Murders in the Rue Morgue
One of the most unheralded of Universal’s 1930s horror films, though perhaps the purest example of the form during that era, Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) comes off as early-Hollywood torture porn by way of German Expressionism.
House of Horrors + The Brute Man
The shadowy figure of Rondo Hatton creeps appropriately over the opening-credits sequences of both House of Horrors and The Brute Man, the two official films in which the hulking journalist-turned-actor stepped into the role of a spine-snapping villain known as The Creeper.
The Black Cat
A paragon of queer perversity, Edgar G. Ulmer’s unfathomable Universal horror hit gave major stars Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff two of their greatest roles. In the first of many films together, the erstwhile Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster play a pair of intensely bonded frenemies locked in an epic sadomasochistic pas de deux.