Horror Films

Walter Paisley is a awkward busboy at a Bohemian coffeehouse who longs to be accepted by the beatnik artists and poets who hang out there. When he accidentally kills his landlady's cat, he covers the body in clay and passes it off as a sculpture, and the café's crowd hails him as a genius. Pressured to produce more work, he graduates from dead cats to dead people. Roger Corman shot the film in five days on a $50,000 budget using leftover sets, and Charles B. Griffith's script turns the pretensions of the art world into a sharp black comedy. Dick Miller, a character actor who spent decades in small parts, gets a rare lead and carries it. The film is a companion piece to The Little Shop of Horrors, made the next year by the same team. It entered the public domain due to a missing copyright notice.

Comedy · Horror

Originally aired as an ABC Movie of the Week on November 12, 1974, this thriller directed by Burt Kennedy follows a man traveling through a remote backwoods area who is taken captive by a group of orphaned children. The children want him to become their father, and adults who refuse that particular honor have a way of disappearing. Stacy Keach leads the cast alongside Samantha Eggar, John Savage, and Robby Benson. The film, also known as *Evil in the Swamp*, was produced by Cinemation Industries and filmed in Lebanon, Tennessee. Because it was published in the United States between 1929 and 1977 without a copyright notice, it is in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller

A 1960 Italian horror film directed by Anton Giulio Majano, originally titled Seddok, l'erede di Satana. When a singer named Jeanette Moreneau (Susanne Loret) is horribly disfigured in a car accident, scientist Professor Alberto Levin (Alberto Lupo) develops a serum called Derma 28 that restores her beauty. But the treatment is only temporary, and Levin — who has fallen in love with Jeanette — must kill young women to obtain the glandular transplants needed to make the cure permanent. Unable to continue killing without remorse, Levin uses his earlier failed serum Derma 25 to transform himself into a monstrous killer. Despite its American title, the film contains no actual vampire.

Horror · Sci-Fi

People begin disappearing in a backwoods swamp, and a game warden and a local doctor discover that giant, slug-like leeches are responsible. The creatures drag their victims down into the water and keep them alive to feed on slowly. Produced by Gene Corman for American International Pictures and released on a double bill with A Bucket of Blood, Attack of the Giant Leeches is a tight little creature feature that gets its mileage out of the swamp atmosphere and the underwater scenes of the leeches at work. The monsters are men in rubber suits, which is part of the charm. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of its copyright.

Horror · Sci-Fi

Two nightclub entertainers, Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, parachute into a Pacific jungle island where they meet a sarong-clad island princess and a mad scientist named Dr. Zabor, played by Bela Lugosi in full Dracula regalia. Jealous of Duke's romance with the princess, Zabor decides to use his evolution experiments to turn his rival into a gorilla. Mitchell and Petrillo were a comedy team built to imitate Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and Jerry Lewis reportedly sued to shut the production down. William Beaudine, a veteran of silent comedy, directed with the workmanlike speed that earned him the nickname "One-Shot." The film is a strange collision of horror parody, knockabout slapstick, and stock jungle footage. It entered the public domain because no copyright was ever filed.

Comedy · Horror

A low-budget horror thriller written and directed by Ralph Brooke, based without attribution on Richard Connell's 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game." Four young adults boat to a remote tropical island, where they discover the estate of Dr. Albert Balleau (Wilton Graff), a sadistic hunter who has grown bored with stalking animals and now collects human trophies. Balleau gives his captives a head start before hunting them with bow and arrow through the jungle. Filmed in 1959 at Screencraft Studios but not released until 1961 on a double bill with The Devil's Hand, the film is a threadbare but atmospheric retelling of the oft-adapted story. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller

Bloody Pit of Horror (Italian: Il boia scarlatto, The Crimson Executioner) is a 1965 Italian Gothic horror film directed by Domenico Massimo Pupillo and starring Mickey Hargitay as a deranged former actor who believes himself the reincarnation of a 17th-century executioner. When a group of photographers and models arrives at his castle to shoot covers for horror novels, he traps them in his dungeon of elaborate torture devices and sets about purging them of their sins. The film is loosely inspired by the writings of the Marquis de Sade and is a prime example of mid-1960s Italian exploitation horror, full of campy grandeur, garish color, and baroque death traps. It is in the public domain.

Horror

In 19th-century Paris, puppeteer and portrait painter Gaston Morrell strangles the models who pose for him, while police hunt the killer the newspapers call Bluebeard. John Carradine gives one of his finest performances as the tormented Morrell, with Jean Parker as the dressmaker who loves him and Nils Asther as the inspector on his trail. Made on a five-day PRC schedule, it's poverty-row stylist Edgar G. Ulmer's most admired film — moody, literate, and shot with genuine atmosphere. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Horror · Noir

A respected university professor by day secretly runs a criminal ring out of a Bowery soup kitchen by night, disposing of disloyal henchmen by burying them in the cellar, where a junkie doctor keeps them in a zombie-like trance. Bela Lugosi stars in this Monogram quickie. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Horror · Crime

A 1951 jungle horror film written and directed by Curt Siodmak, the screenwriter of The Wolf Man. On a rubber plantation deep in the Amazon, foreman Barney Chavez (Raymond Burr) kills his employer and takes his beautiful wife Dina (Barbara Payton) — but a witch's curse condemns him to transform into a gorilla, stalking the jungle while the police commissioner (Lon Chaney Jr.) closes in. Essentially a loupe-garou tale transplanted to the tropics, it is a minor-key cult item with a remarkable cast for its budget. The film is in the public domain.

Horror

Ed Wood's belated follow-up to Glen or Glenda, and the closest he came to a conventional horror film. Bela Lugosi, in one of his final roles, plays Dr. Eric Vornoff, a mad scientist experimenting with atomic energy in a swamp-side laboratory, attempting to create a race of superhumans with the help of his brutish assistant Lobo (Tor Johnson). When a nosy reporter (Loretta King) investigates, she becomes Vornoff's next subject. The film features Wood's trademark blend of earnest ambition and staggering incompetence: a rubber octopus prop with visible wires, mismatched day-for-night footage, and dialogue that defies logic. Yet Lugosi gives it his all, delivering lines like "Home? I have no home. Hunted... despised... living like an animal!" with genuine pathos. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Sci-Fi

Mary Henry survives a car that plunges off a bridge into a river, dragged out hours later with no memory of how she escaped. She moves to a new town to start a job as a church organist, but she is drawn to an abandoned pavilion on the shore, and she keeps seeing a pale, grinning man no one else can see. Herk Harvey made the film for around thirty thousand dollars on weekends, with a crew borrowed from industrial film work. The organ score and the empty fairground imagery give it a dreamlike dread that influenced later horror. Mary keeps slipping out of the world entirely, becoming invisible and silent to the people around her, and the film never explains why in a neat way. The film was largely ignored on release and found its audience years later through television. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Horror · Mystery

A college student travels to the New England village of Whitewood to research witchcraft for a paper, on the recommendation of her professor, played by Christopher Lee. She checks into the Raven's Inn, run by a mysterious woman who is in truth the reincarnation of a witch burned at the stake two centuries earlier, and the village proves to be in the grip of a coven. City of the Dead, released in the United States as Horror Hotel, is an atmospheric black-and-white horror film that relies on fog, shadow, and a genuine sense of dread. Its release happened to coincide with Psycho, and the two share a structural resemblance that was purely coincidental. The film is in the public domain and is regarded as a minor classic of British horror.

Horror

A horror-comedy directed by Roger Corman, written by Charles B. Griffith. American agent XK150, using the alias Sparks Moran (Robert Towne, billed as Edward Wain), infiltrates a gang led by Renzo Capetto (Antony Carbone), who is transporting a Cuban general and a fortune in treasury gold out of Cuba. Capetto invents a sea monster to cover his murders, but a real creature from the haunted sea surfaces to complicate matters. Corman, exhausted by monster movie formulas, famously ended the film with the creature killing the entire cast and picking its teeth with their bones. Filmed in Puerto Rico in 1959, the film was released by The Filmgroup on a double bill with Devil's Partner. Robert Towne would go on to win an Academy Award for writing Chinatown (1974). The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Comedy

Francis Ford Coppola's feature directorial debut, produced by Roger Corman with leftover money from another shoot. A woman conceals her husband's death and travels to his family's Irish castle to secure a share of the inheritance, only to find the household haunted by the drowning of a young daughter years before. Then an ax-wielding killer begins picking off members of the family. Coppola shot the film in Ireland on a tiny budget, and Corman later added a prologue by Monte Hellman to pad the runtime. The result is a rough but atmospheric black-and-white horror picture that hints at the talent Coppola would soon develop. It entered the public domain and has circulated widely on budget labels ever since.

Horror · Mystery

The definitive silent adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novella, directed by John S. Robertson for Famous Players-Lasky. John Barrymore delivers a tour de force as the virtuous Dr. Jekyll, whose experiments in separating good from evil unleash the hideous Mr. Hyde. Barrymore's transformation, achieved largely through facial contortion and makeup rather than camera tricks, remains one of the most effective in screen history. Nita Naldi plays the dance hall temptress who draws Jekyll toward his darker self. The film cemented Barrymore's reputation as a serious screen actor and established the visual vocabulary for cinematic split-personality horror. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Drama · Silent

Bela Lugosi's defining role. He plays Count Dracula, a Transylvanian nobleman who leases a ruined abbey in London and begins preying on the city's residents. The film was based on the stage play rather than Stoker's novel directly, which is why the pacing feels theatrical and the dialogue is sparse. Dwight Frye as Renfield is genuinely unhinged. The film was released during the Great Depression and was a box office hit, saving Universal from bankruptcy and launching the Universal monster franchise. Lugosi's interpretation of the Count, with his hypnotic stare and deliberate accent, set the template for every screen Dracula that followed.

Horror · Drama

A 1962 American horror film directed by Arch Hall Sr. (credited as Nicholas Merriwether) and starring his son Arch Hall Jr. and Richard Kiel. While driving through the California desert, Roxy Miller (Marilyn Manning) nearly hits a giant caveman named Eegah (Richard Kiel). Her father, a writer of adventure books, heads into the desert to find the creature, but is captured and trapped in Eegah's cave. When Roxy and her boyfriend Tom (Arch Hall Jr.) come to rescue him, Eegah grows fond of Roxy and follows them back to civilization, leading to tragedy. Made on a budget of $15,000, the film was later featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and became a cult favorite.

Horror · Sci-Fi

A 1976 American science fiction horror film directed by Ralph Nelson, starring Rock Hudson. A scientist (Hudson) doing experiments on a human fetus discovers a method to accelerate the fetus into a mature adult in just a few days using a growth hormone. His creation, Victoria (Barbara Carrera), develops rapidly into a beautiful and brilliant woman — but soon begins to exhibit horrifying psychopathic tendencies. As she accelerates beyond his control, the scientist must confront the ethical and physical consequences of playing God. The film also features Diane Ladd and Roddy McDowall, with a cameo by psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers playing herself.

Sci-Fi · Horror

A 1985 Canadian horror film directed by George Mihalka, also known as The Blue Man. Paul Sharpe (Winston Rekert), a dissatisfied Montreal TV commercial director, is taught to astrally project himself by a mysterious woman named Janus (Karen Black). But soon he finds he does it against his will while he sleeps, and during these out-of-body episodes he commits savage acts against those in his life. A detective (John Novak) ties a series of murders to Janus and Paul's experiments with astral travel. The film is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Horror · Thriller

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

The first known film adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, produced by Edison Studios and directed by J. Searle Dawley. In this 12-minute silent short, Frankenstein (Augustus Phillips) creates his monster (Charles Ogle) not through electricity but through chemical means in a boiling cauldron, and the creature manifests as a skeletal apparition born of fire and smoke. Ogle designed his own monster makeup, creating a hunched, wild-haired figure that bears no resemblance to Boris Karloff's later icon but established the first screen image of Shelley's creation. The monster haunts Frankenstein's wedding night, a psychological torment that ends when the creature sees its own reflection and vanishes. Long believed lost, a print was rediscovered in the 1970s. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Short · Silent

The East Side Kids return in a sequel of sorts to Spooks Run Wild. When one of their own gets married, the gang tries to fix up a bargain suburban house for the newlyweds but accidentally breaks into the "haunted" house next door, where a mysterious man named Emil, played by Bela Lugosi, slips in and out of secret panels. The boys uncover a Nazi spy ring operating a printing press in the basement. Ava Gardner, on loan from MGM and not yet a major star, appears as the bride. William Beaudine directs with his usual no-nonsense pace. The film is more comedy than horror, with the gang's slapstick carrying most of the running time, and Lugosi used mostly for atmosphere. It entered the public domain because its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Horror

Satan presides over a hellish jazz concert where demons and imps dance to a fiendish orchestra, until one rebellious devil challenges the boss. A Ub Iwerks-directed Disney Silly Symphony. The 1929 film entered the public domain on January 1, 2025.

Animation · Comedy · Horror · Music

A 1972 Spanish-British science fiction horror film directed by Eugenio Martín, starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Telly Savalas. British anthropologist Alexander Saxton (Lee) discovers a frozen prehistoric humanoid in Manchuria in 1906 and boards the Trans-Siberian Express to transport it to Europe. But when passengers begin turning up dead — their brains drained of memories — Saxton and his rival Dr. Wells (Cushing) realize the creature is alive and possesses the power to absorb minds and control bodies. Telly Savalas appears in the final act as a Cossack captain. The film was shot in Madrid and marked Peter Cushing's first film after the death of his wife. The screenplay was by blacklisted writer Julian Zimet (credited as Julian Halevy). The film is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Horror · Sci-Fi

A 1960 West German horror film directed by Fritz Böttger, also known as Ein Toter hing im Netz and It's Hot in Paradise. Nightclub owner Gary Webster (Alexander D'Arcy) is interviewing dancers for his exotic troupe in New York and flies with several of them to Singapore. Their plane crashes into the Pacific, and the survivors reach a deserted island where they discover a dead man hanging in a giant spider's web. Gary is bitten by a mutant spider and transforms into a murderous spider-creature, terrorizing the women as they await rescue. The film was released in the US in 1962 and later featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Horror

Vincent Price plays an eccentric millionaire who offers five people ten thousand dollars each to spend the night in a haunted house. He locks them in and the scares begin. William Castle was famous for his gimmicks; for this film he arranged for a plastic skeleton to fly over the audience at a key moment. The film is a tight, atmospheric haunted house picture that works on its own without the gimmick. Price is in top form, clearly enjoying himself. The film has a twist ending that holds up. It was remade in 1999, but the original is better.

