Top 10 SHOCKING Pre-Code Films You Won't Believe Were Made!

Is the actor shown in "Black Cat" Bella Legusi?

Mae West was by far the oldest actress in the Golden Age. At 40 she could have been the Mother of many of her Actress peers

Unfortunately the very uptight religious American fanatics are still censoring the world. Many new songs today have had words like "bitch" removed from their presentation. How puerile and fanatical for mentally unstable zealots, to try and remove reality from entertainment and the world. These self-righteous lunatics, are not doing this to aid the world, but hide truths of their own crimes these nut jobs can't and won't deal with. As like Cancel Culture, many are having careers destroyed by ignorant, moronic zealots, who jump on the bandwagon of holding back humanity. I don't require moral guidance from men who wear frocks and rape children.

Excellent summary.

All of these except Baby Face can be downloaded from the Internet Archive.

Outrageous films? They merely reflect the outrageousness of real life. The explicitness or violence seen as too much for the audience to handle or accept is but the reality of society.

All good choices - and I've seen them all (I think I have DVD copies of almost all of them). One favorite not mentioned is HEROES FOR SALE (1933), William Wellman's depiction of the shabby treatment given returning US soldiers and the instances of drug abuse among them.

What a brainless NARRATOR. Mar-LEEN Deitrich! LOL, This country is turning out such ignorant morons these days!

Marleen…lol. That’s not how you pronounce it, dude.

Yawn

Until the US became overly sensitive (as usual) there were no restrictions outside the US.

THE HAYES COMMITTEE were just like the EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS of today, Hippocrates ! Depicting the "Bible only view" of everything was NOT REAL LIFE ! NOT until the 60s did film finally show life as it was, like it or not ! The creative artist, whether the writer, director, or the actor, has ALWAYS BEEN STUNTED. Honesty and reality was never a part of the HAYES GROUP.

People talk about the pre-Code years in Hollywood as if it was a wonderful time.
When in reality, talentless writers decided to pen controversy just for the sake of being controversial. (As a writer, I know about that trick.) Take the first entry, the main theme involving her character is still considered disgusting nearly 100 years later. Breaking up marriages just for the fun of it. Destroying lives as part of some immature game for her. Yeah, she got away with it.... in the film. But if we're going for a true depiction of reality, one of her former lovers would have found her, and violently unalived her. The most of the other entries? Again, controversial just to be controversial.

Heck, only two films on this list are even remembered. Only two are iconic. And, that is only because they were very well written. The rest are mostly forgotten trash.

I love the pre Code films. Sure, there was a lot of sensationalistic garbage, but that's par for the course for any year in film. Freaks is probably my favorite on your list, as it was a film that made the "freaks" the heroes of the story, plus it had Schlitzie and Johnny Eck, two of my favorite unusual people. I love Baby Face too, but I'm a Stanwyck fan, lol, ditto too for Morocco. Dietrich was phenomenal in that one. I'd be remiss though, if I didn't mention 2 of my very favorites, both Cagney films. First, Footlight Parade (1933) has the gorgeous Berkeley girls wearing very little as usual, and the Shanghai Lil musical sequence had a brothel/opium den with an integrated clientele and Lil is a Chinese prostitute that a sailor falls in love with and she loves him too. He smuggles her onto his ship, essentially kidnapping her. Second is The Public Enemy. It was the first film I ever saw that didn't have a conventional happy ending. It had violence out the wazoo, the famous Grapefruit Scene, where he smashes a grapefruit in his girlfriend's face. Real bullets were used, this was before blanks were made. One of them almost got Cagney, missed him by a hair. And that ending, just wow! It's what made me a JC fan at 12 and still one at 58.

Reminds me of the seventies and the release of Video Nasties, which were in the UK uncensored and unrated 99% of which were nothing more than gore fest with little or no storyline apart from the violence and sex, and eventually getting banned, regardless of whats on screen nowdays Hollywood is worse in real life than the films it makes, most if not all actors are degenerate simpletons.

Freaks is a really good movie. You have to watch the whole thing to get it. The depiction of the characters shows them as regular people. The revenge scene has meaning as to why they do what they do. Just to be clear, it’s not an explanation movie. Exploitation

Beast of the City and The Most Dangerous Game

You’ve got something wrong. Wings in 1929 showed the first same sex kiss 💋

Some recommendations - the so-ridiculous-it's-great "Madam Satan", "Murder At The Vanities" and "Wonder Bar" (be aware that this last film has probably the most racist musical number in Hollywood history)

You forgot someone

I’m not interested in entertaining anyone’s bellyaching about the Hays Code when in the 2020s we have the puritanical woke, who seek to cancel and ban anything that doesn’t suit them while simultaneously foisting on the rest of us content that doesn’t suit us and engaging in ad nauseam narcissistic posturing about how they’re on some “enlightened moral high ground.” Censorship is ok when it aligns with your ideology, right? 🙄🤡

Others that deserve mention are "Skyscraper Souls," "Murders in the Zoo," and the Lon Chaney films "The Unknown" and "West of Zanzibar," both of which were directed by Tod Browning.

Claudette Colbert has a "nip-slip" while in the milk bath!

As a Hoosier, and on behalf of the great state of Indiana, I want to apologize to the cinema-loving community for Will Hays and his atrocious code.

Thank you.

Important to note this period came right out 'The Roaring 20s'!

What about Bird of Paradise 1931, showing Dolores del Rio full nude swimming scene

The 1933 version of King Kong also felt the censor's wrath after its original release.

You could have talked about the undertones of repressed homosexuality in scarface. Certainly a large part of the film is the exploration of the relationship between suppressed homosexuality and ubermacho violence. When he first joins the boy gang, it is clear that all those boys are being used sexually by the leader of the gang. And he rises to the top of that crowd. Then, there is a very frank conversation between Jean Harlow and the protagonist in which, they discuss his sexual proclivities.

Well done! 😊

I directed a stage production of Noel Coward's "Design For Living" back in 1979. No one complained or said they were offended.

Cole-bert?

Thank you for this review. I've seen some of these, but not all. I'll have to keep an eye out for the rest.

I'm offended if you're not offended.

I have 3 of these; Sign of the Cross, Morocco, and Island of Lost Souls. So I guess I need to find the others.

Freaks was awesome.

Let us not forget INTERNATIONAL HOUSE, TROUBLE IN PARADISE, PUBLIC ENEMY, the now lost CONVENTION CITY, THE MERRY WIDOW, ANIMAL CRACKERS, QUEEN CHRISTINA, DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE, SO THIS IS AFRICA (sadly, only extant in a very censored print, as is LOVE ME TONIGHT) and CALL HER SAVAGE, Clara Bow's last film.

"Freaks" ruined Tod Browning's career as a film maker.
My great uncle was Johnny Eck, (Eckhardt) and Tod wanted to do a feature film about him, but after "Freaks" Tod was shunned from Hollywood and was unable to continue. RIP Uncle June.

Stanwyck modified the script of Baby Face. The story of a young woman using sex to survive and get on was almost a carbon copy of her experiences as a young chorine in New York.

The Sign of the Cross was shocking in other ways. The bad characters all lived through the movie, with no seeming punishments. And all the good guys died, even the main couple, and Frederic March, who converted as he and his love were ushered into the arena.

A very entertaining & informative video!❤

Mae West is possibly the most underappreciated actor/film maker ever.

Baby Face is a great movie, mainly because Stanwyck was, even at that age, a great actress. The section they cut first was her German friend spouting the philosophy of Nietzsche, where he tells her that her beauty gives her power and she should use it.

Tarzan and Jane swimming naked in the lagoon was very risque in the pre-Hayes Code era.