London’s infamous Bedlam asylum becomes a house of horrors in this visually Hogarth-inspired 1946 film from producer Val Lewton, with Boris Karloff chillingly sinister as its cruel master and Billy House stealing scenes as a flighty lord.

Plague quarantine traps a Greek general and his guests on an island haunted by vampire folklore in this 1945 RKO horror, but its mix of war, disease, and catalepsy never coheres into a satisfying whole.

Edinburgh’s grim underworld of cadaver trafficking comes to life in this 1945 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s story, featuring a career-best performance from Boris Karloff as a gleefully sadistic body snatcher.

A young merchant marine finds himself trapped on a ship under a captain descending into murderous insanity in this tense 1943 RKO thriller — a masterwork suppressed for nearly 50 years by a plagiarism lawsuit.

A search for a missing woman leads into the world of Manhattan Satan worshippers in this 1943 RKO thriller that starts promisingly but collapses under too many underdeveloped characters and a baffling conclusion.

An escaped black panther and a serial killer terrorize a small New Mexico town in this 1943 RKO horror, featuring two genuinely terrifying set pieces alongside a rambling and unsatisfying plot.

Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre’ gets a Caribbean makeover in this beautifully atmospheric 1943 zombie film from producer Val Lewton, where a Canadian nurse uncovers dark secrets on a plague-shadowed sugar plantation.

A lonely little girl’s supernatural imaginary friend drives this haunting 1944 follow-up, which producer Val Lewton steers away from conventional horror into deeply personal emotional territory, co-directed by a young Robert Wise.

Eroticism and horror collide in Paul Schrader’s 1982 remake of the Lewton classic, as Nastassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell play siblings cursed to transform into leopards after sexual contact.

A young Serbian woman’s belief that intimacy will transform her into a predatory cat drives this 1942 RKO horror classic, a masterpiece of suggestion over shock from producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur.