Cat People from 1942. It's on the internet for free. It's astounding.
Detour from 1945 also available for free. Tom Neal, who is in this movie, later killed his wife!
Pre-Code horrors are strongest at Paramount. One movie, that's impossible to find right now, is about someone who just kills everyone on board a ship! (This is called "Terror Aboard", described as "Friday the 13th of the '30s) "Murders in the Zoo" is a Paramount horror that features the scene of Lionel Atwill sewing someone's mouth shut as he says, "A Mongolian prince taught me this, Taylor. An ingenious device for the right occasion. You'll never lie to a friend again, and you'll never kiss another man's wife" - his wife asks what happened to the victim, Atwill says that he decided to go off on his own. She asks what he said; "He didn't say anything".
"Island of Lost Souls" is another famous pre-Code horror. (Really, the Code existed after 1930 but the Breen office only started enforcing it in mid-1934.)
The Code was a system implemented by the studios, not a law. So people outside the system could make movies that violate the Code. Dwain Esper's "Maniac" from 1934 is an example of this, and this can be viewed for free on the internet. It features bare breasts, syringes and injections, a cat's eye is swallowed, women are seen lounging about in their underwear and singing 'la Cucaracha', as well as scenes of cats, dogs and mice fighting!
Last edited by xenon13 on 22 Jun 2009, 7:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.