Phyllis Dietrichson is trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who inspires in her nothing but contempt, but rather than leave him Phyllis decides to kill him and collect on the insurance policy she's had set up with the help of her lover, and naive partner in crime, insurance salesman Walter Neff. The only flaws in their plan are the company's reluctance to pay out so much, the diligence of Neff's increasingly suspicious colleague, (and his 'little man'), and the exemplary ruthlessness of Ph find out more...

Lang's epic thriller, drama and social commentary portrays Dr Mabuse as the villains' villain, a megalomaniac of the highest order and a man so utterly devoid of morality that no opportunity is beneath him. One of his earliest the film works almost like a testing ground for his later seminal works, with the director returning to Dr Mabuse's hypnotic character a number of times over the next thirty odd years with great success. Of historic interest. find out more...

In its very idiosyncratic way, Spione beats Lang's three Mabuse pictures as his definitive vision of a criminal mastermind, the reason probably being that this film entirely lacks the socio-political overtones of the Mabuse trilogy. The exploits of the evil genius, Haghi, represent criminality almost in the abstract, and plunge the movie into a delirium of disguises, deaths, double-motives, and labyrinthine tricks. The tone is somewhere between true pulp fiction and pure expressionism, and the r find out more...

One of the first horror movies, about a hypnotist who uses a somnambulist to do his murders, and a landmark in the history of cinema. The dark shadows, crazy angles and doom laden atmosphere of German Expressionism and the film's extraordinary use of painted light have rarely been copied, and its influence, on film noir in particular, is indisputable. find out more...

Hitchcock's third feature is basically a variation on the Jack the Ripper story adapted from a novel by Anne Belloc Lowndes. A serial killer is on the loose in London, singling out blonde haired chorus girls and, as the hunt for him hots up, a stranger turns up seeking lodgings at the Bunter family's house. Mysterious he certainly is, but is he the murderer? Menacingly effective camera work, but lighter in tone than his later thrillers. Especially interesting is the way the younger Hitchcock is find out more...