Like a lovingly guided midnight tour, this book covers the seductive shadows of the most fascinating horror films and melodramas from the 1930s and 1940s. From the bloody censorship battles behind 1935's Bride of Frankenstein, to the sexual controversies of 1941's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the gruesome Nazi atrocities of 1943's Women in Bondage, this book delves into newly excavated research to tell the behind-the-scenes sagas of some of Hollywood's most frightening films. Beloved characters--including the WereWolf of London, Richard III, Rasputin and a mad doctor who wants to mate his panther woman with a man--pounce once more in this expansive volume. Included are profiles of the performers and filmmakers who made the nightmares feel all too real in the darkened theaters of yesteryear, and an examination of the factors that have kept these films popular so many decades later.