On a stormy night in a haunted house, an heiress must prove her sanity while a masked killer roams the halls. This is the true founding film of the “Old Dark House” genre at Universal. Carl Laemmle brought German director Paul Leni (Waxworks) to Hollywood specifically for this project; Leni’s expressionist use of camerawork and lighting visibly influenced James Whale’s later works (Frankenstein, The Old Dark House). Without this film, there would be no visual grammar for Universal’s horror films of the 1930s.

A trivial melodrama starring Florence Lawrence, historically significant not for its plot, but for the marketing campaign surrounding it: In 1910, Laemmle had the press report that Lawrence, who until then had been known anonymously as the “Biograph Girl,” had died in a streetcar accident, only to “resurrect” her the next day as the “IMP Girl.” In essence, Laemmle thus invented the star system, using a name, a face, and publicity as selling points. This logic of calculated sensation is the direct precursor to later horror marketing (“Karloff! Lugosi!”).