The Circus (1928), Footlight Parade (1933), The Scarlet Empress (1934), One Way Passage (1932), Heroes for Sale (1933), Employees' Entrance (1933), Three on a Match (1932), Bombshell (1933) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Pre Code Film movies.
Storyline: The Tramp finds himself at a circus where he is promptly chased around by the police who think he is a pickpocket. Running into the Bigtop, he is an accidental sensation with his hilarious efforts to elude the police. The circus owner immediately hires him, but discovers that the Tramp cannot be funny on purpose, so he takes advantage of the situation by making the Tramp a janitor who just happens to always be in the Bigtop at showtime. Unaware of this exploitation, the Tramp falls for the owner's lovely acrobatic stepdaughter, who is abused by her father. His chances seem good, until a dashing rival comes in and Charlie feels he has to compete with him.
Plot Keywords: ring, face slap, fainting, falling, father in law son in law relationship, fear, fight ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Chester Kent produces musical comedies on the stage. With the beginning of the talkies era he changes to producing short musical prologues for movies. This is stressful to him, because he always needs new units and his rival is stealing his ideas. He can get an contract with a producer if he is able to stage in three days three new prologues. In spite of great problems, he does it.—Stephan Eichenberg <eichenbe@fak-cbg.tu-muenchen.de>
Plot Keywords: extortion, marriage proposal, choreographer, unrequited love, show business, brother sister relationship, broken engagement ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Young Princess Sophia of Germany is taken to Russia to marry the half-wit Grand Duke Peter, son of the Empress. The domineering Empress hopes to improve the royal blood line. Sophia doesn't like her husband, but she likes Russia, and is very fond of Russian soldiers. She dutifully produces a son -- of questionable fatherhood, but no one seems to mind that. After the old empress dies, Sophia engineers a coup d'etat with the aid of the military, does away with Peter, and becomes Catherine the Great.—John Oswalt <jao@jao.com>
Plot Keywords: execution, adultery, rise to power, prince, oppression, mental illness, decadence ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Suave Dan Hardesty, a convicted murderer, is apprehended by Steve Burke, a police detective, in Hong Kong and accompanied on the SS Maloa headed for San Francisco. On board, Dan romances Joan Ames, a terminally ill socialite. She is unaware that his ultimate destination is San Quentin. Both realize that their time together is fleeting so they make a pact to meet at a Mexican night club on New Years Eve. When they part in San Francisco they know that the odds are against them.—Gary Jackson <garyjack5@cogeco.ca>
Plot Keywords: terminal illness, new year's eve, bartender, bullet, dancing, doctor, drunkenness ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The saga of Tom Holmes - a man of principles - from the Great War to the Great Depression. Will he ever get a break? His war heroics earn fame and a medal for someone else, and his wounds result in a morphine addiction that costs him a job, his reputation in his home town, and months in a clinic. He goes to Chicago, where he's enterprising and dedicated to his work and his fellow workers, but an invention he champions results in the opposite of his intentions, leading to loss of life and an unjust imprisonment. After release, during the Depression, he must face local "red squads" and vigilante groups jousting out jobless men. Will anyone see his true heroic character?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: veteran, hunger, laundry, machine gun, mob violence, mother son relationship, police ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Kurt Anderson is the tyrannical manager of a New York department store in financial straits. He thinks nothing of firing an employee of more than 20 years or of toying with the affections of every woman he meets. One such victim is Madeline, a beautiful young woman in need of a job. Anderson hires her as a salesgirl, but not before the two spend the night together. Madeline is ashamed, especially after she falls for Martin West, a rising young star at the store. Her biggest fear is that Martin finds out the truth about her "career move."—<dbubbeo@cmp.com>
Plot Keywords: husband wife relationship, newspaper headline, department store, employer employee relationship, secret marriage, ruthlessness, infidelity ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Mary Keaton, Vivian Kirkwood (née Revere), and Ruth Westcott have just run into each other having not seen each other in ten years since they graduated from Public School 62 together, and become friends of sorts in their re-acquaintance. Their intervening lives went much as probably would have been predicted when they were in public school: Mary, the troublemaker who almost didn't graduate with her class, spent some time in a reformatory but went straight and became a showgirl; Vivian, the popular beauty with a charmed life, married wealthy and renowned lawyer Robert Kirkwood, the two with an adolescent son, Robert Jr.; and Ruth, the quiet, hard-working, smart one, who became a stenographer. While Mary's life took a positive turn since her reformatory years, Vivian has come to the realization that she is unhappy with her life, its path a little too easy in its predetermination. She realizes she probably never loved Robert. Her quest for pleasure, with a blessing of sorts from Robert who doesn't want his wife, whom he still loves, to be as distant as she seems, will affect Mary, as well. Their collective destinies may be foreshadowed by an old wives' tale about three sharing a single match, from which the film takes its name.—Huggo (updated by R.M. Sieger)
Plot Keywords: pre code film, childhood friend, drug addiction, suicide, kidnapping, divorce, gangster ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Lola Burns is at the top of the pile in Hollywood. But life ain't easy, what with her father and brother always hanging around for handouts, and devious studio publicity honcho Space Hanlon cooking up endless lurid newspaper stories. Makes a girl want to give up pictures.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}
