win the princess from a wicked vizier. The third and last of the Fleischer Studios' two-reel Popeye color specials. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Family · Fantasy

One of the earliest feature-length adaptations of Lewis Carroll's Alice stories, directed by W.W. Young for the Nonpareil Feature Film Corporation. Stage actress Viola Savoy plays Alice, who follows the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole into Wonderland and encounters the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse, and the Queen of Hearts. Shot on a wooded Long Island estate, the film was a $25,000 production and one of only two screen appearances by Savoy. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Fantasy · Silent

A supernatural comedy in the Here Comes Mr. Jordan vein, directed by Archie Mayo as his final film. Paul Muni plays Eddie Kagle, a murdered gangster whom the Devil (Claude Rains) sends back to Earth in the body of an upright judge to corrupt him, only to watch Kagle gradually reform. Anne Baxter is the judge's fiancée who sees through the swap. The film's U.S. copyright expired in 1973, leaving it in the public domain.

Comedy · Fantasy

Three lonely millionaire engineers — Harry Carey, C. Aubrey Smith, and Charles Winninger — throw their wallets out the window on Christmas Eve to see who returns them, and end up adopting the two strangers who do: a young singer and a cowboy who fall in love. When the three men die in a plane crash, they return as ghosts to shepherd the couple through the consequences of the money they left behind. Also released as Beyond Christmas, it is a gentle holiday fantasy directed by A. Edward Sutherland for RKO, and its dark second half — one ghost tempted away from the light — surprises anyone expecting pure sentiment. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Drama · Fantasy · Romance

A Mary Pickford vehicle directed by James Kirkwood for Famous Players, and one of the earliest feature-length Cinderella adaptations. Pickford plays the fairy-tale heroine tormented by her stepmother and stepsisters, with her then-husband Owen Moore as Prince Charming. The film features early special effects in the pumpkin-to-coach transformation and was released as a Christmas attraction in December 1914. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Fantasy · Silent

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

F.W. Murnau's final German film is a lavish silent adaptation of the Faust legend, drawing on Goethe and older folk versions of the tale. An archangel and Mephisto wager over the soul of an aged scholar, and the devil unleashes a plague to drive Faust to desperation. The pact gives Faust youth and worldly pleasure, but the story turns on his seduction of the innocent Gretchen and the tragedy that follows. Emil Jannings plays Mephisto as a leering, theatrical tempter, while Gosta Ekman ages and de-ages across the picture. The film is a high point of German Expressionism, famous for its optical tricks, painted skies, and the surreal image of Mephisto's wings spreading over a miniature town. It was a financial disappointment on release but has been revered by critics ever since. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2022.

Fantasy · Horror · Drama · Silent

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

Abbott and Costello's musical comedy version of the classic fairy tale, directed by Jean Yarbrough. Costello plays Jack, a hapless boy who trades the family cow for magic beans, while Abbott plays Mr. Dinkelpuss, the shady butcher who swindles him. When the beans grow into a giant beanstalk, Jack and Dinkelpuss climb to the cloud kingdom, where they encounter a fearsome giant and a treasure beyond their dreams. The film was originally released in a two-color Cinecolor process and features songs by the Mellomen. It was the first Abbott and Costello film to be independently produced rather than made under their Universal contract. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Family · Fantasy · Musical

Jack the Giant Killer is a 1922 animated short from Walt Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studio, featuring Julius the Cat — Disney's first named animated character and the precursor to Oswald and Mickey Mouse. A boy and his companions (a dog and the cat) sail to the land of giants to rescue a captured girl, encountering sea creatures and performing monkeys along the way. The short is one of seven fairy tale cartoons produced by Laugh-O-Gram Films before the studio's bankruptcy. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy · Fantasy

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

Frank Borzage's adaptation of Ferenc Molnar's 1909 play about a carousel barker in Budapest whose doomed romance with a servant girl ends in tragedy and a chance at redemption from beyond the grave. Charles Farrell stars as Liliom, a swaggering but troubled carnival worker, with Rose Hobart as Julie, the woman who loves him despite his flaws. Lee Tracy plays the Sparrow, a heavenly marshal who oversees Liliom's posthumous trial. The film was one of several Borzage-directed romances that blended realism with spiritual fantasy, a hallmark of his career. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Fantasy

