FilmsFolded |

Freaks (1932)

Can a full grown woman truly love a midget?

Filmmaker(s): Tod Browning

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.

11 Dec Freaks (1932)

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Elephant Men older gems have to be watched with eyes on two levels. The first concerns the experience within the narrative. Projects that worked well in this regard when new often fade. Those that continue to work as the context changes get called "classics" as if...

Published December 11, 2024

| Categorised as Fours, IMDB Comments |
Tagged: 1930s, f1932, p2005

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)

The Frankenstein of the Orient!

Filmmaker(s): Charles Brabin

Adventure

Horror

Science Fiction

The villainous Dr. Fu Manchu races against a team of Englishmen to find the tomb of Ghengis Khan, because he wants to use the relics to cause an uprising in the East to wipe out the white race.

11 Dec The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)

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Scientific Rape many times a movie can be worthwhile when it does no more than create and display a strange world. Almost always that's the case where the world is new and/or synthesised from previous abstract sources. "Metropolis" of five years earlier is often celebrated as...

Published December 11, 2024

| Categorised as Fours, IMDB Comments |
Tagged: 1930s, f1932, p2005

Blond Venus (1932)

What could she do but flee from love? She loved two men at once!

Filmmaker(s): Josef von Sternberg

Drama

In an effort to get enough money to afford expensive treatment for her gravely ill American husband, a retired German entertainer returns to the cabaret, gaining fame as Blonde Venus and unknowingly catching the eye of a wealthy politician.

20 Jan Blond Venus (1932)

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Furry are better von Sternberg Dietrich projects. The only charm of this one is the America situation. I never got the charm of Dietrich, and if you didn’t, you’ll find this empty. It has three stage performances by our blond Venus. The first of these is...

Published January 20, 2024

| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: 1930s, f1932, p2006

The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932)

They found a love they dared not touch!

Filmmaker(s): Frank Capra

Drama

Romance

An American missionary is gradually seduced by a courtly warlord holding her in Shanghai.

17 Jan The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932)

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Frank can get value out of pretty much any film, but some are harder work than others because they place impediments. Capra and Spielberg are the leading placers of the leading impediments: representing the world in a way that is ideal, attractive, but presented in...

Published January 17, 2024

| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: 1930s, f1932, p2008

Island of Lost Souls (1932)

TERROR! Stalked the Brush-Choked Island...Where Men Who Were Animals Sought the Girl Who Was All-Human!

Filmmaker(s): Erle C. Kenton

Adventure

Horror

Science Fiction

An obsessed scientist conducts profane experiments in evolution, eventually establishing himself as the self-styled demigod to a race of mutated, half-human abominations.

24 Mar Island of Lost Souls (1932)

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The Soul of the Movie a movie enters you while you watch it. These days a movie often enters you well before you pay to see it, the soul of the thing having been conveyed to you by too-long trailers and saturation advertising. But is...

Published March 24, 2023

| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
Tagged: 1930s, f1932, p2006

Jewel Robbery (1932)

He stole her jewels -- but that wasn't all!

Filmmaker(s): William Dieterle

Romance

Comedy

Crime

A gentleman thief charms a Viennese baron's wife and also conducts a daring daylight robbery of a jeweller's shop.

07 Mar Jewel Robbery (1932)

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Sex, Drugs and Crime Powell is responsible for a huge element of our loves, the smoothness that has comic irony behind it. He invented it. There are a few of his movies that are essential viewing, but those are after the government thugs decided what...

Published March 7, 2023

| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
Tagged: 1930s, f1932, p2005

The Old Dark House (1932)

Beware the night!

Filmmaker(s): James Whale

Drama

Horror

Thriller

In a remote region of Wales, five travelers beset by a relentless storm find shelter in an old mansion.

22 Feb The Old Dark House (1932)

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Extremes without Connection is James Whale in his prime, for better or worse. The film was lost for generations before being reclaimed and restored, and for that reason is celebrated beyond its merits. What we have is a collection of stereotypical scenarios and characters. A stormy...

Published February 22, 2023

| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
Tagged: 1930s, f1932, p2015

20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)

MEN without WOMEN...MEN without HOPE! smash their lives to pieces against their STEEL CHAINS!

Filmmaker(s): Michael Curtiz

Crime

Drama

Brash hoodlum Tom Connors enters Sing Sing cocksure of himself and disrespectful toward authority, but his tough but compassionate warden changes him.

24 Dec 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)

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Graphic I write this, “Shawshank Redemption” is IMDB’s number two top movie of all time. I find that absolutely fascinating. The prison movie isn’t quite a genre to itself because the story possibilities vary so. But there is a definite collection of cinematic devices that are...

Published December 24, 2022

| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
Tagged: 1930s, f1932, p2006

Tombstone Canyon (1932)

Filmmaker(s): Alan James

A range lawman (Ken Maynard) unmasks a black-cloaked phantom killer (Sheldon Lewis).

06 Dec Tombstone Canyon (1932)

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Haunted House meets Mystery meets Western love watching these films from the early thirties. Rarely are they good in the way that I need as a modern viewer. But the story is not the one the movie directly delivers, but the larger story of movies...

Published December 6, 2022

| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Ones |
Tagged: 1930s, f1932, p2015

The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes’ Greatest Case (1932)

Filmmaker(s): Graham Cutts

A young woman turns to Holmes for protection when she's menaced by an escaped killer seeking missing treasure. However, when the woman is kidnapped, Holmes and Watson must penetrate the city's criminal underworld to find her.

06 Dec The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes’ Greatest Case (1932)

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Displaced Mind and Eye form — at least as established in the Holmes stories and subsequent early detective fiction, has the reader experience things in the order the detective does. In the best, there is some tension as we know the detective is ahead of...

Published December 6, 2022

| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
Tagged: 1930s, f1932, p2015