Its lurid reputation wasn’t enough to prepare me for William Cowen’s “Kongo” (1932), the most out-there of a raft of pre-codes released recently by the Warner Archive Collection — the pioneering and ...

Old movies are old movies, but pre-Code movies are something else — old and new, vintage and yet strangely and refreshingly modern. Pre-Code festivals used to be an annual staple in San Francisco, but ...

The one man most responsible for popularizing “Pre-code” movies — those racy early talkies turned out by Hollywood before the Production Code Authority cracked down, largely at the behest of the ...

Despite only lasting four short years from 1930 to 1934, the pre-code era of Hollywood’s Golden Age produced films that pushed the boundaries of cinema and storytelling, even by today’s standards.

“Forbidden Hollywood,” Warner Archive’s made-to-order DVD series featuring Pre-Code films, sounds like good, clean – well, dirty – fun. Pre-Code films, made from the late ’20s until 1934, when the ...

Complicated Women: Documentary. Narrated by Jane Fonda. 5 and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday on Turner Classic Movies. Imagine what today's Hollywood actresses would give for a part as juicy as Frances Dee's in ...

About 20 years ago I was in a kind of partnership with another film historian who told me that, no, there wasn’t a market for a book on pre-code movies. I can only wonder what he thinks today after ...

They might seem tame by today’s standards, but there was a time in Hollywood when the men were bad and the women were badder. Today it’s known as the ‘pre-Code’ era, and it’s coming to TV this month.