Best movies like Make Mine Laughs

Martin Scorsese narrates this tribute to Val Lewton, the producer of a series of memorable low-budget horror films for RKO Studios. Raised by his mother and his aunt, his films often included strong female characters who find themselves in difficult situations and who have to grow up quickly. He is best remembered for the horror films he made at RKO starting in 1940. Starting with only a title - his first was The Cat People - he would meticulously oversee every aspect of the film's completion. Although categorized as horror films, his films never showed a monster, leaving it all to the viewers imagination, assisted by music, mood and lighting.

In 1920s New York City, W. C. Fields is a successful headlining entertainer, but when his girlfriend leaves him and his broker loses his money, Fields begins anew in California. Working at a wax museum, Fields eventually lands a film role that ascends him to stardom. Back in the limelight and palling around with John Barrymore and the like, Fields meets an aspiring actress Carlotta Monti at a party, with whom he forms a rocky relationship.

A movie cameraman is on the lookout for new material but a rival plans to copy everything he films.

Billionaire businessman Noel Noel is long on cash but short on social graces; so when he finds himself falling for the fairy Beatrice, he mistakenly thinks he can buy her love with material gifts. It takes a little girl named Zooey, her dog Snooze, and a blue-eyed reindeer to help Noel Noel learn the true meaning of love in this animated Christmas fable that features narration by Leslie Nielson (AIRPLANE, NAKED GUN) and music by French-Canadian songstress Ariane Moffatt.

Failing vaudeville performer, Len, is taken under the wing of the German Shepherd wonder dog, Kelly, and a new act is born. Len hopes all his dreams are coming true when he finds himself in Hollywood ... but Kelly is the one in demand on the big screen.

The gang operates a donkey-propelled tour bus. Later, a cut-rate vaudeville producer hires them to help out with his show, which they wreck.

The vaudeville act of Harriet and Queenie Mahoney comes to Broadway, where their friend Eddie Kerns needs them for his number in one of Francis Zanfield's shows. When Eddie meets Queenie, he soon falls in love with her—but she is already being courted by Jock Warriner, a member of New York high society. Queenie eventually recognizes that, to Jock, she is nothing more than a toy, and that Eddie is in love with her.

The first woman to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and possibly the first woman to appear in a motion picture within the United States. In the film, Carmencita is recorded going through a routine she had been performing at Koster & Bial's in New York since February 1890.

An escaped convict gets a hold of some radioactive material after his escape. Authorities desperately try to find the man that unknowingly is threating the lives of everyone in the city.

A lost submarine discovers a secret island where dinosaurs still live. The film, 20 minutes long, was scrapped by RKO. Approximately 4 minutes survived.

Archie Rice, an old-time British vaudeville performer sinking into final defeat, schemes to stay in show business.

Documentary on advertising. Investigates the way work has disappeared from advertising images, and traces the phenomenon through archive advertising films from 1897 to 1960. Places advertising in the context of historical events and everyday life, archive material being juxtaposed with contemporary images.

Foreign investors converge on a luxury hotel in China to bid on a new kind of radioscope. But, this is a hotel where Burns and Allen are the in-house medical staff, a measles risk sends the whole building into quarantine, and a madcap millionaire crashes dinner in his autogyro. Hotel and radioscope become a stage for an all-star cast of comedians and musicians, from vaudeville to the new generation.

Two engaged vaudeville magicians quarrel and go their separate ways.

George and Gracie enter an elegant drawing room, looking everywhere for something. Turns out, they're looking for the audience, and when George spots the camera, they start in on their patter. Gracie wants to convince George that she's smart, not dizzy - it's an uphill struggle of which she's blissfully unaware. Midway through, they break into song: "Do You Believe Me?" It includes a little bit of hoofing as the chatting continues. They end on a story Gracie whispers into George's ear.

An ex-cop is suspected of murder after he is found with a dead woman. The private detective is on the run -- attempting to prove his innocence.

A husband-and-wife vaudeville team disguise their young son as a girl so he can enter a contest run by a movie studio that's looking for "a new Shirley Temple".

In this amiable Columbia B musical, society girl Ann Miller escapes her Back Bay family by performing in the chorus line in a burlesque house. But trouble starts when her boss (William Wright) decides to build her up as a star. One of the many bread-and-butter Columbia productions graced by the contributions of Cole’s in-house dance studio. Cole dances behind Miller in “I’m Gonna See My Baby.” --Museum of Modern Art

A vaudeville performer returns from the dead to help his wife and daughter, who are being dominated by a greedy banker.

A New York City boarding house for vaudeville performers, none of whom have any steady work....