Horror · Thriller

A 1967 American made-for-television horror science fiction film directed by Larry Buchanan for American International Pictures. A color remake of Roger Corman's 1956 film Day the World Ended, the title is borrowed from a short story by Jules Verne and his son Michael Verne, though the film bears no relation to that story. After a nuclear war wipes out most of Earth's population, a group of survivors holes up in a secluded valley protected from radiation by its geography. They must protect themselves from rising radiation levels, cannibalistic mutants with telepathic powers, and in some cases each other. The film entered the public domain because it was published without a copyright notice.

Sci-Fi · Horror

A convicted killer known as "the Butcher" is executed in the gas chamber, but his body is sold to a scientist who accidentally revives him with an experimental serum, making him nearly indestructible and impervious to bullets. He sets out to take revenge on the partners who betrayed him. Lon Chaney Jr., in the late, diminished stretch of his career, plays the mute, brooding creature with almost no dialogue, stalking through Los Angeles landmarks like Angels Flight and the Bradbury Building. The film is a low-budget crime-horror hybrid that plays like a rough remake of Chaney's earlier Man Made Monster. It entered the public domain because its copyright was not renewed.

Horror · Sci-Fi

A 1973 American science fiction thriller directed by Denis Sanders from a screenplay by Nicholas Meyer (later director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan). In a small California town, male scientists at a top-secret research facility begin dying after extreme sexual exertion. State Department agent Neil Agar (William Smith) investigates and uncovers a horrific plot: a mad scientist (Anitra Ford) is using radiation-mutated bee serum to transform women into queen bees who seduce men to death. Roger Ebert called it "the best schlock soft-core science fiction movie" of its era. The film is a cult favorite, praised as a stinging satire of 1970s sexual politics. It is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Sci-Fi · Horror · Thriller

Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Charles Kessler, a grief-stricken widower whose wife is believed dead — but is actually alive, hidden away in the cellar by the gardener, driven mad by a car accident. When she wanders the grounds at night, the sight of her through the window sends Kessler into a trance that turns him into an unwitting killer, and his daughter Virginia's fiance takes the fall for the murders. The first of Lugosi's nine Monogram pictures, directed with unusual atmosphere by Joseph H. Lewis, who stages the trances with slow, eerie poise. Clarence Muse gives a dignified turn as the Kesslers' butler Evans. The film entered the public domain because its copyright was not renewed.

Horror · Crime · Thriller

Exactly what the title promises, and one of the great camp titles of the 1960s. Maria Frankenstein (Narda Onyx), granddaughter of the Baron posing as his daughter, sets up a frontier lab outside a Western town to perfect artificial brains, and finds her ideal test subject when the wounded outlaw Jesse James (John Lupton) stumbles in with his dying partner. Shot in eight days by veteran poverty-row director William Beaudine — his final film, after hundreds of features and serials stretching back to the silent era — it is cheap, padded, and weirdly sincere, a B-western colliding with a monster movie. Perennial fodder for bad-movie nights and a staple of every public domain horror collection. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Western

A 1954 American science fiction film directed by W. Lee Wilder, brother of Billy Wilder. Peter Graves plays atomic scientist Doug Martin, who is presumed dead after his plane crashes on a reconnaissance flight following a nuclear test — then turns up alive, telling a story nobody believes: he was captured by aliens who plan to conquer Earth with an army of giant mutated insects and reptiles. Famous for its bug-eyed aliens (created with ping-pong balls) and liberal use of stock footage, the film features an uncredited early appearance by Coleman Francis. Its copyright was never renewed, and it has become a drive-in staple of public domain sci-fi collections.

Sci-Fi · Horror

A pilot and his passengers crash-land on a Caribbean island while searching for a missing admiral and find a mansion occupied by a sinister doctor and his household, where voodoo is practiced and zombies roam. Mantan Moreland plays the pilot's valet, Jeff, and his reactions carry most of the film's comedy; he was a gifted comedian whose wide-eyed double takes were a staple of 1940s B-pictures, though the roles he was given were limited by the era's racism. The film was Monogram's answer to Paramount's Bob Hope hit The Ghost Breakers, and it earned an Academy Award nomination for its musical score, a rare distinction for a poverty-row horror comedy. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Comedy · Horror

A 1953 Jack the Ripper mystery directed by Hugo Fregonese, the third adaptation of Marie Belloc Lowndes' novel The Lodger. In gaslit 1880s London, a series of brutal murders terrorizes the city just as the brooding, enigmatic Slade (Jack Palance) takes a room in the Harley family's attic. When the Harleys' niece Lily (Constance Smith), a music-hall performer, takes an interest in their mysterious lodger, her family — and Scotland Yard — begin to suspect he may be the Ripper himself. Frances Bavier, later Aunt Bee on The Andy Griffith Show, plays the suspicious landlady. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller

A vaudeville impersonator is hired by a mad scientist to assist in his experiments, then kills him and takes his place, slowly losing his own mind as he poses as the doctor. Dwain Esper's lurid 1934 exploitation film splices in medical footage and cribbed text from a psychiatry textbook. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Horror

A family on vacation in the Texas desert takes a wrong turn and ends up at a remote lodge run by a strange caretaker and his cult-master leader, who worships the god Manos. Made by an El Paso fertilizer salesman on a bet, the film circulated for decades as a public-domain curio before Mystery Science Theater 3000 made it one of the most famous bad movies ever made.

Horror

A mad scientist named Dr. Aranya (Jackie Coogan) conducts experiments on Zarpa Mesa in Mexico, injecting women with spider enzymes to create an army of spider women and dwarfs. When a group of survivors escapes the mesa, their pilot must recount the horrors to a doctor who doubts his story. Coogan — best known as Uncle Fester on The Addams Family — gives a memorably strange performance in this notorious low-budget production from Ron Ormond and Herbert Tevos. Frequently cited among the worst films ever made, it later appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The film is in the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Horror · Science Fiction

A 1972 American made-for-television horror film directed by Daniel Petrie, broadcast on ABC Movie of the Week. After several locals are viciously murdered in a Louisiana bayou town, Sheriff Aaron Whitaker (David Janssen) begins to suspect he may be dealing with a werewolf. As the investigation deepens, the suspects include the town doctor, a swamp dweller, and the local aristocrat Andrew Rodanthe (Bradford Dillman), whose sister Louise (Barbara Rush) becomes the sheriff's romantic interest. Based on the novel by Leslie H. Whitten, the film is a Southern Gothic murder mystery with a lycanthropic twist, filmed on location in Burnside and Clinton, Louisiana. The film is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Horror · Mystery · Thriller

Ed Wood's spiritual sequel to Bride of the Monster, also known as Revenge of the Dead. The Amazing Criswell introduces the story from a coffin, narrating the tale of Dr. Acula (Kenne Duncan), a phony medium who runs a fake seance operation out of the old Willows Lake house where Bela Lugosi's character died in Bride of the Monster. But the ghosts of the dead are real, and they have come for Dr. Acula. Tor Johnson reprises his role as the lumbering Lobo, now scarred from the lab fire, and Paul Marco returns as the hapless Officer Kelton. Shot in 1958 but shelved for decades because Wood couldn't afford the lab fees to get the prints, the film was finally released in 1984. The film is in the public domain.

Horror

The film that invented the modern zombie. Seven people barricade themselves in a farmhouse while reanimated corpses surround them. The radiation from a space probe is blamed for the dead returning to life. Romero's film is a low-budget black and white production that accidentally entered the public domain because the distributor changed the title from "Night of the Flesh Eaters" and forgot to include a copyright notice on the new prints. Duane Jones plays the lead, a Black man trying to survive both the zombies and the group's internal conflicts. The ending is still shocking. The film spawned a genre and five sequels from Romero alone.

