Movies from the 1930s
A collection of scenes, people, lines, props, and other details from the movies of the 1930s.
Frankenstein (1931)
Those metal studs in the creature’s neck, much beloved by the makers of horror parodies and Halloween costumes, aren’t bolts at all. (more…)
Frankenstein (1931)
Near the beginning of James Whale’s 1931 version of Frankenstein, the hunchbacked assistant breaks into a university in order to steal a brain. (more…)
Dracula (1931)
Watching Tod Browning’s 1931 version of Dracula for the first time can be an odd experience. Apart from seeing Bela Lugosi laying the groundwork for eighty years of imitations, there are some real double-take moments, like hearing those classic lines spoken without irony (“Listen to them… Children of the night… What music they make.”), and seeing Dwight Frye as Renfield laying the groundwork for Andy Serkis’s Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and, well, and the vampire bee… (more…)
Vampyr (1932)
Although credited as Julian West, the star of Carl Dreyer’s haunting film Vampyr is really Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, the film-loving son of a Russian aristocratic family whose international travels had become an exile following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
Baron Nicolas met Dreyer at a party in Paris; they fell into conversation, and he offered to help fund Vampyr, on condition that he be allowed to play the lead role: Allan Gray, a young man whose interest in the occult leads him into conflict with a vampire. (more…)
