Welcome to our starter pack column, in which our staff will recommend movies that will help you start watching a particular genre, director, film movement, or other whatever. It’s a list of movies, but with a purpose that isn’t recounting the best or even favorites. Each entry will suggest a few films that will help you find a way into more movies! 

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

In this edition, I’m offering a guide into the dark and macabre history of the earliest horror films. From the time we started putting stories to film, horror was an essential element, as important to the medium as spectacle or comedy. This guide will cover silent and sound films from the first three decades of the 20th century.

Part I: Silent Scares

The Infernal Cauldron and the Phantasmal Vapors (dir. Georges Méliès, 1903)

Technically the first horror movie is probably Méliès’ The House of the Devil from 1896, viewable here on YouTube, but it feels more like a spooky vibe than fear inducing. However, The Infernal Cauldron and the Phantasmal Vapors, featuring Méliès as a demon throwing human victims into a large cauldron, turning them into ghosts, evokes more of a fear response, if only because there are victims in this one. This 2 minute short features hand-painted color, and the beautiful restoration is on HBO Max. 

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (dir. Robert Wiene, 1920)

A monumental influence on cinema, especially most of the films on the rest of this list, as well as American noir, every cinephile should watch Caligari every few years as it is foundational text for the entire medium. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari maintains its status as a classic not just for being one of the purest incarnations of German Expressionism, but because it is so endlessly watchable and interpretable. It is also one of the perfect gateways for watching silent feature films in general as the visual language and twisting, dark story makes the last 100 years melt away before your eyes and it remains as immediate as when it was made. I’ve seen Caligari twice, and both times it left me in awe of what it accomplishes. 

Also check out the Cinematic Crypt on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from my mausoleum mate, Rosalie Kicks.

The Phantom Carriage (dir. Victor Sjöström, 1921)

The Phantom Carriage opens with two alcoholics talking about a legend in a graveyard. The legend says that the last person to die each year will spend the following year driving Death’s carriage collecting the souls of the newly dead. They speculate that this is what happened to their friend Georges (Tore Svennberg), and sure enough, it happens to David (Victor Sjöström). Georges shows up to collect him, and flashbacks show how David got to such a low point. Equal parts “A Christmas Carol” and a warning about the dangers of alcohol, this Swedish silent film has influenced Ingmar Bergman as well as The Shining. 

Also check out the Cinematic Crypt on The Phantom Carriage from my mausoleum mate, Rosalie Kicks.

Nosferatu (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922)

Celebrating its centennial this year, Nosferatu remains elemental. Because it predates Bela Legosi’s iconic performance as the forreign count who brings blood-borne illness to western Europe, there is something unfiltered here. While Dracula is stately, charming, and deceitful, Max Schrek’s performance as Count Orlok is unnerving and repulsive. His lanky arms, long fingers, and hairless head except for bushy eyebrows-all of these come together to make our reaction to him one of revulsion, and that’s before we understand that rats are at his beck and call. While it may have been primarily about fear of spreading illness, in reality, Nosferatu plays at all of the things that race through our brains in the middle of the night as we wait for the cleansing of dawn.

Also check out the Cinematic Crypt on Nosferatu from my mausoleum mate, Rosalie Kicks.

Vampyr (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)

While technically a sound film, Vampyr has very little dialogue and uses intertitles, so it fits in better with the silent films. As fantastic as Nosferatu is, Vampyr might be superior when it comes to mood and tension. So much of Vampyr blends the irrational nightmare feel of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with a slightly more grounded reality, which makes it even more unnerving because it becomes harder to separate the waking life from the dream. If there is truly a film from this era that is haunted, this is it. 

Part II: The Sound of Screams

The Skeleton Dance (dir. Walt Disney, 1929)

This 5½ minute short film was the first in the Silly Symphony line of cartoons from Disney with a focus on matching animation to music, an idea which later reached its apex in 1940 with Fantasia. The first color Disney cartoon was a few years away, but this danse macabre is full of life and jokes. You’ll likely recognize the skeletons from how often they show up in gifs, or even in this year’s Don’t Worry Darling. 

