Best Horror Film 1931-1935 (part 35 of a series)

As much great stuff as there is in here, it's really down to Freaks vs. Vampyr.

Sorry, Island of Lost Souls and King Kong and The Old Dark House and The Bride of Frankenstein.

i have a hard time thinking of King Kong as a horror film (ditto Most Dangerous Game). it's probably the one i have the most affection for tho.

March/Mamoulian Jekyll is a possibility, obv along with the Whale 'steins, Vampyr.

Old Dark House is a blast but too funny to win.

The definition of what a horror movie is has become so markedly different from what almost all of these films were doing, though.

Also, any plans to do a poll of the 20s?

there are many better films than The Black Cat on this list, but it gets my vote as the craziest Karloff/Lugosi feature

xpost Well, this wasn't 'planned' as much as 'quickly cobbled together' (for somewhat selfish reasons, as I have about a fifth of this list sitting unwatched on my shelf at home and wanted to read some recommendations and commentary to see where I should dig in). As little as I know about the '30s films overall, I know even less about the '20s. I'd love to see it if someone else wanted to run with it, though.

Of the years that haven't been polled, this era and the '50s are of the most interest to me personally.

The Black Cat is nutso alright

What is the law?

Not a comprehensive list, but the '20s has these heavyhitters:

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The Golem
The Penalty
Haxan
Nosferatu
The Phantom of the Opera
A Page of Madness
Faust
London After Midnight
The Phantom Carriage
The Fall of the House of Usher

Isn't London After Midnight a lost film?

Still more worthy of a vote than Phantom of the Opera tbh.

Boo! Hiss!

a poll of the '10s would be cool:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1910s_horror_films

Not sure how to vote but I've seen 18 of these and Bride Of Frankenstein, Old Dark House, Mad Love and Mark Of The Vampire are my favourites.

Svengali has some really striking imagery but I haven't seen the whole thing.

London After Midnight is lost but the photo slideshow reconstruction is pretty extensive. John Barrymore version of Jekyll & Hyde is one of the key 20s. Both versions of Usher are important.

Vampyr v Bride

If you're going to poll the earlier stuff I'd bundle 20s together with the previous silent decades. Hands Of Orlac is another.

Curious if anyone has seen these. Not familiar at all.

The Mad Genius
The Phantom (1931)
Castle Sinister
Kongo
The Monster Walks
Tales of the Uncanny
La Llorona
The Monkey's Paw (1933)
Murders in the Zoo
Night of Terror
Supernatural
Black Moon
Chloe, Love is Calling You
House of Mystery
The Phantom of the Convent
The Tell-Tale Heart (1934)
The Black Room
Condemned to Live
The Crime of Dr. Crespi
Ouanga
Der Student von Prag

just for the record:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_horror_films_of_the_1900s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_horror_films_of_the_1890s

i find the idea of these films incredibly spooky, for some reason

After Death (1915) is arguably a horror movie.

Vampyr for me. Though it is a source of constant shame that I have never seen the entirety of Freaks.

Bride of Frankenstein narrowly over Dracula, Freaks, and Most Dangerous Game

i find the idea of these films incredibly spooky, for some reason

There's good reason to! Have you ever seen this list: http://www.cracked.com/article_21664_9-utterly-terrifying-movies-older-than-anything-youve-seen.html

I think The Peanut Vendor is one the most frightening thing I've ever encountered & I think it was supposed to be a movie for children! Anyway, there's def. enough great stuff to run polls on the 10's and 20's, at least.

Thanks for picking up the slack on this Old Lunch! I kind of ran out of steam on these after 30+ polls.

I forgot how dry Browning's Dracula gets once the action moves from Transylvania to London. Should I bother watching the Spanish version before returning the DVD to the library?

It's supposed to be much better but I've never seen it.

love many of these but the original kong holds a special place in my heart

the original kong used to be my favorite movie, i suspect on some level it prob still is. still maybe my favorite last scene in a movie.

son of kong is actually surprisingly good iirc

Island of Lost Souls sure is icky. I had to watch it twice before deciding that this was a good thing.

maybe Lugosi's creepiest role

and Laughton's funniest?

The Most Dangerous Game is about as good as I remember it being, though the lingering aftertaste of Island of Lost Souls cannot help but eclipse it a bit. The penultimate action scene is pretty terrific--scored and edited like a silent film, and coming just after Joel McCrae's big-game-hunter spells out for us that now he knows how all of those animals must've felt, I was grateful for the lack of dialogue.

gooble-gobble!

TCM has Freaks, Doctor X, White Zombie and Mark of the Vampire all on this weekend, though only the former airs before the poll closing.

Werewolf of London seems to be one of the less well-known titles here, and is likely little more than a cinematic footnote, as it was both the first Universal werewolf movie (predating The Wolf Man by six years), and the apparent inspiration for both the Zevon tune and An American Werewolf in London. It would be hard to argue that it deserves much more than footnote status, but it is a neat little genre pic nonetheless--I particularly dug Ethel Griffies and Zeffie (Grandma Joad) Tilbury's comic-relief roles. It won't be anyone's favourite film on this list, but if you're a fan of these things, and have access to that two-disc Wolf Man reissue from a few years back, it might be worth a look.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I didn't watch nearly as many of these as I intended to, but I will say that, for good or ill, none of the ones I did watch were quite what I'd expected (e.g. pretty much the entirety of The Mummy, particularly the fact that the movie only contained one brief shot of Karloff as an actual mobile mummy). Of those I did watch, I think Island Of Lost Souls was the best. I might watch Bride Of Frankenstein tonight and see if my vote changes.

Bride Of Frankenstein was definitely the strongest of the Universal films I've seen but it's perhaps been overhyped. Some very good bits connected by stretches of so-so rambling. Again, in many ways not at all what I was expecting. Most of my cultural knowledge of the 20th Century version of Frankenstein seems to have come from this source (ditto Lugosi's Dracula).

Aside: Una O'Connor might be the most irritating screen presence I've ever encountered. She ruins every second of The Invisible Man and Bride Of Frankenstein in which she's onscreen.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Low turn out in correct result shocker.

Vampyr obv the hippest choice, and I like it well enough, but I certainly enjoy something like Island of Lost Souls or The Mummy quite a bit more (I voted for the former).

Goddamn poll closed as I was about to cast my vote. System hasn't even chimed in with its thread bump yet! But you can +1 the Island Of Lost Souls results.

Yeah, I was glad to have finally caught up with that one thanks to this poll. Among those that got votes, The Black Cat, The Mad Genius and The Old Dark House are the ones that I don't know. Will keep an eye on TCM for those.

Erm, guess I forgot to include M? Haven't seen it but placed pretty high in the big horror poll from a few years back so I assume that was a pretty big oversight on my part.