Lon Chaney

Among the pieces featured in Fragments are the final reel of John Ford's The Village Blacksmith (1922) and a glimpse at Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh (1927), the only Oscar®-winning performance in a lost film. Fragments also features clips from such lost films as Cleopatra (1917), starring Theda Bara; The Miracle Man (1919), with Lon Chaney; He Comes Up Smiling (1918), starring Douglas Fairbanks; an early lost sound film, Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), filmed in early Technicolor, and the only color footage of silent star Clara Bow, Red Hair (1928). The program is rounded out with interviews of film preservationists involved in identifying and restoring these films. Also featured is a new interview with Diana Serra Cary, best known as "Baby Peggy", one of the major American child stars of the silent era, who discusses one of the featured fragments, Darling of New York (1923).

Open details →

A peculiar, meticulous, vocationally archeological account of the professional life of the actor, Spanish by birth, Argentinean by adoption, Narciso Ibañez Menta (1912-2004), spiritual disciple of Lon Chaney, the new man of a thousand faces, master of horror, star of Argentinean theater, cinema and television for decades.

Open details →

On Valentines Day, 1931, Universal Pictures released the film Dracula - the first true horror movie. Its worldwide success catapulted the film's lead actor, Romanian-born Bela Lugosi, to overnight stardom. "Bela Lugosi: The Fallen Vampire" traces the life and career of this mysterious man whose name became synonymous with the evil, yet magnetically compelling Count Dracula. Using archival still and film clips as well as interviews with film historians, actors and Lugosi himself, the special chronicles the meteoric rise and then precipitous decline of a talented yet tragic man who forever changed the face of horror films.

Open details →

Famous Monster takes a fast-paced, colorful look at the life of science fiction's greatest fan - Forrest J. Ackerman, whose 85 year love affair with the genre helped bring it into the mainstream and shape the way we view science fiction today.

Open details →

A reconstruction, made from still photographs, of the lost 1927 Tod Browning film London After Midnight (1927) starring Lon Chaney.

Open details →

Lon Chaney, the silent movie star and makeup artist, renowned for his various characterizations and celebrated for his horror films, becomes the subject of this documentary.

Open details →

Hosted by Christopher Lee, this documentary examines the different actors who have portrayed Dracula over the years.

Open details →

A documentary about the era of classic monster movies that were made at Universal Studios during the 1930s and 1940s.

Open details →

Born Creighton Chaney, this is a biographical documentary on Lon Chaney Jr, the only star to play all four of the classic monsters: the Mummy, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein and Dracula.

Open details →

A documentary on the life and career of actor Lon Chaney, with clips from his films and interviews with people who knew him.

Open details →

A collection of film clips from horror movies and interviews with the actors and directors who made them.

Open details →

A history of horror movies.

Open details →

In this made-for-TV production, Vincent Price and his hunchback sidekick (Billy Van) host a pun-filled salute to the horror film genre from its earliest beginnings all the way up to The Exorcist. Featuring clips from classic horror films and interviews with genre greats like Frank Gorshin, John Carradine, John Astin and SFX legend Bill Tuttle, among others.

Open details →

A compilation of early-day silent films that serves as a glimpse back to the formative days of the movie industry as a salute to Hollywood's Golden Year, so proclaimed by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce as 1953.

Open details →

An independent producer unwisely opens a can of worms after he decides to make a movie about the unsolved murder of a famous silent film director.

Open details →

A look back at 25 years of Columbia's series of newsreels chronicling the film industry and the lives of Hollywood stars. Clips from earlier films in the series are featured, along with a montage of film greats who have passed away in the intervening years.

Open details →

The edition of Screen Snapshots celebrates 25 years of production. It looks at the content of edition #1, then a tribute to movie people who have died in those 25 years. Finally there are tributes to the Screen Snapshots series by Cecil De Mille, Walt Disney, Louella Parsons and Rosalind Russell.

Open details →

The House That Shadows Built (1931) is a short feature, roughly 48 minutes long, from Paramount Pictures made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the studio's founding in 1912. It was a promotional film for exhibitors and never had a regular theatrical release and includes a brief history of Paramount, interviews with various actors, and clips from upcoming projects (some of which never came to fruition). The title comes from a biography of Paramount founder Adolph Zukor, The House That Shadows Built (1928), by William Henry Irwin.

Open details →

A trio of former sideshow performers double as the "Unholy Three" in a scam to nab some shiny rocks.

Open details →

Reissued version of 'The Phantom of the Opera' with a synchronized score, sound effects, new dialogue sequences, and footage reshot by directors Ernst Laemmle and Frank McCormick.

Open details →

A train operator's obsession with being on time leads to tragedy for his family.

Open details →

A Chinese wife returns to the American family she left behind in Southeast Asia and then moves in on her daughter's (Lupe Velez) beau (Lloyd Hughes).

Open details →

A magician seeks vengeance upon the man who paralyzed him and the illegitimate daughter he sired with the magician's wife.

Open details →

A despairing clown suffering a broken heart and a self-indulgent count who uncontrollably laughs learn to help each other with their problems, but both fall in love with the same young woman.

Open details →

Gangster boss Chuck Collins, despite his ruthlessness, is a basically decent fellow. Collins is plagued by a rival gang, led by deceptively boyish Curly, who has been stealing jewelry from the rich and famous. Collins tricks the other crooks into turning the gems over to him, intending to use them for his own profit. But sweet heroine Sunshine eventually persuades Collins and his cohorts to turn honest. Considered a lost film.

Open details →

A tough New York cop is determined to bring down a crook who has always managed to provide an alibi for the crimes he's been accused of, even though the detective knows he's guilty of committing them.

Open details →

Lon and Hazel Chaney with Mabel and Bill Dunphy play with a dog [perhaps Sandy] and perform some vaudeville routines. Later men and women, including Lon and Hazel and Lon's son, Creighton and his friends, and perhaps Eddie Parker, sit inside smoking, drinking, and talking.

Open details →

The abandoned Balfour House, the owner of which was found dead five years earlier, comes back to life with the arrival of two suspicious sinister-looking tenants. This film was lost in the 1965 MGM vault fire; only a few stills exist.

Open details →

Part of a 7-part series exploring all aspects of Hollywood.

Open details →

There is hunger in Siberia during the Russian Civil War. One day while dim-witted peasant Sergei is searching corpses for food, he meets a young woman looking for the town of Novokursk. She asks Sergei to help her get there, and to tell anyone they might meet that he is her husband.

Open details →

On the lam, criminal Alonzo hides in the circus as The Armless Wonder—a performer who uses his feet to hurl knives. Alonzo keeps the arms he really has concealed to hide his identity. Meanwhile, ringmaster's daughter Nanon has a phobia of being touched by men, but is romantically pursued by not only Alonzo but the strongman Malabar. Alonzo's desperation to remain with Nanon will only end in tragedy.

Open details →

When Mandarin Wu's unmarried daughter becomes pregnant by a young Englishman, he seeks vengeance.

Open details →

A 1927 silent-era series of Hollywood studio tours, these short subjects go behind the scenes at major studios and showcase famous stars, directors, and landmarks of the movie capital.

Open details →