Plot Keywords: money, teddy bear, publicity, marquis, movie star, secretary, newspaper ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Lora Hart manages to land a job in a hospital as a trainee nurse. Upon completion of her training she goes to work as a night nurse for two small children who seem to be very sick, but something much more sinister is going on.—Col Needham <col@imdb.com>
Plot Keywords: woman punches a man, child in peril, ethics, drunkenness, conspiracy, attempted murder, ambulance ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Bumper (Al Jolson) is a vagabond leader of a strange group of tatterdemalions and eccentrics who hang around New York's Central Park. Among his followers are Egghead (Harry Langdon), Sunday (Chester Conklin), Acorn (Edgar Conner) , The General (Victor Potel), Orlando (Tammany Young) and Apple Mary (Louise Carver). Bumper's idol is Mayor Hastings (Frank Morgan), whose life he once saved and frequently has lunch at the Park Casino. Bumper is always on hand to open the door of the Mayor's Rolls Royce, and the Mayor makes it a point to linger a moment at the entrance and listen to the whimsical Bumper's philosophy and ideas abut life. Through his contact with the Mayor, Bumper is able to "fix" things when the other vagabonds get in trouble. The Mayor cannot fathom why Bumper, an unusually bright fellow, is content to spend his life in the park, doing nothing. The Mayor, for all his power and popularity, is unhappy. He's in love ----and madly jealous. He believes his sweetheart June Marcher (Madge Bellamy) is "two-timing" him. At lunch he slips a $1,000 in her purse. She loses it and the Mayor accuses her of giving it to another man. Bumper find the purse and takes it to the address in the purse and is met there by the exiting Mayor. He does not see nor know June. Later,The grief-stricken June attempts suicide by jumping from a bridge and is rescued by Bumper, but has lost her memory. He takes her to the tenement home of the Sundays, and asks the Mayor to get him a job, as he has a new interest, known to him as Angel, in his life. He spends his money making Angel happy and she falls in love with him. Meanwhile, the Mayor, despondent over not being able to locate the missing June, goes on a drinking binge and is found asleep in the park by Bumper's friends, who take him hoe and notify Bumper. While Bumper is trying to sober him up, Hastings begins talking to a photograph. Bumper discovers the woman in the photograph is that of Angel, and that the girl of his dreams is the Mayor's sweetheart. Bumper takes his friend to the Sunday family tenement and the sight of the Mayor and his voice as he clasps her in his arms restores June's memory. She pleads to be taken away from "this awful place". All she remembers is walking in the park at night. Bumper is a stranger to her. The Mayor takes her away, out of Bumper's life. Bumper returns to the park and his former life.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: suicide attempt, amnesia, poverty, great depression, central park, mayor, sadness ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Alfred's father wants him to make of a man of himself so sends him off on a hunting and fishing trip. He doesn't catch or shoot anything, but he does fall in love with a mountain girl. When her father and brothers laugh at this they are informed that he is Alfred "Battling" Butler, the championship fighter. From there on the masquerade must be maintained.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: boxing, cigarette smoking, dire straits, farce, hotel desk clerk, deception, jealousy ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Frisco Jenny was orphaned by the 1906 earthquake and fire and has become the madame of a prosperous bawdy house. She puts her son up for adoption and he rises to prominence as district attorney dedicated to closing down such houses. When her underling Dutton proposes telling the DA that Frisco Jenny is his birth mother, she kills the underling not to cause trouble for her son now the successful DA, she must face execution.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: character name as title, prohibition, election, detention, accidental death, prostitution, building collapse ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: After her father dies Pat Riley (Merna Kennedy), returns home from an eastern board school and takes charge of the family horse ranch. She immediately has a spat with the ranch foreman Ken Benson (Ken Maynard). He is trying to convince her that the smooth-talking Steve Frazier (Niles Welch) has an hidden agenda for wanting to buy the ranch's ramada of broken wild horses. Turns out he does...he represents a company that makes dog food.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: character name in title, horse billed above the title, actor billed above the title, bushwhacker, grindhouse film, pre code film, treachery ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A radio-singer, Bing Hornsby, is none-too-concerned about his job, and an affair with Mona leads to his dismissal. When it appears Hornsby is getting and paying a lot of attention to his fiancée, Anita Rogers, station manager Leslie McWhinney buys the station, gives Hornsby his job back, and goes on a honeymoon with Anita.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: loss of job, 1930s, quartet, radio announcer, radio program, radio show, singing ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Sinister music maestro Svengali can control the actions of women through hypnotism and his telepathic powers. When a pupil he has seduced announces she has left her husband for him, he uses his powers to cause her suicide and promptly forgets her. He meets a beautiful model, Trilby, and becomes infatuated with her, but she, in turn, falls for a young artist called Billee who also loves her. One day Svengali hypnotizes Trilby to cure her headache, but also examines her upper palate and decides it is an ideal cavity for great singing. He convinces her to fake her suicide, so Billee and friends will forget her, and goes on a singing tour with her. Svengali uses his powers to make her sing wonderfully and Madame Svengali, as Trilby is now known, becomes a sensation throughout Europe. But Billee discovers the ruse and begins to follow the pair, upsetting Svengali enough to have him cancel performances too frequently, so they no longer can perform in Europe. They go to Egypt, but Billee relentlessly follows.—Arthur Hausner <genart@volcano.net>
Plot Keywords: death, alcohol, pre code film, character name as title, one word title, bare chested male, man in bathtub ...
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