Warner Oland

Warner Oland's tenth outing as Charlie Chan sends the detective to a San Francisco mansion where Allen Colby, the heir to the Lowell fortune, has returned after being presumed drowned for seven years — and is murdered at a séance before he can reclaim a cent. Chan sifts through a household of psychics, suspicious relatives, and a butler who knows more than he says, while the killer keeps striking. Henrietta Crosman and Rosina Lawrence co-star, with Jonathan Hale as the police chief. Directed by Gordon Wiles, it is one of the more atmospheric of the Fox Chan pictures, leaning hard into spiritualism and old-dark-house menace. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

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

Adventure · Romance · Silent

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

Adventure · Action · Romance · Silent

A Vitaphone-era synchronized-sound historical drama from Warner Bros., directed by Alan Crosland (who would direct *The Jazz Singer* the same year). Dolores Costello stars as Dolores Vasquez, the daughter of an old Spanish California family, and Warner Oland plays Chris Buckwell, a villainous landowner with underworld connections who schemes to steal the Vasquez property. The film climaxes with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. While the film has no audible dialogue, it was released with a synchronized musical score and sound effects via the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · History · Romance

The Jazz Singer is the film that ended the silent era. It was the first feature-length motion picture with synchronized music and lip-synchronous speech, and its release in 1927 announced that sound had arrived. Al Jolson plays a young man torn between his father's wish that he become a cantor and his own dream of singing on the Broadway stage. Most of the film is silent, with intertitles, but Jolson's songs and a few spoken lines stop the show. The moment he ad-libs, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet," is one of the most famous in cinema history. The film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2023.

Drama · Musical · Music

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

The fiendish Dr. Fu Manchu returns from apparent death to continue his campaign of vengeance against the Petrie family, ensnaring a young woman in his web of poison and hypnotism. Warner Oland reprises his role in this sequel to The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. The 1930 film entered the public domain on January 1, 2026.

Crime · Mystery · Drama