What movies might Lovecraft have seen in 1932-33? He wrote to Morton in 1933 that, over Christmas/New Year, “I was cinema’d nearly every night” by his friends in New York City.
Most likely are:
* The Sign of the Cross, a lavish epic by Cecil B. DeMille. An Ancient Roman setting under Nero, complete with vast architecture and huge crowds, and thus a natural fit for Lovecraft-the-Roman. 30th November release and almost certainly still playing a month later.
* The Mummy with Boris Karloff. Ancient Egyptian mummy-horror. He was rarely scintillated by these 1930s monster movies, but he may have appreciated some of the set design. 22nd December release.
* Island of Lost Souls with Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi. Apparently now a bit of a cult movie. A gruesome adaptation of H.G. Wells’s early horror The Island of Dr. Moreau. This appears to have been heavily marketed as a ‘sex movie’, or what passed for such a thing in the movie-houses of December 1932. This marketing tone only got worse, as the movie passed down into the flea-pits…
Movies at this time were all ‘pre-Code’ and thus running in their full uncensored forms. The often scrappy and cut versions that appeared on TV in the 1970s and 80s were usually not accurate reflections of what had been screened at the 1930s movie palaces.
He appears to have stayed on in New York into January, but probably not for long enough to see lesser movies such as The Vampire Bat (12th January) or The Monkey’s Paw (13th January) in New York. He could not afford to see movies in Providence at this time, even if he had though the movie worth bothering with, so would have missed these.
Notable movies from earlier in 1932 were: The Old Dark House, a Boris Karloff horror by James Whale; and the modestly successful zombie movie White Zombie with Bela Lugosi. Either of these might still have been playing somewhere in New York at the end of 1932, if only in the lesser cinemas as a double-bill.
He evidently was not going to the cinema in Providence at this time, as he noted of his 1932/33 New York viewings that they were… “the first sight of such performances since last June [1932] when he had enjoyed a similar series of New York cinema treats from his friends. He would not have been so well served with horror movies in summer 1932. But Murders in the Rue Morgue (a Poe adaptation), and Tod Browning’s infamous Freaks, might have still be running somewhere in New York. They had been released in February 1932 and by the summer would make a natural double-bill for the lower end of the market.
James Whale’s Frankenstein was likely still running. This had its New York opening 4th December 1931 and was a sensational hit, said by movie history buffs to have kick-started the 1930s horror movie boom. It must surely have been playing somewhere in New York City, even six months later. The same may have been true of the high-quality Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, released 31st December 1931. These would have formed another natural double-bill of movies, this time for the classier end of the market.
Lovecraft would not have seen some flea-pit hold-over of the February 1931 Dracula, though. He eventually saw the first reels of that 1931 Dracula on a visit to Miami, but was so bored by it that he walked out on the movie and went for a night walk on the sea-front instead. When with friends he would often snooze through a dire movie rather than walk out, as being in the dark tended to induce a sleep response in him. Thus, even if he mentions that he attended a movie screening, unless he discusses the movie we can’t always be sure that he saw it rather than snoozed.
His summer 1933 letters to Barlow show a renewed zeal for the cinema, so evidently the 1932/33 New York viewings had stirred something in him.
