Horror classics and obscurities through the ages, in chronological order: Witchcraft, satanic panic, vampires, cults, mad scientists, werewolves, black-gloved killers, possession, haunted houses, voodoo, zombies, ghost stories, dark sci-fi, new age, ancient curses and other mumbo jumbo...

Georges Méliès in Une nuit terrible (1896)

The Lion and the Darkness (Big Game Hunter films)

Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer in The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)

Includes most felines, including cats.

 “Did you think the lion was sleeping because he didn't roar?”

Friedrich Schiller (German playwright 1759-1805)

The Roar of the Darkness (Lion attack films)

Lorraine De Selle and John Stacy in The Wild Beasts (1984)

My attempt at a comprehensive list of feature-length and short sound films produced in America between 1930 and July 1934 (plus others included on pre-code.com, and Wikipedia's and Letterboxd's Pre-Code film lists).

The Internet Archive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive) is well-known for the Wayback Machine it hosts and they also have a very large selection of public domain media*, relevant to IMDB are the films they have and this is a list designed to bring together the horror ones. I largely made the list for myself, so I could keep a track of some of these early classics as I work through their catalogue (some are classic for being good, others for being so bad they are good and some are just bad) but I'm making it public as I'm sure there are other people out there who'd be interest - if nothing else you can grab the bad ones (http://www.imdb.com/list/nr_p_uZYcpI/?sort=user_rating:asc), some beer, some friends and hold your own MST3K (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000) (a number of them have appeared on the show (http://www.imdb.com/list/iwYhkr1qLrw/)).  Although it is worth noting that not all of the lowest rated ones here appear in the Bottom 100 (http://www.imdb.com/chart/bottom) because they don't have the 1,500 votes needed to qualify - so get watching and get voting, the world need to seem some of these gems!!

The better known PD ones are available on some dirt cheap DVDs - I have quite a few on triple feature DVDs selling for £1** and there are 50 film boxsets selling for very little, most of them are worth the 30p/20 cents you'd pay for them, although free is better.

So here you'll find quite a few classics of German Expressionism, a good sampling of early zombie films (http://www.imdb.com/list/Zu0aA0_BPKI/) (usually following more of the voodoo model, as these mainly pre-date Romero), films starring horror movie giants like Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, a number of films by Roger Corman, as well as some of the worst films ever made, which often makes them must-sees (e.g. Manos: The Hands of Fate).

One film I couldn't add to the list is Lunch Meat (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093452/) (Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/details/LunchMeat)), it has been wrongly classified as porn and can't be added to this list - I have highlighted the problem and hope to get it resolved.

See also: the equivalent list for science-fiction movies (http://www.imdb.com/list/4NU-9dKEm9Q/), there is some crossover with science-fiction/horror films so I've tended to include them in both. I've also started a similar list for public domain martial arts films (http://www.imdb.com/list/3OGm9dxmbRA/)

Further reading: If you want to track down other PD films outside of these genres then a good place to start is Wikipedia's list of public domain films in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_in_the_public_domain_in_the_United_States), which also explains the situation. Their page on public domain films (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_film) has a wider focus. There are numerous sites offering public domain films but I can't really vouch for their checks (just Google them up (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=public+domain+films)), however, for horror there is Horrortheque (http://www.horrortheque.com/) and Openflix's horror section (http://www.openflix.com/genre/horror.html).

* I can't check the copyright status of each one but they are pretty diligent (although not perhaps as careful as the Gutenberg Project, but they might be being over cautious some times) so there are unlikely to be any legal issues, although you'd want to check the copyright situation in your own country to be sure (America has longer copyright period than somewhere like Australia, for example. So if you go by what is available in the US you should be fine). There are other places online with PD films but IA is the most trustworthy source.

** Bride of the Monster (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047898/) is on one of the DVDs, so I assume it is PD (as every other one appears to be), but not in the Internet Archive. I'll keep an eye out for that one.

NB: IMDB does include links to the Internet Archive videos on a few entries, but not all. I'll see what I can do about fixing that at some point but feel free to scoop up the links here and add them to the entries.

NB 2: Because of spam lists, IMDB has turned off external links in lists. I am waiting to see how permanent a change this is before updating all the items in this list.

Comments: As I don't have a Facebook account I cannot interact with the new comments system, so have switched it off. I will start a thread on the message board and link it in here shortly.

Public domain horror films in the Internet Archive

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