Little Red Riding Hood is a 1922 animated short from Walt Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studio, and the first appearance of Julius the Cat — Disney's first named animated character and the precursor to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse. The short reimagines the classic fairy tale with Disney's contemporary humor, featuring a cat who helps Red Riding Hood outwit the wolf. The film is one of the earliest surviving Disney animated shorts. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy · Fantasy

Oh What a Knight is a 1928 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon directed by Walt Disney. Oswald is a knight who must rescue a princess from a castle, with plenty of gags along the way. The short features medieval fantasy settings and the distinctive animation style of Disney's Oswald period. As a 1928 work, the film entered the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2024.

Animation · Comedy · Fantasy

Pastry Town Wedding is a 1934 animated short from the Van Beuren Corporation's Rainbow Parade series, co-directed by Burt Gillett and Ted Eshbaugh and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. The first entry in the Rainbow Parade series, it is set in a fantastical world made entirely of pastries where a young couple's wedding is celebrated by pastry chefs. The short was the first Van Beuren cartoon produced in two-strip Cinecolor. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy · Fantasy

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

Poor Cinderella is a 1934 animated short from Fleischer Studios, distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was the first color cartoon in the Betty Boop series, produced in two-strip Cinecolor. Betty Boop stars as Cinderella in this retelling of the classic fairy tale, with the Fleischers' signature surreal animation style and musical numbers. The short was a departure from Betty's usual urban, adult-oriented comedies. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Fantasy · Musical

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

Prest-O Change-O is a 1939 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Chuck Jones for Leon Schlesinger Productions. Two curious dogs wander into a magician's house and encounter a series of magical transformations, including a two-headed dog and other surreal creatures. The short is an early example of Jones's developing style, blending Disney-esque charm with the anarchic humor that would later define his work. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy · Fantasy

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

Puss in Boots is a 1922 animated short from Walt Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studio. Based on the classic fairy tale, the short features a clever cat who helps his master win the hand of a princess. The cartoon includes Julius the Cat — Disney's first named animated character — in a supporting role. Like the other Laugh-O-Gram fairy tales, the film reimagines the traditional story with contemporary humor and gags. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy · Fantasy

A 1970 animated Christmas film directed by Barry Mahon and Tony Benedict. When a park ranger tells two bear cubs, Nikomi and Chinook, about Christmas and Santa Claus, they become determined to stay awake instead of hibernating so they can meet Santa. Their mother, Nana, cynically tells them there is no Santa, but the cubs' faith persists. The ranger is eventually persuaded to impersonate Santa to fulfill their wish. The theatrical release includes live-action bookend sequences directed by Barry Mahon, often edited out in television broadcasts. The film aired in syndication regularly during the holiday season for decades and is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Animation · Family · Fantasy

René Cardona's wildly strange Mexican Christmas fantasy. Santa lives not at the North Pole but in a castle in the sky, where he watches Earth's children through a spyglass eye and fights off the demon Pitch, sent by Lucifer to turn the kids of the world bad — starting with a poor girl who just wants a doll. The English dub distributed by K. Gordon Murray became a staple of American holiday television and a Mystery Science Theater 3000 favorite. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Fantasy · Family · Comedy

The first feature-length sound adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, directed by Henry Edwards for Twickenham Film Studios. Seymour Hicks, who had played Scrooge on stage since 1901 and in a 1913 silent film, reprises the role as the Victorian miser visited on Christmas Eve by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. The production relies on atmosphere and Hicks's seasoned performance rather than elaborate effects, and the spirits are partly conveyed as voices and outlines. The film is in the public domain.

Drama · Fantasy

A 2010 animated fantasy short film and the third "open movie" produced by the Blender Foundation. Directed by Colin Levy and created entirely with Blender and other free/open-source software, the film follows Sintel, a lonely young woman who befriends a wounded baby dragon she names Scales. When Scales is taken by an adult dragon, Sintel embarks on a perilous quest across years and continents to find her lost friend — leading to a devastating conclusion. The film, its production files, and all source assets are released under a Creative Commons Attribution license, making it freely available for distribution, remixing, and reuse.

