The 40 most popular 1930s science fiction movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


Bride of Frankenstein
1935 · 1h 15m
country: United States
Dr. Frankenstein and his monster both turn out to be alive after being attacked by an angry mob. The now-chastened scientist attempts to escape his past, but a former mentor forces him to assist with the creation of a new creature.


Frankenstein
1931 · 1h 10m
country: United States
Henry Frankenstein pieces together body parts in the hope of bringing a human-like creature to life. The mad scientist’s dreams are shattered by his monstrous creation awakening with rage to a world that hates and fears him.


The Invisible Man
1933 · 1h 11m
country: United States
After experimenting on himself and becoming invisible, scientist Jack Griffin, now aggressive due to the drug's effects, seeks a way to reverse the experiment at any cost.


Son of Frankenstein
1939 · 1h 39m
country: United States
One of the sons of late Dr. Henry Frankenstein finds his father's ghoulish creation in a coma and revives him, only to find out the monster is controlled by Ygor who is bent on revenge.


The Son of Kong
1933 · 1h 10m
country: United States
Beleaguered adventurer Carl Denham returns to the island where he found King Kong.


Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
1931 · 1h 36m
country: United States
Dr. Henry Jekyll believes that there are two distinct sides to men: one that is good and one that is evil. He believes that by separating the two, man can become liberated. He succeeds in his experiments with chemicals to accomplish this and transforms into Hyde to commit horrendous crimes. When he discontinues use of the drug, it is already too late.


Things to Come
1936 · 1h 40m
country: United Kingdom
The story of a century: a decades-long second World War leaves plague and anarchy, then a rational state rebuilds civilization and attempts space travel.


Island of Lost Souls
1932 · 1h 11m
country: United States
An obsessed scientist conducts profane experiments in evolution, eventually establishing himself as the self-styled demigod to a race of mutated, half-human abominations.


The Walking Dead
1936 · 1h 6m
country: United States
Down-on-his-luck John Ellman is framed for a judge's murder. After he's convicted and sentenced to death, witnesses come forth and prove his innocence. But it was too late for a stay to be granted and Ellman is executed. A doctor uses an experimental procedure to restore him to life, though the full outcome is other than expected.


The Mask of Fu Manchu
1932 · 1h 8m
country: United States
The villainous Dr. Fu Manchu races against a team of Englishmen to find the tomb of Ghengis Khan, because he wants to use the relics to cause an uprising in the East to wipe out the white race.


Modern Inventions
1937 · 9m
country: United States
Donald Duck goes to a museum of modern inventions. After getting in without paying, he meets a robot butler who takes Donald's hat every time he sees him. Donald is very annoyed by this and magically fixes himself a new hat every time this happens and strolls on. Ignoring the sign not to touch it, Donald starts playing with a wrapping machine and ends up being wrapped himself. He also encounters and tries out a robot nursemaid and a fully automatic barber chair. They both don't do him much good.


The Invisible Ray
1936 · 1h 19m
country: United States
Dr. Janos Rukh discovers a certain type of radium that has almost magical healing properties. But the element has a dangerous side, too, and it has already started affecting Rukh. Consumed by paranoia, he begins to suspect that his wife is having an affair. Wild for revenge, Rukh hatches a deadly plot...using his own poisoned body as a weapon to kill.


Ghost Patrol
1936 · 1h
country: United States
A Professor has an invention that will bring down planes causing them to crash and Dawson is forcing him to use it on those carrying money. When Tim arrives to investigate he is mistaken for a noted outlaw. So he assumes that identity to force Dawson to make him a partner. But just as a plane bringing Tim help is arriving, his true identity is revealed and while he is a prisoner, Dawson forces the Professor to start his machine.


Flash Gordon
1936 · 4h 5m
country: United States
Disaster seems imminent when scientists discover that the planet Mongo is about to crash into Earth. Luckily, heroic young Flash Gordon is on hand to lead an investigative mission into outer space and onto the speedily approaching planet. There, he and his best girl, Dale, who is along for the ride, learn that Ming, the devious ruler of Mongo, has purposely put the planet on a collision course with Earth, and only Flash can stop him.


The Man They Could Not Hang
1939 · 1h 4m
country: United States
Dr. Henryk Savaard is a scientist working on experiments to restore life to the dead. When he is unjustly hanged for murder, he is brought back to life by his trusted assistant. Re-animated he turns decidedly nasty and sets about murdering the jury that convicted him.


The New Moscow
1938 · 1h 40m
country: Soviet Union
A comedy about a naive young architect and his wild designs for a “New Moscow.” The Soviet censors weren't at all amused and shelved it.


