“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 ...

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 ...

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.

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 ...

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 ...