1920-1929

1920: Broadway star John Barrymore plays the central character in Paramount’s version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde becoming the first major acting star to take on a horror movie role. In Germany Paul Wegener releases his third and most successful Golem movie Wie Er in die Welt Kam (How He came into the World).

1921: The Cabinet of Dr Caligari arrives in the US, the first German film to be seen in the States since the war. The New York Times wrongly calls it a ‘cubist shocker’

1922: The German film Nosferatu is released. It is the first screen adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. A subsequent lawsuit launched by Stoker’s widow sees the courts decree that all copies of the film should be destroyed. Thankfully a pirate copy survives and will resurface in 1930 saving a piece of cinematic history. In the USA inspired by Calligari Wallace Worsley directs A Blind Bargain. A generally unremarkable film, it is noteworthy for one main reason; the films surgeon and monster are both played by the same actor, one Alonso (Lon) Chaney.

1923: Wegener’s Der Golem arrives in the USA. A German born American filmmaker Carl Laemmle is inspired to make a horror movie of his own and releases another version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame for Universal Pictures, again Worsley directs. It is filmed on the biggest set built up to that point, a stone by stone replica of the cathedral Notre Dame de Paris. However it is Chaney’s self created make up and performance that stuns the world. He is to become known as ‘The Man of a Thousand Faces’. Universal will go on to become one of the most influential horror movie producing houses in the history of cinema.

1925: Chaney teams up with director Tod Browning for The Unholy Three a macabre film set in a circus. Carl Laemmle sets out to repeat the success of Hunchback and makes The Phantom of the Opera again with Chaney in the title role for Universal. Once again Chaney stuns the world with his performance and make-up. Certain sections of the film are screened in two colour Technicolor. Willis O’Brien uses his stop motion animation technique to bring Dinosaurs to life for The Lost World and London is demolished on the screen by giant monsters.

1926: German filmmaker Fritz Lang releases Metropolis. Although technically a science fiction film the movie contains a sequence in a scientist’s lab which becomes the prototype for every Frankenstein movie that will be made. Another German Friedrich Willhelm Murnau remakes Faust which is still recognised as a cinematic masterpiece. While London Sleeps an otherwise unimportant film runs at to 5,810 feet in the USA. That is cut to 4,700 feet for it’s British release. It is the first film to be censored for horrific content.

1927: Chaney and Browning team up again for London After Midnight the first American vampire movie. The film is released in Britain as The Hypnotist. Outside of the horror movie genre Al Jolson appears in The Jazz Singer, the film credited with bringing ‘talkies’ into the mainstream and the world of cinema is changed forever.

1928: Laemmle releases The Man Who Laughs as a follow up to Phantom. Unable to secure Chaney’s services he brings the original German horror movie star Conrad Veidt (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari) to the USA. The Terror becomes the first horror movie with sound and the second full length talkie ever made. Even the credits are read out!