The Return of Doctor X
1939 · 1h 2m
country: United States
When news reporter Walter Garrett arrives at the hotel room of bombshell actress Angela Merrova to conduct an interview, he finds her dead from multiple stab wounds. He returns with the police to find the hotel empty and the body vanished. Garrett writes about the incident but is fired when Merrova, alive and well, goes to the paper to complain. Now his only chance to get his job back is to find the truth, which involves the grisly scheme of a madman.


Daughter of the Dragon
1931 · 1h 10m
country: United States
At her Chinese father's bidding, a woman goes to murder an enemy and meets a Scotland Yard detective.


The Devil-Doll
1936 · 1h 18m
country: United States
Respected Parisian banker Paul Lavond is framed for robbery and murder by crooked associates and sent to prison. Years later, he escapes with a friend, a scientist who was working on a method to reduce humans to a height of mere inches (all for the good of humanity, of course). Lavond, however, is consumed with hatred for those who betrayed him, and takes the scientist's methods back to Paris to exact painful revenge.


6 Hours to Live
1932 · 1h 12m
country: United States
The victim of a political assassination is brought back to life by a scientific experiment. However, the effects only last for six hours, and he must find his killer in that time.


Mystery of the Ghastly Face
1935 · 1h 28m
country: Mexico
Dr. Forti carries out strange experiments, assisted by his son Pablo. They embark on an expedition to the jungle. Eight years later Forti returns without his son but strange things start to happen in the old house where they live.


Sharad of Atlantis
1936 · 3h 46m
country: United States
Crash Corrigan, a recent graduate of Annapolis, and Diana, a go-getting reporter, join Professor Norton for a search for the source of a string of earthquakes, Atlantis. They ride Prof. Norton's rocket submarine searching the sea and little Billy Norton, the professor's son stows away, of course. When they find Atlantis they are caught in a war between peaceful Atlanteans, note their white capes, and war-monging Atlanteans, note their black capes. After many harrowing moments for Crash, Diana, Prof. Norton and Billy, they barely get away with their lives when they escape a tower of Atlantis raised to the surface for the sole purpose of dominating or destroying the Earth (Which one depends on the compliance of the upper world dwellers.)


The Phantom Creeps
1939 · 4h 25m
country: United States
A mad scientist attempts to rule the world by creating various elaborate inventions.


The End of the World
1931 · 1h 45m
country: France
The plot concerns a comet hurling toward Earth on a collision course and the different reactions to people on the impending disaster.


The Man Who Changed His Mind
1936 · 1h 6m
country: United Kingdom
Dr. Laurence, a once-respectable scientist, begins to research the origin of the mind and the soul. The science community rejects him, and he risks losing everything for which he has worked. He begins to use his discoveries to save his research and further his own causes, thereby becoming ... a mad scientist, almost unstoppable.


Just Imagine
1930 · 1h 53m
country: United States
New York, 1980: airplanes have replaced cars, numbers have replaced names, pills have replaced food, government-arranged marriages have replaced love, and test tube babies have replaced ... well, you get the idea. Scientists revive a man struck by lightning in 1930; he is rechristened "Single O". He is befriended by J-21, who can't marry the girl of his dreams because he isn't "distinguished" enough -- until he is chosen for a 4-month expedition to Mars by a renegade scientist. The Mars J-21, his friend, and stowaway Single O visit is full of scantily clad women doing Busby Berkeley-style dance numbers and worshiping a fat middle-aged man.


Deluge
1933 · 1h 10m
country: United States
A massive earthquake strikes the United States, which destroys the West Coast and unleashes a massive flood that threatens to destroy the East Coast as well.


Cosmic Journey
1936 · 1h 10m
country: Soviet Union
Scientist Pavel Sedykh grows impatient with the restrictions of the conservative Soviet space institute in Moscow. Sedikh builds his own spacecraft, and accompanied by a female astronaut and a boy, he embarks on a the first human trip to the moon.


Buck Rogers
1939 · 3h 57m
country: United States
Buck Rogers and Buddy Wade are in the middle of a trans-polar dirigible flight when they are caught in a blizzard and crash. Buddy then releases a special gas to keep them in suspended animation until a rescue party can arrive. However, an avalanche covers the craft and the two are in suspended animation for 500 years. When they are found, they awake to find out that the world has been taken over by the outlaw army of Killer Kane. Along with Lieutenant Wilma Deering, Buck and Buddy join in the fight to overthrow Kane and with the help of Prince Tallen of Saturn and his forces, they eventually do and Earth is free of Kane's grip.


