“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 ...

Time hasn’t been terribly kind to this 1931 gangster drama, which suffers more than it should from the glitches of early sound. But James Cagney’s portrayal of a bootlegging runt is truly electrifying ...

Parents, lock up your children. Wives, keep a wary eye on your husbands. “Baby Face” is coming to town. More specifically, the uncensored version of the profane Holy Grail of pre-Code Hollywood cinema ...

Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely ...

Ross Johnson writes about television, film, and literature for Lifehacker. He has a degree in political science from the University of Rochester and has previously been a legal writer and editor for ...

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 ...