Jackie Coogan

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

Jackie Coogan, fresh from his triumph in Chaplin's *The Kid* (1921), stars as Dickens's orphan hero in this First National silent adaptation directed by Frank Lloyd. Lon Chaney plays Fagin, the sinister fence who trains young street urchins as pickpockets, in one of his most memorable character performances beneath layers of makeup. The film was considered lost for decades until a print surfaced in Yugoslavia in 1973. Sol Lesser produced the picture for Jackie Coogan Productions at a budget of nearly half a million dollars, with elaborate sets recreating Victorian London. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

Charlie Chaplin's first feature film and one of the greatest films of the silent era. The Tramp discovers an abandoned baby in an alley and, after trying to leave it, raises the boy as his own. Five years later, the Kid (Jackie Coogan) is his partner in a glass-replacing scam, and the two share a tender, scrappy life together. When the boy falls ill and welfare officials try to take him away, the Tramp fights to keep him. Chaplin balanced broad comedy with genuine pathos, and Coogan's performance made him the first major child star in film history. The dream sequence, in which Chaplin imagines heaven as a rooftop populated by angels and devils, is one of the most imaginative passages in silent cinema. The film was co-founded through United Artists, the distribution company Chaplin had helped create in 1919. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Drama · Silent