Dr Henry Jekyll's enthusiasm for science and his selfless acts of service have made him a much-admired man. He becomes fascinated with the two contrasting sides of human nature, and he becomes obsessed with the idea of separating them. After extensive work in his laboratory, he devises a formula that does indeed allow him to alternate between two completely different personalities, his own and that of a brutish, lascivious person whom he names Hyde. It is not long before the personality of Hyde begins to dominate Jekyll's affairs.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

Metropolis is one of the first and most important science fiction films made. Set in the future where humans are divided into two groups: the thinkers, who make plans (but don't know how anything works), and the workers, who achieve goals.

Metropolis (1927)

An important sci-fi short film, The Crazy Ray is about a scientist's invisible ray that freezes Paris into immobility. The night watchman on the Eiffel Tower comes off his shift to find people all over Paris frozen in motion. 

The Crazy Ray (1925)

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. The Golem is an entertaining, dramatic silent German horror that is highly recommended.

The Golem (1920)

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

The Lost World (1925)

A mysterious radio message is beamed around the world, and among the engineers who receive it are Los, the hero, and his colleague Spiridonov. Though the main focus of the story are the daily lives of a small group of people during the post-war Soviet Union, the film's enduring importance comes from its early sci-fi elements. It primarily tells of an engineer Mstislav Sergeyevich Los traveling to Mars in a rocket ship, where he leads a popular uprising against the ruling group of Elders, with the support of Queen Aelita who has fallen in love with him after watching him through a telescope. 

Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924)

When a tornado rips through Kansas, Dorothy and her dog, Toto, are whisked away in their house to the magical land of Oz. They follow the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, and en route, Snowball, a black farmhand, soon joins them after a lightning bolt chases him into the sky. They land in Oz, where the farmhands try to avoid capture. Semon becomes a scarecrow, Hardy briefly disguises himself as a tin woodman, and Snowball is given a lion suit by the Wizard, which he uses to scare the Pumperdink guards. The wizard asks the group to bring him the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West.

1920s