Horror · Thriller

A 1965 Italian Gothic horror film directed by Mario Caiano, starring Barbara Steele in a dual role. When scientist Stephen Arrowsmith (Paul Müller) discovers his wife Muriel (Steele) having an affair with the gardener, he tortures and murders them both, removing their hearts and using their blood to rejuvenate his aged servant Solange (Helga Liné). Since Muriel's estate was willed to her mentally unstable stepsister Jenny (also Steele), Stephen marries Jenny and plots to have Solange drive her insane. But Jenny begins having nightmares — the sound of beating hearts and Muriel's voice urging her to murder Stephen — and when a doctor is brought in to treat her, the supernatural vengeance of the murdered lovers begins to unfold. The film features an early score by Ennio Morricone. Also known as The Faceless Monster.

Horror

An unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, made without securing the rights. The names were changed but the Stoker estate sued anyway and won, ordering all copies destroyed. A few survived, which is why we can watch it today. Count Orlok, the rat-faced vampire, buys a house in the fictional town of Wisborg and brings plague with him from Transylvania. Max Schreck's performance is still unsettling a century later. The film is a landmark of German Expressionist cinema and one of the earliest feature-length horror films.

Horror · Silent

Insurance salesman Albert Tuttle arrives at the Rutherford mansion to sell a policy — only to find his prospect already dead, the heirs locked in by a will that won't be read until the body is entombed, and the corpse itself refusing to stay put. Jack Haley plays the jittery Tuttle, with Bela Lugosi in a red-herring role as the sinister butler, plus secret passages and a disappearing body. A Pine-Thomas production for Paramount, directed by Frank McDonald. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Horror · Mystery

A 1953 science fiction film directed by W. Lee Wilder, brother of Billy Wilder. An alien spacecraft lands in Santa Monica, and when the visitor's spacesuit makes it look menacing, it kills two people who attack it — then removes the suit and becomes invisible while being pursued by federal agents. A group of scientists races to communicate with the creature before the military destroys it. A quintessential low-budget 1950s invader picture, notable for its early use of an "invisible alien" premise and its downbeat ending. The film is in the public domain.

Sci-Fi · Horror

Aliens resurrect the dead to stop humanity from developing a doomsday weapon. Bela Lugosi appears in a few minutes of footage shot before he died; the rest of his scenes are played by a taller man holding a cape over his face. Often cited as the worst film ever made, which is unfair. It is cheap and incoherent, but also earnest and fast-paced. Ed Wood wrote, produced, and directed it in a few days on a tiny budget. The film was not released until two years after it was made, and it was a commercial failure. It found its audience through television reruns in the 1980s.

Sci-Fi · Horror

The Halperin brothers' follow-up to their cult hit White Zombie — loosely, since this one's set in post-WWI Cambodia and has no Lugosi. An expedition hunts for the lost Angkor secret that once let priests raise armies of the dead, and Count Mazovia (Roy D'Arcy, doing his best zombie-hypnotist glare) gets to it first, turning the local population into an undead work force. Dean Jagger, in one of his earliest leads, plays the expedition's psychic officer. Slow even by mid-thirties horror standards, but the premise — zombies as a weapon of war — was decades ahead of its time. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Horror

Larry Elliot, a timid chess columnist who covers murders for a newspaper, flees to Grape City to escape a gangster's threats — only to land in a haunted-house mystery involving a stolen jade chess set, a missing corpse, and a fortune hidden in a creepy mansion. Jack Haley, the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, plays the jittery reporter alongside Ann Savage and Barton MacLane. A Pine-Thomas production for Paramount, also released as Treasure of Fear. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Mystery · Horror

A 1972 American slasher film directed by Theodore Gershuny, starring Patrick O'Neal, Mary Woronov, and John Carradine. The plot follows a series of murders that occur in a small New England town on Christmas Eve after a man inherits a family estate which was once an insane asylum. As the body count rises, the town's dark secrets are revealed through a series of eerie phone calls and flashbacks. The film was produced by Lloyd Kaufman (later of Troma Entertainment) and is considered a precursor to the slasher genre that would explode later in the decade. Although a copyright statement appears in the credits, the film was never registered for copyright, placing it in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller · Mystery

A 1977 American made-for-television horror film directed by Herb Wallerstein from a teleplay by Joseph Stefano (co-creator of The Outer Limits and writer of Psycho). A bloodthirsty Bigfoot-like creature terrorizes a ski resort in the Colorado Rockies during the town's annual Snow Carnival. Former Olympic skiing champion Gar Seberg (Bo Svenson) and his wife Ellen (Yvette Mimieux) arrive seeking work, only to find vacationers disappearing. The resort owner (Sylvia Sidney) tries to keep the killings secret to protect her business, while the sheriff (Clint Walker) blames a rogue bear. One of the many Jaws-inspired creature features of the late 1970s, the film is notable for its POV monster shots and location filming in Crested Butte, Colorado.

Horror · Thriller

The East Side Kids, a gang of streetwise New York teenagers, are shipped off to a summer camp in the country and end up stranded in a town where a "monster killer" is said to be on the loose. After one of them is wounded, they take shelter at a hilltop mansion owned by a mysterious caped figure named Nardo, played by Bela Lugosi, and his dwarf assistant. The boys decide Nardo is a zombie master and tie him up. The film was made to pair Monogram's two biggest draws, Lugosi and the East Side Kids, and it leans into the comedy as much as the scares. Leo Gorcey's malapropism-heavy banter with Huntz Hall is the engine of the picture. The film entered the public domain because its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Horror

John Barrymore gives one of his great performances as Svengali, the grotesque, mesmeric music teacher who hypnotizes the artists' model Trilby (Marian Marsh) into becoming a famous singer — and destroys himself loving what he created. Adapted from George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby, the novel that gave English the word "svengali" for a manipulative mentor. Directed by Archie Mayo for Warner Bros., with expressionist sets that turn the hypnosis sequences into genuine nightmare imagery. The film is in the public domain.

Drama · Romance · Horror

An alien youth sent ahead of an invasion fleet to prepare Earth for colonization turns against his mission after experiencing human kindness, and tries to stop the giant lobsters his people intend to unleash. Tom Graeff wrote, directed, produced, edited, and scored this micro-budget curio. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Sci-Fi · Horror

Boris Karloff plays Dr. Bernard Adrian, a gentle small-town physician still grieving his wife and daughter's deaths from polio, now experimenting with spinal fluid to cure a paralyzed young woman. When a vicious circus ape escapes and is shot, Adrian sees a grim shortcut to the human material he needs — and the killings that follow are blamed on the ape itself. A Monogram horror cheapie that gives Karloff an unusually sympathetic mad scientist. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Mystery

Bela Lugosi at his most committedly absurd: Dr. James Brewster, a scientist whose experiments with ape glands have turned him into a stooped, shaggy ape-man who must harvest human spinal fluid to stay alive. Wallace Ford and Louise Currie play the reporters who stumble onto the story, and Henry Hall wanders through as the creepiest character in the picture — a mysterious man who keeps appearing to comment on events. Shot in a week for Monogram under William Beaudine, it is cheap even by poverty-row standards, but Lugosi plays the degradation with real conviction, and the final twist is genuinely strange. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Horror · Sci-Fi