Animation · Fantasy

A silent fairy-tale feature directed by J. Searle Dawley for Famous Players, starring Marguerite Clark, who reprises her Broadway stage role as Snow White. The film follows the Brothers Grimm tale of a princess menaced by her jealous stepmother, sheltered by dwarfs in the forest, and restored to her prince. Long believed lost in a vault fire, a substantially complete print with Dutch intertitles was rediscovered in Amsterdam in 1992 and restored by the George Eastman Museum. Walt Disney reportedly cited this film as the inspiration for his 1937 animated feature. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Fantasy · Silent

George Reeves stars as Superman in this special eighteen-minute short produced for the U.S. Department of the Treasury to promote school savings stamp programs to children. When a blackout strikes Metropolis, Superman visits a classroom and teaches the students — including a boy named Blinky — about buying U.S. Savings Stamps. The film was donated to the Treasury and never aired commercially, making it the only Adventures of Superman production in the public domain. It features the series' regular cast including Noel Neill, Jack Larson, and John Hamilton.

Fantasy · Science Fiction

The oldest surviving animated feature film, made by Lotte Reiniger over three years using silhouette animation. Reiniger cut every figure by hand from paper and lead, then photographed them frame by frame on a multiplane camera she and Carl Koch designed. The story draws from the Arabian Nights: Prince Achmed rides a mechanical horse, battles demons, and courts Princess Peri Banu across a world of shadow and color tinted by hand. The film is in the public domain in the United States as a pre-1930 work.

Animation · Silent · Fantasy

The surviving masterpiece of German expressionist horror. In 16th century Prague, Rabbi Loew (Albert Steinrück) sculpts a giant of clay and brings it to life with a magic word to defend the ghetto from an imperial decree of expulsion — but the Golem (Paul Wegener, who co-directed with Carl Boese) will not remain a servant. The staggered Expressionist sets, built like crooked clay houses, and the creation sequence's Kabbalistic ritual became templates for Frankenstein and every creature feature after. This was Wegener's third Golem film and the only one to survive substantially intact. A century on, it remains genuinely uncanny. Published in 1920, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Horror · Fantasy · Silent

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 Merry Frolics of Satan (original French title: Les Quatre Cents Farces du Diable) is a 1906 French silent fantasy film directed by Georges Melies. The film follows a chemical engineer who makes a pact with the devil, gaining magical powers that he uses to play a series of pranks. The film showcases Melies' signature visual effects, including transformations, disappearances, and elaborate set pieces. As a 1906 work, the film is in the public domain.

Fantasy · Comedy

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

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 1957 made-for-television musical directed by Bretaigne Windust and broadcast on NBC as a color spectacular. Van Johnson stars as the Pied Piper (and his alter ego Truson), with Claude Rains as the Mayor of Hamelin, plus Lori Nelson, Jim Backus, and Kay Starr. Adapted from the Robert Browning poem, the story follows the piper who rids Hamelin of its rats, then leads away the town's children when the mayor refuses to pay. Aired once and then rerun for years, the film's copyright was never renewed, making it one of the most widely circulated public domain musicals and a staple of holiday broadcasts on local stations.

Musical · Fantasy · Comedy

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

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 young woman is murdered at a creepy mansion and returns as a ghost to enlist the mild-mannered Cosmo Topper to find her killer, dragging the bewildered man through a house full of secret passages and suspects. The third Topper comedy. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Mystery · Fantasy

Paul Leni's German Expressionist anthology strings together three tales a wandering poet invents for the figures in a wax museum. Emil Jannings plays the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, slipping through Baghdad in disguise to court a baker's wife; Conrad Veidt is Ivan the Terrible, spiraling into paranoid madness over a poisoned hourglass; and Werner Krauss is a nightmarish Jack the Ripper who seems to step out of the poet's dreams. Leni's sets tilt and bend, his shadows are painted on, and the camera pushes in close on faces twisted by fear and obsession. The film was a bridge between German Expressionism and the horror cinema Leni would help found after he emigrated to Hollywood, where he directed The Cat and the Canary (1927). The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Fantasy · Horror · Silent