Frankenstein/Bride of Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, 1931, 1935)

“It's a perfect night for mystery and horror. The air itself is filled with monsters.” - Mary Shelley (Elsa Lanchester)

I’m including the first two Frankenstein movies because they are both directed by the legendary James Whale and star Boris Karloff as the iconic Creature. They are also only each about 70 minutes long, which makes them an easy double feature. And you must watch Bride if not for the creation of the iconic title character, but also to meet the gleefully irreverent Doctor Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger). He’s the maddest of all scientists. 

The Frankenstein story is foundational to both horror and science fiction, which makes sense. If you drew a Venn diagram of those two genres, the overlapping section is generally where monsters dwell. Whale captures both grandeur and humanity across both films. With amazing set design, special effects, and makeup, Whale brings the Gothic feel of the novel to the screen, mixing science with the ‘old world’ as Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) unwittingly sends his creation out into a world that feels medieval compared to his laboratory filled with electricity. Frankenstein is a cautionary tale about trying to bend the rule of nature to our wills, something that will return on this list in the atomic age. 

While the Creature supposedly lacks a soul, Whale’s sympathy for him–a thing that never asked to be brought to life–comes through strongly in both films. He rarely seems evil, but more like a child in a man’s body, a blank slate that responds to his fears with instinct. By the sequel, the film is almost a romance between the Creature and life itself. The Frankenstein story is rich with metaphor, but Bride circles around belonging. We see how an outsider can never truly belong to a society that will not accept him. The outsider’s behavior is irrelevant, because he cannot choose to be accepted by others when he is rejected just for being alive.

The Old Dark House (dir. James Whale, 1932)

One of my missions in life is to spread love for James Whale far and wide. Stepping out of the Frankenstein iconography allows us to see past it and appreciate Whale’s talents even more. Boris Karloff and Ernest Thesiger are both in this gothic tale which, while ostensibly about British class differences, Whale and company use to give a cautionary tale about old money. People who live in remote manor houses are weird, and those homes are hard to light properly. There’s a lot of richness here, and feels modern even 90 years later. Just wait until you see what it looks like when Whale puts the camera inside the fireplace!

Murders in the Rue Morgue (dir. Robert Florey, 1932)

What a delightfully twisted picture! Director Robert Florey and cinematographer Karl Fruend (who would go on to direct The Mummy a few years later) meld German Expressionism into this Edgar Allen Poe caper. The streets of Paris are filled with fog and angular buildings, creating a mood of uncertainty and jagged teeth reaching toward heaven. I don’t remember from my long ago reading of the original Poe text how much of the “science can be used for good or bad” theme is built into the source material, but it is on full display here. Lugosi preaches evolution to crowds, but also indulges in blood-mixing—Erik the Ape standing in for so many fears of interracial affairs.

The Black Cat (dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934)

The first movie where Boris Karloff and Bela Legosi appear together (of 8 total), The Black Cat furthers the gothic kind of horror to the point at which it begins to morph into psychological horror. The Black Cat, along with the excellent 1942 Cat People, introduced to movie screens the kind of horror that isn’t driven by monsters and gore, but by violence of the mind. Told in a gripping 70 minutes, Karloff plays a character inspired by Alistair Crowley, and the way he blends the occult with science and brutality are very timely for the film’s production and the biggest real life horrors of the 20th century. 

Werewolf of London (dir. Stuart Walker, 1935)

I saw this film for the first time a few years ago at the Mahoning Drive-In’s Monster Mash weekend. I was very eager to see it since this is the first studio film featuring a werewolf, and who doesn’t love a good wolf, where? I was pleased by the werewolf makeup here being perfect. Designed by Jack Pierce–who would go on to do Lon Cheney, Jr.’s more monstrous look in The Wolf Man six years later–the minimalist approach taken for this film allows Henry Hull’s performance to come through much more than Cheney’s. Never losing sight of the werewolf’s humanity is key to the film because, like the best monster stories, this is a tragedy. So many modern werewolf movies emphasize the animal nature of the creature, but seeing the human eyes behind the beast is much more impactful than merely showing a large wolf. Not only does the werewolf in this story instinctively want to kill those who he loves, but also the cure for the werewolf’s condition lies just out of reach of the protagonist.