A 1963 American science fiction horror film also known as Monstrosity, directed by Joseph V. Mascelli. A wealthy elderly woman, Mrs. March (Marjorie Eaton), funds the experiments of Dr. Otto Frank (Frank Gerstle), who uses an atomic reactor in her basement to transplant brains between bodies. Mrs. March wants her brain transplanted into the body of a beautiful young woman, and three European girls are lured to the mansion as candidates. The experiments go horribly wrong — one woman receives a cat's brain, another becomes a zombie — and the film culminates in the destruction of the laboratory. The film was shot in 1958 but not released until 1963 after the production company went bankrupt. It was later featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Sci-Fi · Horror

A D.W. Griffith silent feature inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, particularly "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "Annabel Lee." A young man (Henry B. Walthall) lives under the tyrannical rule of his uncle, whose murder he plots and commits. But guilt gnaws at him—apparitions of Poe's vision haunt his waking hours, and the beating of a dead heart seems to echo from beneath the floorboards. Griffith blends psychological horror with pastoral romance, intercutting the nephew's torment with scenes of courtship with his sweetheart (Blanche Sweet). Cinematographer G.W. Bitzer's inventive use of tinting and irises gives the film a dreamlike, Expressionist quality that anticipates the German Expressionist movement. Released August 2, 1914, the film is in the public domain.

Horror · Drama · Crime · Silent

A masked criminal known as the Bat terrorizes the guests of an old dark house rented by a mystery writer, while a stolen bank fortune is hidden somewhere inside. The Bat announces his crimes in advance and dares the police to stop him, and the household spends the night hunting for the money, the Bat, and a killer who may or may not be the same person. Roland West directed this adaptation of the 1920 Broadway hit by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, and his use of a bat signal and a caped figure inspired Bob Kane's later creation of Batman. The film was considered lost for decades before a print surfaced in the 1980s. Pre-1930 films are in the public domain in the United States.

Horror · Comedy · Silent

A 1959 American crime-mystery thriller directed by Crane Wilbur, starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. Mystery novelist Cornelia van Gorder (Moorehead) rents a country mansion for the summer, only to find herself in the middle of a killing spree by a mysterious murderer known as "The Bat," who wears all black and slashes his victims' throats. Meanwhile, a million dollars has gone missing from the local bank, and the bank president has disappeared. As the bodies pile up in the mansion's secret passages, Dr. Malcolm Wells (Price) may hold the key to the mystery. Based on the 1908 novel The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart and the 1920 play The Bat, this is the fourth film adaptation of the story. Written and directed by Crane Wilbur, who also wrote House of Wax (1953).

Mystery · Thriller · Horror

The debut episode of the NBC anthology series "The Dow Hour of Great Mysteries," broadcast live on March 31, 1960 and preserved as a kinescope. Hosted by Joseph N. Welch — the Boston lawyer famous for the Army–McCarthy hearings — this elaborately staged television version of the 1920 Avery Hopwood and Mary Roberts Rinehart play stars Helen Hayes as spinster Cornelia Van Gorder, who rents a rambling country mansion where a fortune in stolen securities is believed to be hidden. A sinister criminal known only as "The Bat" stalks the corridors, determined to find the money first. Jason Robards Jr. and Margaret Hamilton round out the cast of one of television's most lavish live productions of its era, adapted from one of the archetypal "old dark house" mysteries.

Mystery · Horror

A defecting Russian scientist, fleeing through the Nevada desert, is caught in a nuclear blast and transformed into a mindless, murderous creature. Tor Johnson, the Swedish wrestler best known for his work with Ed Wood, plays the beast, lurching through the flats and strangling anyone who crosses his path. The film is essentially a silent picture told through narration, with almost no dialogue between characters. Coleman Francis wrote and directed it for an estimated thirty-four thousand dollars, and it is widely regarded as one of the strangest and most incoherent films ever made. Its reputation was sealed by Mystery Science Theater 3000. It entered the public domain and circulates widely on budget labels.

Horror · Sci-Fi

A silent crime-horror film directed by James Young, based on the 1867 French play Le Juif Polonais by Erckmann-Chatrian. Lionel Barrymore stars as Mathias, an innkeeper who murders a wealthy Jewish merchant for his gold on New Year's Eve, then is haunted by the sound of sleigh bells and ghostly visions. Boris Karloff appears in an early role as a sinister mesmerist who arrives to torment Mathias with supernatural visions of hell. The film blends murder melodrama with Gothic horror, and Karloff's menacing presence, years before Frankenstein made him a star, hints at the iconic monster roles to come. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Crime · Silent

A 1943 Poverty Row mystery-horror film directed by Sam Newfield and produced by Sigmund Neufeld for Producers Releasing Corporation. On a stormy night, a group of strangers—including an eloping couple, an embezzling bank teller, and a gangster—take shelter at the Black Raven inn, run by the mysterious Amos Bradford (George Zucco), known in the underworld as "The Raven." When a murder occurs and the roads wash out, the trapped travelers begin to suspect each other. The film co-stars Wanda McKay, Robert Livingston, and Charles Middleton. The film is in the public domain.

Mystery · Crime · Horror

A surgeon crashes his car and saves his fiancée by keeping her severed head alive in a tray of fluid in his laboratory. While she grows increasingly unhinged and telepathically commands a monstrous experiment locked in the closet, he scours the city's nightclubs and back alleys for a body to attach to her. The Brain That Wouldn't Die is a sleazy, low-budget cult film that became a staple of late-night television and was later mocked on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Its mix of mad-science horror and exploitation is pure early-1960s B-picture. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of its copyright.

Horror · Sci-Fi

In a German village, a series of murders follows the arrival of a fairground showman named Dr. Caligari, who displays a sleepwalker named Cesare and claims he can answer any question. Cesare is made to kill at night. The story is told by a young man named Francis, and the truth of what he describes is called into question by the ending. The film defined German Expressionist cinema. Every set was painted with sharp angles and distorted perspective, with no right angles, so that the world itself looks like it is bending. The visual style was a direct influence on film noir and on horror for the next century. Werner Krauss plays Caligari and Conrad Veidt plays Cesare; both performances are unsettling and physical. The film is in the public domain as a pre-1930 work.

Horror · Silent

The relatives of the eccentric Cyrus West gather at his brooding mansion twenty years after his death to hear the reading of his will. The heir is Annabelle West, but only if she is deemed sane; otherwise the fortune passes to a successor whose name is sealed in an envelope. Before the lawyer can reveal it, he disappears, and the night brings secret passages, a escaped lunatic known as the Cat, and a growing sense that someone in the house is not what they seem. Paul Leni, a German Expressionist director who came to Hollywood late in his career, blended stylized shadows with broad comedy in a way that defined the "old dark house" genre for decades. The film was a cornerstone of Universal's early horror line and a direct influence on the 1939 Bob Hope remake. Pre-1930 films are in the public domain in the United States.

Horror · Comedy · Silent

Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Lorenz, a mad scientist who sends poisoned orchids to brides so they collapse at the altar, then steals their bodies to extract the fluids that keep his aging wife young. A journalist investigating the string of deaths tracks Lorenz to his country home, where she finds a household of coffins, secret passages, and a hunchbacked servant. The Corpse Vanishes is a brisk Monogram B-picture from the stretch of Lugosi's career when he was working the Poverty Row circuit. It is campy and cheap, but Lugosi plays it with complete conviction. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Mystery

Bela Lugosi plays a small-town chemist who breeds a giant bat and trains it to attack anyone wearing a cologne he invented. He uses it to take revenge on the family he believes cheated him, handing out the cologne as a free sample and then sending the bat after each victim. A reporter and his photographer, played by the comic team of Dave O'Brien and Donald Kerr, arrive to investigate the strange deaths. It was the first horror film from Producers Releasing Corporation, one of the poverty-row studios, and Lugosi gives it more gravity than the budget deserves. The film was a surprise hit and PRC made a fortune on it. It entered the public domain and has circulated in countless cut and restored versions ever since.

