TCM Presents All-Day RKO Horror Classics Marathon on April 8
On Tuesday, April 8, starting at 8:30 a.m. EST, TCM will launch a day-long tribute to the classic horror films produced by RKO Pictures.
Over the course of its roughly 30-year existence, from 1929-59, RKO Pictures was among the top film studios during Hollywood’s golden age. It produced titles in a variety of genres, but RKO’s horror features were especially good — though Universal and its collection of monsters get all the credit, RKO created just as thrilling a lineup of cinematic creepshows.
For 12 hours straight, TCM is airing eight RKO horror classics; seven of them are movies produced by Val Lewton, a master of understated chills and psychological terror.
8:30am: The Seventh Victim (1943)
Everett Collection
The Seventh Victim follows a woman who’s searching for her missing sister … but instead finds a cult of devil worshippers in New York’s Greenwich Village. The film marked the directorial debut of Mark Robson, who would later be nominated for a Best Director Oscar for his work on Peyton Place.
9:45am: Cat People (1942)
Everett Collection
Directed by the French Golden Age horror auteur Jacques Tourneur, Cat People stars Simone Simon as Irena, a young newlywed who believes that she turns into a giant, vicious cat when aroused. It might sound silly — but this moody, atmospheric film was a tremendous influence on erotic thrillers and sexy horror films. Don’t take our word for it — no less an icon than Paul Schrader directed a remake as a straight-up erotic thriller (that made a lot of the subtext into plain old text) in 1982.
11am: Isle of the Dead (1945)
Everett Collection
Boris Karloff stars as a general at the end of the Balkan Wars of 1912. When he and an American reporter visit the so-called “isle of the dead” to pay respects to Karloff’s deceased wife, they find an empty grave — and a dangerous situation in which a creature of myth might be proven real.
12:15pm: The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
Courtesy of Everett Collection
This sequel to Cat People follows the widower of the first film’s doomed Irena; now remarried and the father to a young girl, he becomes worried when his daughter seems to display the same penchant for fantasy (or is it awareness of her own supernatural nature?) that plagued his first wife. This film marks the directing debut of Robert Wise, Academy Award-winning director of The Sound of Music and West Side Story.
1:30pm: The Body Snatcher (1945)
Everett Collection
Val Lewton joins forces with Robert Wise and Boris Karloff in this Robert Lewis Stevenson adaptation, following the sinister adventures of a man who drives cabs by day and robs graves by night. The movie marks the final time that Karloff and Bela Lugosi appeared together on film.
3pm: I Walked With a Zombie (1943)
Everett Collection
This Jacques Tourneur-directed film follows a Canadian nurse’s journey to the Caribbean, where the plantation owner’s wife that she’s been contracted to care for just might be a member of the living dead. The film, which was loosely based on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, got mixed reviews at the time, but is now considered a wildly influential cult film.
4:15pm: King Kong (1933)
Everett Collection
Twas beauty killed the beast! RKO’s most famous picture (and one of the greatest monster movies of all time), King Kong stars Fay Wray as the gorgeous Ann Darrow, whose sweetness and beauty tempt Kong away from his placid life of fighting dinosaurs — only for him to kidnapped and subject to the horrors of the New World. The film’s ground-breaking special effects and sensitive beast have made it a classic for almost a century.
6:15pm: The Ghost Ship (1943)
Everett Collection
If you’ve never seen or even heard of this Mark Robson-directed film about a boat that might be haunted (or just might have an insane captain at the wheel), that isn’t because you weren’t paying attention; a lawsuit from a playwright alleging copyright infringement got the film pulled from theaters and removed from circulation. The film wasn’t available to US viewers until the 1990s, when it passed into the public domain.
Click here to download the full April 2025 TCM schedule.
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