The Lost Jungle
1934 · 1h 8m
country: United States
Clyde Beatty, an animal trainer and circus star, leads a search for his missing girlfriend and her father who were on an expedition looking for a lost tropical island. Using a dirigible as his mode of transportation, Beatty and his band head off in search of the missing explorers only to crash their airship on the same island their friends are located. Battling wild animals and a gang of greedy men searching for gold, Beatty and his party must rescue his girlfriend and father all the while trying to escape their jungle island. Feature version of the same-title serial of the same year, with refilmed sequences substantially altering the plot and characters of the original chapterplay.


Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars
1938 · 3h 49m
country: United States
When a deadly Nitron ray strikes Earth, Flash Gordon and his friends travel to Mars to battle Ming the Merciless and his new ally Queen Azura.


Der Tunnel
1933 · 1h 12m
country: Germany
The engineer MacAllan designs a tunnel, which will join America and Europe together on the seabed. A group of American billionaires are financing the gigantic project, but the construction of the tunnel is proving to be as tedious as it is dangerous. MacAllan's worst enemy is the speculator Woolf, who had embezzled the money for the construction and who is attempting to cover up his crime by carrying out acts of sabotage. Also filmed in 1933 in a French-language version, LE TUNNEL, and remade in 1935 in England as TRANSATLATIC TUNNEL.


The Phantom Empire
1935 · 4h 5m
country: United States
When the ancient continent of Mu sank beneath the ocean, some of its inhabitant survived in caverns beneath the sea. Cowboy singer Gene Autry stumbles upon the civilization, now buried beneath his own Radio Ranch. The Muranians have developed technology and weaponry such as television and ray guns. Their rich supply of radium draws unscrupulous speculators from the surface. The peaceful civilization of the Muranians is corrupted by the greed from above, and it becomes Autry's task to prevent all-out war, ideally without disrupting his regular radio show.


Mars Attacks the World
1938 · 1h 15m
country: United States
Feature version of the 1938 film serial FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS. Flash Gordon fights Ming the Merciless once again to ensure the survival of the Earth.


Queen of Atlantis
1932 · 1h 27m
country: Germany
Two young officers, Saint-Avit and Morhange, get lost in the desert and find themselves prisoners of the beautiful Antinéa, queen of the city of Atlantis. Saint-Avit, blinded by his love for her, obeys her when she orders him to kill his comrade... With L’Atlantide, Pabst offers a psychoanalytic reading of Benoit’s novel, with a dominant female figure who enslaves her lovers before destroying them. The film’s fantasy dimension is disturbing, L’Atlantide bathes in a humid nightmare atmosphere, between the desperate search for a missing friend and the apparitions of an underworld lost in the desert. A long, discursive flashback suggests the Parisian origins of Antinéa, born from the marriage between Clémentine, a pretty, light-thighed French Cancan dancer, and an Arab prince seduced during a theatrical performance. But again, it's impossible to know whether these are the ramblings of an old alcoholic or the strange truth.


F.P.1 Doesn't Answer
1932 · 1h 54m
country: Germany
F.P.1 is a huge airplane landing dock in the Atlantic where pilots making the transatlantic flight can stop. Yet a saboteur tries to sink the technical wonder in this classic German science fiction film from 1932. The film was also created with English and French speaking actors at the same time.


The World Will Shake
1939 · 1h 48m
country: France
In this sci-fi film, a scientist invents a prescient machine that can tell people when they will die. Oddly enough, the people do not want to know and therefore begin to riot…


The Fighting Devil Dogs
1938 · 3h 24m
country: United States
Two marine lieutenants battle a masked would-be world conqueror who uses electricity as a weapon.


The Vanishing Shadow
1934 · 4h 2m
country: United States
A 12-episode serial in which a son avenges the death of his father at the hands of corrupt politicians. He develops a wide variety of complex devices in his crusade . . . ray guns, robots and a 'vanishing belt.'


Night Key
1937 · 1h 8m
country: United States
The inventor of a new top-of-the-line burglar alarm system is kidnapped by a gang in order to get him to help them commit robberies.
The 1930s were the studio system at full power, with sound now fully integrated and the Production Code arriving mid-decade to sharply narrow what films could depict. It's the decade of the Universal monster cycle, screwball comedy, and the first Technicolor spectacles.
Science fiction uses the future — or a plausible alternative present — to think through the current moment. It's produced some of cinema's most influential images, and the genre's biggest leaps have usually followed leaps in effects technology.