Horror · Comedy

Abel Ferrara's feature debut, a grimy, hallucinatory descent into urban madness shot on 16mm in New York's Union Square. Ferrara himself stars (credited as Jimmy Laine) as Reno Miller, a struggling artist driven to madness by poverty, noise, and the pressures of city life. He vents his rage by stalking derelicts at night with a power drill. The film blends punk rock energy with Catholic guilt and Expressionist horror, anticipating the themes of sin and redemption that would define Ferrara's later work in Bad Lieutenant and King of New York. The Driller Killer was one of the notorious "video nasties" prosecuted in the UK under the Obscene Publications Act, giving it a notoriety that overshadowed its art-house ambitions. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller

Often called the first British horror film of the sound era, The Ghoul stars Boris Karloff as Professor Morlant, a dying Egyptologist who demands to be buried with a sacred jewel he believes will grant him eternal life. When the gem is stolen from his tomb, Morlant rises from the grave to reclaim it, stalking the heirs and hangers-on who have gathered at his gloomy estate. The cast is a remarkable roll of British talent: Cedric Hardwicke, Ernest Thesiger, Dorothy Hyson, and Ralph Richardson in his feature film debut. Produced by Michael Balcon for Gaumont-British and directed by T. Hayes Hunter, the film was considered lost for decades until a print surfaced in the 1980s. It is in the public domain in the United States.

Horror

A giant lizard terrorizes a rural Texas community, and a hot-rod-building teenager becomes the town's unlikely hero when the adults fail to stop the creature. The Giant Gila Monster was shot in Texas on a tiny budget and released on a double bill with The Killer Shrews, produced by the same team. The monster is played by a real Gila monster filmed on a miniature set, which gives the film a different texture from the men-in-suits creature features of the era. Don Sullivan, as the singing, car-fixing hero, performs a couple of songs along the way. The film entered the public domain and became a television staple.

Horror · Sci-Fi

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

A wealthy insurance broker receives a death threat from a killer known as the Gorilla and hires three bumbling detectives, the Ritz Brothers, to protect him. On the appointed night, a real escaped gorilla appears at the mansion just as the lights go out, and the detectives scramble through secret panels and hidden catacombs trying to tell the murderer from the ape. Bela Lugosi plays the sinister butler, Peters, in a role originally written for Peter Lorre. Allan Dwan, a veteran director whose career began in the silent era, keeps the slapstick moving at a brisk pace. The film is based on the 1925 stage play by Ralph Spence that was a Broadway hit. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Comedy · Horror

A pre-Code early sound musical drama directed by James Cruze, based on Ben Hecht's short story "The Rival Dummy." Erich von Stroheim stars as Gabbo, a ventriloquist who becomes increasingly unhinged as he relies more and more on his dummy Otto as his only means of emotional expression. Betty Compson co- stars as Mary, his former assistant and lover. The film was originally released with Multicolor sequences, now surviving only in black and white. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain.

Music · Drama · Horror

Robert Wiene, the director of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, turned Maurice Renard's novel into a late Expressionist horror about a concert pianist whose hands are crushed in a train wreck and replaced with those of an executed murderer. Conrad Veidt plays Orlac as a man slowly convinced that the graft has passed the killer's violence into his own body, his long fingers curling and twitching as if with a will of their own. The film trades Caligari's painted sets for shadowed, realistic spaces, but keeps the same dread of identity dissolving from within. The premise has been remade twice, most notably as Mad Love (1935) with Peter Lorre, but Wiene's original remains the purest version of the body-horror idea. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Horror · Thriller · Silent

The Haunted House is a 1921 silent comedy short co-directed by and starring Buster Keaton, with Edward F. Cline. Keaton plays a bank clerk who ends up in a haunted house that is actually a front for a counterfeiting operation. The short features elaborate mechanical gags, including a collapsing staircase and a series of trap doors, as well as a memorable dream sequence where Keaton goes to heaven and hell. As a 1921 work, the film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Horror

A 1929 Mickey Mouse short directed by Walt Disney. Mickey takes shelter from a storm in a haunted house, where he encounters skeletons, ghosts, and a menacing figure who forces him to play the organ. The cartoon blends comedy with Gothic atmosphere, with the skeletons dancing to Mickey's music in a sequence that echoes Disney's own Skeleton Dance, released the same year. The short is a fine example of the early, spookier Mickey Mouse cartoons, before the character was softened into a more wholesome figure. Published in 1929, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.

Animation · Short · Comedy · Horror

A starving cat wanders into a haunted house hoping to catch a mouse, only to find the mouse is a ghost who torments him with supernatural gags. A Tex Avery-directed Looney Tunes short. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · Horror

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

A boat captain delivering supplies to an isolated island is trapped there by a hurricane and finds a group of scientists holed up in a compound. Their experiments to shrink humans and solve world hunger have instead produced giant, venomous shrews that are eating through their supplies and closing in. The Killer Shrews is a compact creature feature from the late 1950s, shot on a small budget with the giant shrews played by dogs in shrew costumes. It was double-billed with The Giant Gila Monster and became a staple of television and later Mystery Science Theater 3000. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of its copyright.

Horror · Sci-Fi

Vincent Price plays Dr. Robert Morgan, the apparent sole survivor of a plague that has turned the rest of humanity into vampire-like creatures. By day he hunts them and stakes them; by night he barricades himself inside his home while they swarm outside, calling his name. The film is the first adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, which later inspired The Omega Man and the Will Smith version. Matheson worked on the screenplay but was unhappy with it and took a pseudonym. Shot in Rome on a low budget, it leans on Price's weary, haunted performance to carry the isolation. The film entered the public domain in the 1980s and is widely considered the most faithful of the novel's adaptations.

Horror · Sci-Fi

Seymour works in a failing flower shop on Skid Row and raises a strange plant he found after a total eclipse. The plant will only drink human blood, and as it grows it demands more, so Seymour feeds it the people who get in his way. Roger Corman shot the film in two days and a night on leftover sets from another production, and it became a surprise hit that ran for years in midnight screenings. The script by Charles B. Griffith is full of oddball characters and black comedy, and a young Jack Nicholson has a small, memorable part as a masochistic dental patient. The film later inspired the off-Broadway musical and the 1986 film adaptation. The original entered the public domain due to a missing copyright notice.

Comedy · Horror

The Mad Monster is a 1942 horror film directed by Sam Newfield and produced by Sigmund Neufeld for Producers Releasing Corporation. George Zucco plays Dr. Lorenzo Cameron, a discredited scientist who injects his simple-minded handyman Petro (Glenn Strange) with a serum derived from wolf's blood, transforming him into a werewolf. Cameron unleashes his creation on the colleagues who ruined his career, while reporter Tom Gregory (Johnny Downs) and Cameron's daughter Lenora (Anne Nagel) close in on the truth. A quickie knock-off of Universal's monster pictures, it gave Glenn Strange an early turn as a screen monster before he played Frankenstein's creature at Universal. The film is in the public domain through non-renewal.