In 1939, boy-wonder Orson Welles leaves New York, where he has succeeded in radio and theater, and, hired by RKO Pictures, moves to Hollywood with the purpose of making his first film.

Broke lion tamers travel to Africa to make a movie about Amazon women, from a distance.

A beautiful but unscrupulous female performer manipulates all the men in her life in order to achieve her aims.

Documentary looking at Orson Welles and the production of the film CITIZEN KANE fifty years ago, considering the furore that accompanied it and the real life press baron William Randolph Hearst upon whom Kane is based, and his efforts to halt the film, destroy the negative and persecution of people involved with its production and showing. It includes BBC interviews with Welles made in 1960 and 1982, and film historian Robert Carringer looks at the scenes that never made it to the screen. American film critic Pauline Kael also analyses the film's enduring appeal. Extracts from "The RKO Story" (producer: Rosemary Wilton) and "Yesterday's Whitness" (producers: Christopher Cook and Stephen Peet).

In the first BBC documentary to be filmed entirely on smartphones, Mark Miodownik reveals the weird materials that have built our high-tech world.

That Kind of Girl is a British cult film and the directorial debut of Gerry O'Hara. Produced by Robert Hartford-Davis with a script by Jan Read, it was released in 1963. The film's subject is premarital sexual relationships and sexually transmitted diseases in an English 1960s millieu.

Alchemy, Webster says, is a magical process of transmuting ordinary materials into something of true merit (base metals into gold). And such is this story of a young, very intense, woman who 'sculpts' by placing in some kind of order into cigar boxes, little things, usually broken, that she finds here and there. So exciting is her work that she is able to go to a month long retreat where she is only asked to "do what you do without interruption." But there are interruptions, and not only at this retreat, but in other parts of her life as she tries to amalgamate who she is from what she discovers about herself.

A vaudeville magician team is broken up when Carlee, an ex--circus performer, becomes infatuated with socialite Hilda Schmittlap. Meanwhile his vaudeville partner, Claire, has chosen a new partner, but her "heart isn't in it" because she is disconsolate over Carlee. Curious about her new act, Carlee attends a performance and sees Claire nearly killed when she fails to substitute fake bullets for real ones. Rushing to her aid, Carlee realizes how much Claire means to him.

"The slow and subtle repeated rhythms of daily life provide the material for this 12 part film. The pace is slow with the intention of inviting viewers into a more visceral and less verbally analytical state of mind. The 'action,' small events like the mail arriving, the storm coming, and the grass getting mowed, are secondary to the way of perceiving those events. In many ways this film reaches back into a kind of personal memory one might recall from early childhood." –Leighton Pierce

An honest rancher, after killing his best friend who's turned outlaw, takes his pal's orphaned younger brother into his own home. The boy, however, isn't aware he's now living with the man responsible for his brother's death. This 1933 RKO B-western, directed by Lloyd Nosler, stars Tom Keene, Lon Chaney Jr., David Durand, Julie Haydon, Edgar Kennedy, Charles King and Al Bridge.

Three best friends try to get 'internet famous' by filming their own survival show out in the woods. A weekend trip to accomplish this project turns deadly when a mysterious and very foreign visitor ends up in their neck of the woods.

This new reimagining will combine John W. Campbell's original story "Who Goes There?" (1938) with elements drawn from RKO’s "The Thing From Another World" (1951), John Carpenter’s classic "The Thing" (1982), and the long-lost additional chapters of Campbell's story, recently published as the novel "Frozen Hell" (2019).

Not quite a western, not quite a historical drama, Under Strange Flags is a little bit of both, and a lot of former RKO Radio cowboy hero Tom Keene. The star is cast as Tom Kenyon, a roving adventurer in Mexico during the Revolution. Hoping to protect the silver mine owned by heroine Dolores De Vargas (Luana Walters), Tom receives unexpected assistance from none other than rebel leader Pancho Villa (Maurice Black).

Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula uncovers the life and career of legendary actor Bela Lugosi, examining his early life in Hungary and Germany through his Hollywood successes and eventual decline. The film features a vast array of never-before-seen footage of the actor, ranging from remains of his 1918 film Struggle for Life to behind-the-scenes home movies on the set of RKO Studios. Lugosi is peppered with dozens of rare films clips and photographs, with the story itself coming to life thanks to the vast array of on-camera interviewees.

Why are we still able, today, to view images that were captured over 125 years ago? As we enter the digital age, audiovisual heritage seems to be a sure and obvious fact. However, much of cinema and our filmed history has been lost forever. Archivists, technicians and filmmakers from different parts of the world explain what audiovisual preservation is and why it is necessary. The documentary is a tribute to all these professionals and their important work.