Foster on Film

In the castle of Robert von Helldorf (Lionel Atwill) they are celebrating the 21st birthday of his daughter Irene (Gloria Stuart). In attendance are her three suitors, Captain Walter Brink (Paul Lukas), reporter Frank Faber (Onslow Stevens), and brash Thomas Brandt (William Janney). The castle and grounds also contain a groups of extremely suspicious-acting servants.

Crooked Privy Councillor ten Brinken (Albert Bassermann) has had some success with his experiments with artificially inseminating rats, and wants to take it to the next level: inseminating a prostitute with the sperm from a dead murderer. Seems like that shouldn’t be the next level, but hey, I’m not a mad scientist, so what do

The mysterious Dr. Dienys (Carlos Villarías) is both feared and mocked by the medical scientific community. And why not, when he experiments with psychic powers with which he has kept himself from aging. He also can directly effect others and controls a monster (Raúl Urquijo) that he keeps in a cell, but no one knows

Obsessed theater doctor Friedrich Hohner (Boris Karloff) murders Marcellina, his opera star girl friend when she rejects him for being too controlling. Ten years later a new singer, Angela Klatt (Susanna Foster) is the new big thing, with a voice that sounds exactly like the dead star’s. This is too much for Hohner, who hypnotizes

A maniac is killing people, and attaching news clipping to their bodies. Those news clipping must be an important plot point… Nope. Never mind. Anyway, the Maniac is of little interest to Professor Arthur Hornsby (George Meeker), who has discovered a secret formula which allows a person to survive in suspended animation. At his lab

Joe Valerie dies at Dr. Paul Cornelius’s (Warner Oland) clinic, trading knowledge of where he hid a million dollars in stolen loot for euthanasia. Soon after, Joe’s wife (Jane Darwell) falls to her death after seeing Joe’s ghost. The police, picking up fraudulent spiritualists, get one who’s real, Patricia Merrick (Dorothy Wilson). So on a

Fast-talking reporter ‘Scoop’ Hanlon (Paul Kelly) is stuck doing an advice column, so is willing to accept any story to get him back in the big leagues, and the one his editor offers is on the haunted Blue Room of a nearby estate, where people have died in the past. There is a party at

Within a sideshow, the Freaks live, carrying out romances, arguments, friendships, and betrayals. Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), the beautiful acrobat of the circus, plots to marry the midget Hans (Harry Earles) for his secret fortune, and then kill him, with the aid of her lover, the strongman Hercules (Henry Victor). Frieda (Daisy Earles), Hans’s ex-fiancée, knows

‘Deadlegs’ Flint (Walter Huston) is a paraplegic who rules over a small area of the African jungle with a combination of cruelty and magic tricks. From there he plans various illegal schemes which are executed by his cowed henchmen Hogan (Mitchell Lewis) and Cookie (Forrester Harvey). He also keeps around sex toy Tula (Lupe Velez).

Timid opera violinist Erique Claudin (Claude Rains) is fired, which is awkward as he’s been using all his money to secretly pay for voice lessons for Christine DuBois (Susanna Foster). He hopes publishing his concerto will fix everything, but when he thinks it’s been stolen, he breaks and murders the publisher and has acid thrown

Mere seconds after Von Helsing (Edward Van Sloan)—and yes, it is now “Von Helsing” instead of “Van Helsing”—staked Dracula, the bobbies show up. Van Helsing goes with the “I was killing an immortal undead” defense which gets him arrested for murder, although as an upper class professor, he’s treated ridiculously well. Psychologist Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger), another

Things are going very badly in the Jewish ghetto of Prague. The people cry out for Rabbi Jacob (Charles Dorat) to bring the fabled golem to life so save them, but he says it isn’t yet time. Emperor Rudolph II (Harry Baur) also has the golem on his mind as he’s heard the prediction that