Horror · Sci-Fi

Paul Leni's adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel, made at Universal during the silent horror boom that followed The Phantom of the Opera. Conrad Veidt plays Gwynplaine, a nobleman disfigured as a child with a permanent carved grin, who becomes a fairground attraction and falls for the blind girl Dea. Veidt's fixed, grotesque smile is the image the film is remembered for, and it is widely cited as a visual reference for the Joker in Batman. Leni, a German Expressionist who came to Hollywood to design for the screen, fills the frame with baroque shadows and carnival imagery. He died of sepsis the year the film was released, making this one of his last works. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.

Drama · Horror · Romance · Silent

An early "old dark house" horror-comedy directed by Roland West, starring Lon Chaney as Dr. Gustave Ziska, a mad scientist who terrorizes a small town. When an amateur detective (Johnny Arthur) investigates a series of disappearances, he finds himself trapped in Ziska's labyrinthine mansion, complete with secret passages, trapdoors, and a hulking assistant named Caliban. Chaney's grotesque makeup and sinister mannerisms elevate the film above its stage-play origins, while Arthur provides comic relief as the bumbling would-be detective. The film was released with lavish color tints that enhanced its eerie atmosphere, and is considered one of the first horror films to top the North American box office. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Comedy · Silent

A mad scientist becomes obsessed with a concert pianist's daughter and, when she rejects him, injects the pianist with a serum that causes acromegaly, the glandular disease that hideously enlarges the face and extremities. He offers the cure only in exchange for the daughter's hand. J. Carrol Naish plays the villain with relish, and the film uses the real, disfiguring effects of the disease as its horror rather than a fictional monster. A cheap, brisk PRC production from the prolific director Sam Newfield, it is a solid example of 1940s Poverty Row horror. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Sci-Fi

A Pre-Code "old dark house" horror film directed by Frank R. Strayer. Dr. Ted Clayton (Rex Lease) accompanies his fiancee Ruth (Vera Reynolds) to her father's remote mansion, where they find a household of sinister characters, including the creepy servant Hanns Krug (Mischa Auer). When Ruth's father dies mysteriously, a series of terrifying events unfold in the darkened corridors. The film follows the familiar formula of the era: a group of people trapped in a creepy house at night, with something lurking in the shadows. Made on a minimal budget by Action Pictures, it was later re-released in 1938 by Astor Pictures. The film is in the public domain.

Horror

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

The sinister Chinese mastermind Dr. Fu Manchu vows vengeance on the family of the British officer he holds responsible for his family's deaths in the Boxer Rebellion. Warner Oland stars in the first talking Fu Manchu picture. The 1929 film entered the public domain on January 1, 2025.

Drama · Horror · Crime

Atomic-age creature feature from the dawn of AIP. Bodies are washing up on a California beach, glowing with radiation, and oceanographer Dr. Ted Stevens (Kent Taylor) goes undercover to find out why. The trail leads to Professor King's coastal lab, a stolen stash of uranium on the seabed — and the scaly, glowing-eyed mutant that radiation has spawned to guard it. Made by the Milner brothers for pennies and released by the fledgling American Releasing Corporation, it is quintessential 1950s drive-in sci-fi: stiff dialogue, rubbery monster, and a curiously effective finale. Its copyright was not renewed; it is in the public domain in the United States.

Sci-Fi · Horror

A disfigured composer named Erik lives in the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House and falls in love with Christine, a young soprano he secretly trains. When she lifts his mask, he kidnaps her, and her fiancé Raoul descends into the cellars to find her. Lon Chaney designed his own makeup for the role, including wires to distort his nose and a technique that has never been fully reproduced. The unmasking scene, when the audience first sees his face, is one of the most famous moments in silent film; some theaters reportedly kept smelling salts on hand for audience members who fainted. The film was Universal's first horror production and helped establish the genre as a studio staple. The famous two-strip Technicolor ball sequence is included in this print. The film is in the public domain as a pre-1930 work.

Horror · Silent

A 1936 American murder mystery directed by Robert F. Hill and produced by Sam Katzman. A young couple, Jimmy Kelly (Wallace Ford) and Marjorie Burns (Barbara Pepper), arrive at the Red Rock Tavern seeking to marry, only to find themselves trapped with a group of suspicious guests when a killer begins picking off the occupants one by one. As the body count rises and the phone lines are cut, Jimmy—a detective himself—must unmask the murderer among the stranded travelers. The film co-stars Joan Woodbury and Clara Kimball Young and was released by Puritan Pictures. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Mystery

The Sadist is a 1963 American thriller written and directed by James Landis, starring Arch Hall Jr. as a psychopathic spree killer patterned after Charles Starkweather. Three teachers driving into Los Angeles for a Dodgers game break down at a remote gas station and find themselves held hostage by Charlie Tibbs, a cheerful, remorseless killer, and his girlfriend Judy, who toys with the captives while Charlie torments them. Made for about sixty-nine thousand dollars and distributed by Fairway International Pictures, the film is a lean, genuinely unsettling piece of exploitation that benefits from the feature debut of the future Academy Award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, whose handheld 35mm work gives the picture a queasy you-are-there immediacy. The film is in the public domain.

Thriller · Horror · Crime

The last of Hammer's Dracula films to feature Christopher Lee, and the third to pair him with Peter Cushing's Van Helsing. In modern London, Scotland Yard uncovers a secret society of powerful figures dabbling in the occult and a plague designed to wipe out humanity, and the trail leads to a reclusive property developer named D.D. Denham, who is in truth Count Dracula himself. The film moves the series into contemporary conspiracy thriller territory, with bikers, Satanists, and a biological weapon. Lee, who had grown tired of the role, gives Dracula a colder, more calculating edge here. The film fell into the public domain in the United States and circulates widely under this title and as Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride.

Horror

A newlywed woman moves into her husband's estate, the home he shared with his first wife, who drowned on the grounds. Soon she begins seeing a skull that rolls toward her and hearing screams no one else can hear, and she starts to wonder whether she is losing her mind or whether the dead wife is reaching out from the grave. The Screaming Skull is a low-budget black-and-white horror film that builds its scares from atmosphere and suggestion rather than effects. The opening famously warns the audience that the film is so frightening the producers will pay for a burial coffin if anyone dies of fright while watching. It entered the public domain and later found a second life through Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Horror · Mystery

A young couple on honeymoon in Transylvania crashes their car into a lake, and the wife's body is possessed by the spirit of a witch executed two centuries earlier. Her husband and a descendant of Van Helsing must find a way to exorcise the witch and restore her before the creature claims more victims. The She Beast is the directorial debut of Michael Reeves, who would go on to make the acclaimed Witchfinder General before his early death. Barbara Steele, the queen of Italian Gothic horror, stars. The film is rough and low on budget, but its foggy Transylvanian atmosphere and Reeves's eye for grim imagery hint at what was to come. The film is in the public domain.

Horror

The first Silly Symphony, and the short that proved Walt Disney's studio could do more than Mickey Mouse. Animated almost entirely by Ub Iwerks, it shows four skeletons rising from their graves in a graveyard at midnight and dancing to Carl Stalling's score, itself inspired by Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre. There is no story and no dialogue, just movement cut to music, and the timing is so sure that the gags still land nearly a century later. The picture was a hard sell at first, exhibitors balked at the "gruesome" subject, but it became a hit and launched the Silly Symphony series, which the studio used as a laboratory for the techniques that would eventually make Snow White possible. Published in 1929, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.

