1920s Fantasy Movies

The mysterious Count Orlok summons a happily married real estate agent to his castle, located up in the Transylvanian mountains, to finalise a terrifying deal.

Un Chien Andalou is an European avant-garde surrealist film, a collaboration between director Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali.

God and Satan wager on the soul of a learned and prayerful alchemist as part of their eternal war over Earth.

A recalcitrant thief vies with a duplicitous Mongol ruler for the hand of a beautiful princess.

In 16th-century Prague, a rabbi creates the Golem - a giant creature made of clay. Using sorcery, he brings the creature to life in order to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution.

An alcoholic, abusive ne'er-do-well is shown the error of his ways through a legend that dooms the last person to die on New Year's Eve before the clock strikes twelve to take the reins of Death's chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year.

Siegfried, son of King Siegmund of Xanten, travels to Worms, capital of the Burgundian kingdom, to ask King Gunther for the hand of his sister, the beautiful Kriemhild.

When Kriemhild, thirsty for revenge, marries to Etzel, king of the Huns, she invites King Gunther and his court to visit them, intending to finally take the life of the man responsible of her disgrace.

The plot of the film is taken from the legend of the Azerbaijan Maiden Tower. According to legend shirvanshah fell in love with his daughter and wanted to marry her. Learning of this daughter Shirvanshah jumped from the top of the tower in the Caspian Sea.

Taken from The Arabian Nights, a wicked sorcerer and the beautiful prince Achmed battle one against the other during a series of wondrous adventures.

As a young couple stops and rests in a small village inn, the man is abducted by Death and sequestered behind a huge doorless, windowless wall. The woman poisons herself in order to join him and is met by Death, who gives her three opportunities to prove that love is stronger than death, thereby freeing her beloved from his fate.

Stop-motion photography blends with extreme slow-motion in Clair's first and most dada film, composed of a series of zany, interconnected scenes. We witness a rooftop chess match between Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, a hearse pulled by a camel (and chased by its pallbearers) and a dizzying roller coaster finale. A film of contradictions and agreements.

Based on Oscar Wilde's play, the films tells the story of how Salomé agrees to dance for King Herod in return for the head of John the Baptist.

A farm girl learns she is a princess and is swept away by a tornado to the land of Oz.

The first film adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic novel about a land where prehistoric creatures still roam.

Lorenz Lubota is a city clerk with no direction in life. One day on his way to work he is run over by a woman driving a chariot and he is immediately infatuated with her.

A silent, surreal short involving a man buying a pearl necklace. He meets a woman who also desires the necklace.

Mistaken identity, unrequited love, and the supernatural are combined in Shakespeare's classic set in the woods of Greece on a moonlit night.

The legend of how colour came into the world.

An impoverished girl tries to sell matches on New Year's Eve. Shivering with cold and unable to sell her wares, she sits in a sheltered nook. Striking a match to keep warm, the flame shows her what's beyond.

Charley invents a machine that turns ordinary, breakable eggs into rubbery, unbreakable ones for transport. He builds a Rube Goldberg contraption of parts stolen from his neighbors. Rival egg companies want his invention, one of them stooping to sabotage to get it.

Geoffrey Tempest is desperately in love with aspiring writer Mavis Claire, a tenant of his boardinghouse. Unable to marry her due to his poverty, in his anger, he curses God for abandoning him. Soon, Geoffrey meets Prince Lucio de Rimanez, a wealthy, urbane gentleman who informs Geoffrey that he's inherited a fortune, but that he must place himself in the Prince's hands in order to enjoy the fruits of his inheritance. What Geoffrey doesn't know is that Prince Lucio is actually Satan.

A female centaur enters a clearing in the woods and picks flowers. She is met by a male centaur and the two romance each other. They then seek parental consent for their union. Surviving footage of a now lost film.

Peter Pan enters the nursery of the Darling children and, with the help of fairy dust, leads them off to Never Never Land, where they meet the nefarious Captain Hook.

On a volcanic island near the Kingdom of Hetvia rules Count Dakkar, a benevolent leader and scientist who has eliminated class distinction among the island's inhabitants. Dakkar, his sister Sonia and her fiance, engineer Nicolai Roget have designed a submarine which Roget pilots on its initial voyage just before the island is overrun by Baron Falon, despotic ruler of Hetvia. Falon sets out after Roget in a second submarine and the two craft, diving to the ocean's floor, discover a strange land populated by dragons, giant squid and an eerie undiscovered humanoid race.

Upon waking from the dream of a theater peopled entirely by numerous Buster Keatons, a lowly stage hand causes havoc everywhere he works.

Malena's apparent frigidity toward her husband Kenneth is a result of injustice done in an earlier incarnation when he was a knight and she was a gypsy headed for burning at the stake. This becomes evident when their unconscious minds travel back from a train wreck in the American plains to Elizabethan England.

The Man in the Moon invites little Mickey and his dog over for a visit. They go on a magical trip and meet strange characters along the way.

The devil takes Maciste down to hell in an attempt to corrupt and ruin his morality.

A young man travels to Mars in a rocket ship, where he leads a popular uprising against the ruling group with the support of Queen Aelita, who has fallen in love with him after watching him through a telescope.

One of the earliest cinematic adaptation of Chinese classic novel Journey to the West. When seeking for food alone, Tang Xuanzang was kept prisoner by seven spider monsters who took the form of seven beautiful women. The Monkey King and the other two of Xuanzang's disciples managed to rescue him with the help of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva/Guanyin. They renounced the desire for lust and continued the quest for Buddhist Scriptures.

In 1776, an inventor conceals a Polish nobleman in his chess-playing automaton, a machine whose fame leads it to the court of the Russian empress.

Obsessed with a general's wife, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.

"The plot introduces Omar as a leader of his people but deals rather with the love of his nephew, Ben Ali, for the fairest daughter of the tribe" (Variety, 7 Oct 1925, p44).

A Yasuji Murata version of the classic Japanese story Saru Kani Gassen.

Loie Fuller, in her 1920 feature-length film Le Lys de la vie, […] explored the new technique for poetic ends, creating fleeting, dreamlike images that "freed" the medium from "illusionism" and imbued it with fantasy.

Rowland falls sick with leprosy while Mac Allan is captured by the Maharajah, who offers Irene a deal: one night with him in exchange for letting Rowland to be cured. She accepts, but tries to commit suicide.

During a dinner given by a wealthy baron and his wife, attended by four of her suitors in a 19th century German manor, a shadow-player rescues the marriage by giving all the guests a vision what might happen tonight if the baron stays jealous and the suitors do not reduce their advances towards his beautiful wife. Or was it a vision?

In his search for the Philosophers' Stone which would enable him to understand the mysteries of the production of gold, Professor Dobner goes in search of the notes of alchemist Melchiad Koloman who, according to legend, had uncovered the mystery and produced gold. Dobner becomes acquainted with the Japanese Nakahito and the Indian Fakír Arkaj and inducts them into his plan. The Fakír wants to demonstrate that he can bring a dead person back to life and suggests to his companions that he could attempt to bring Koloman back to life enabling them to ask him directly for the formula. In order to do this he needs a young, healthy male. Nakahito finds a young rake, Marcel, who has squandered away his fortune and now contemplates suicide. At the promise of an easy life for the duration of one year he agrees to commit himself to the experiment.

A young man, unsuccessful in love, manages to leave his body and tours Paris, disembodied and invisible, playing practical jokes: a row of coats walks off from a hotel cloakroom; an unattended taxi drives itself away; a row of top hats appears on the pavement.