Animation · Short · Horror

A 1964 American psychological thriller directed by Burt Topper, starring Victor Buono as Leo Kroll, a disturbed hospital lab technician who embarks on a serial killing spree of young women, particularly nurses. Inspired by his dominant, possessive mother, Leo is an overweight loner with low self-esteem whose hatred of women drives him to murder. When he meets Tally, a young woman who works at an amusement park, she briefly curbs his homicidal impulses — but his dark nature ultimately resurfaces. The film was inspired by the real-life Boston Strangler case and went into production while police were still attempting to solve the crimes. Buono, fresh off his Oscar-nominated performance in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, delivers a chilling performance as the tormented killer.

Thriller · Crime · Horror

A young officer in Napoleon's army, separated from his regiment, follows a mysterious woman to the castle of an elderly baron and uncovers a story of murder, guilt, and a witch's curse. The Terror is famous less for its plot than for how it was made. Roger Corman shot Boris Karloff's scenes in a few days using leftover sets from The Raven, then sent a string of directors, including Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman, and Jack Hill, to film the rest around them. Jack Nicholson, then a young actor on Corman's payroll, plays the lead. The film fell into the public domain because it was released without a copyright notice. It is a rambling, atmospheric curiosity that captures a group of future major filmmakers at the very start of their careers.

Horror

A circus knife thrower known as "Alonzo the Armless" performs with his feet and falls for the carnival girl Nanon, who cannot bear to be touched by a man. What no one knows is that Alonzo's arms are strapped to his body to hide a double thumb that marks him as a criminal on the run. When Nanon finally overcomes her fear and turns to another man, Alonzo takes a terrible step to become what he has pretended to be. Lon Chaney gives one of his most disturbing performances, and a young Joan Crawford is the love interest in her first major role. Tod Browning, who would go on to make Freaks and Dracula, sets the whole story in a circus of grotesques. The film was considered lost until a print turned up in 1968. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2023.

Horror · Thriller · Silent

When corpses drained of blood begin appearing in a small European village, the townspeople suspect a vampire. The local police chief doubts it, but the village doctor insists the supernatural is real, and suspicion falls on a simple-minded young man who keeps bats as pets. The Vampire Bat is an early sound horror film made to cash in on the success of Dracula and Frankenstein, and it borrows freely from both. It stars Lionel Atwill as the doctor, Fay Wray as his assistant, Melvyn Douglas as the skeptical policeman, and Dwight Frye, fresh off Renfield in Dracula, as the accused simpleton. The film is in the public domain because it was published without a proper copyright notice.

Horror

The head of a cosmetics company, worried that her aging face is hurting sales, agrees to injections of an experimental wasp-enzyme serum from a discredited scientist. The treatment restores her youth, but the side effects turn her, at intervals, into a murderous wasp-like creature. Roger Corman directed The Wasp Woman quickly and cheaply, recycling the theme of beauty obsession and scientific hubris he had used in earlier films. Susan Cabot plays the lead with a brittle intensity that lifts the material above its budget. The film is in the public domain and has circulated widely on budget home video.

Horror · Sci-Fi

A ghostly horror film directed by B-movie maestro Bert I. Gordon. Jazz pianist Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson) is about to marry his sweetheart when his former lover Vi confronts him at a lighthouse. During an argument, Vi falls to her death—and Tom does nothing to save her. Soon, her disembodied hand and floating head begin to haunt him, whispering accusations and appearing at the most inopportune moments. As the wedding approaches, Tom's guilt drives him to madness. Gordon's daughter Susan plays the little girl who befriends Tom and witnesses some of the hauntings. Joe Turkel, later famous as the bartender in The Shining, appears as a gangster. The film was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller

A low-budget creature feature directed by Richard Ashe and written by Bill Finger, co-creator of Batman. Mineralogist Paul Carlson (Chase Cordell) is struck in the head by a meteorite fragment during a meteor shower, embedding itself in his skull. Under the light of the full moon, Paul transforms into a reptilian monster that prowls the New Mexico desert, killing anyone it encounters. His girlfriend Kathy and Professor "Johnny Longbow" Salinas race to find a cure before the next full moon. Shot in Albuquerque in 1972 on a $300,000 budget, the film features local non-actors as extras and a performance of the song "California Lady" by Frank Larrabee and his band, who happened to be staying at the same hotel as the crew. The film was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Sci-Fi

Dr. Marlowe, a mad scientist played by Bela Lugosi, uses voodoo and hypnosis to kidnap young women and transfer their life essence into the body of his dead wife, who has been in a trance for twenty-eight years. His assistants are a zombie-like coachman played by John Carradine and a gas station owner played by George Zucco who lures victims by pretending their cars have broken down. Shot in seven days by William Beaudine for Sam Katzman's Monogram unit, the film was not intended as a comedy, but its absurd plot and loose continuity have made it a favorite of bad-movie audiences. Carradine reportedly considered it the worst film he ever made. It was the last of Lugosi's nine Monogram features. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Horror · Comedy

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

Often cited as the first feature-length zombie film, White Zombie stars Bela Lugosi as Murder Legendre, a Haitian voodoo master who runs a sugar mill worked by the walking dead. A young couple arrives in Haiti to marry at the estate of a wealthy acquaintance, who turns to Legendre to zombify the bride so he can have her for himself. The film predates the flesh-eating zombie of George Romero by decades; its zombies are enslaved laborers, drawn from the same folklore that fascinated 1930s audiences. Lugosi, fresh off Dracula, carries the picture with his hypnotic stare. Made independently for around fifty thousand dollars, it was a surprise hit and the only real success for the Halperin brothers. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Horror

Considered the first werewolf film ever made, this silent horror film stars George Chesebro as Dick Bannister, the new field boss of a Canadian logging company locked in a bitter feud with a rival firm. After being attacked and left for dead, Dick suffers such severe blood loss that no human donor can be found—so the surgeon performs a transfusion using wolf blood. Soon, Dick begins experiencing visions of running with phantom wolves, and when his rivals are found killed by what appears to be a wolf, the lumberjacks become convinced that Dick has become a werewolf. Co-directed by Chesebro and Bruce Mitchell for Ryan Bros. Productions, the film is a fascinating artifact of early horror cinema, blending logging-camp melodrama with proto-werewolf mythology decades before Universal's The Wolf Man (1941). The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Silent

The first Van Beuren Tom and Jerry short, a duo of cab drivers not to be confused with MGM's later cat and mouse. On a dark and stormy night, Tom and Jerry drive two mysterious bearded men to a castle, only for the passengers to vanish without paying. The cabbies follow them inside and find themselves in a haunted castle full of skeletons, ghosts, and ghouls. Directed by John Foster and George Stallings, the short is a clear riff on Disney's The Skeleton Dance, with Jim Tyer's animation lending it a looser, weirder energy. The series was later reissued as Dick and Larry to avoid confusion with the MGM characters. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Short · Comedy · Horror

A 1966 American made-for-television horror science fiction film directed by Larry Buchanan and starring John Agar. A low-budget 16mm color remake of Roger Corman's It Conquered the World (1956), the film follows Dr. Keith Ritchie, a NASA scientist who secretly communicates with an alien from Venus named Zontar. Believing Zontar will solve humanity's problems, Ritchie enables the creature's arrival on Earth via a fallen laser satellite. But the three-eyed, bat-winged, skeletal creature has a hidden agenda: it causes global power outages and takes control of people's minds using flying "injecto-pods" that sprout from its wings. Only after his wife is killed does Ritchie realize Zontar has come as a conqueror, not a savior. Filmed around White Rock Lake in Dallas, Texas on a budget of $22,000.

Horror · Sci-Fi