She climbed the ladder of success…wrong by wrong!

Kick off our Pre-Code Day celebration with a matinee screening of Baby Face, starring Frida Cinema favorite Barbara Stanwyck in one of her defining roles! And make sure to get their early as the co-author of Pre-Code Essentials: Must-See Cinema from Hollywood’s Untamed Era, 1930-1934, Kim Luperi, will be joining us to introduce the film and sign copies of her book in the lobby!

Stanwyck plays a young woman who, after a brutal upbringing, heads to New York and deliberately sleeps her way up the corporate ladder of a bank, using sex, charm, and sharp intelligence as tools for survival. The film is startlingly frank about exploitation and capitalism, barely bothering to moralize the lead character’s methods, which is exactly why censors cracked down on it soon after release!

Four vignettes, each set in different decades from the 1950s through the 1980s, deal with protagonists at different stages of life between childhood and young adulthood. This is In Our Time, an anthology film from 1982, directed by Edward Yang, Ko I-chen, Jim Tao, and Chang Yi. 

Often seen as a starting point for Taiwan’s great art house wave of the 1980s and marking a shift toward more realistic and socially grounded filmmaking, this landmark anthology is rarely seen, on the big screen or not. Focused on small emotional moments like family life, school, work, and the quiet anxieties of growing up, it’s this exact type of naturalism became a defining trait of the movement that followed and established the career directors who later defined the entirety of new-age Asian cinema.

“I just killed a rat!”

Join us for our Pre-Code Day celebration of Heat Lightning, preceded by an in-person introduction by Kim Luperi, co-author of the TCM/Running Press book Pre-Code Essentials: Must-See Cinema from Hollywood’s Untamed Era, 1930-1934! Kim will also be signing and selling copies of her book in the lobby! 

Set almost entirely at a desert roadside diner and gas station, the film follows two sisters running the business when a group of suspicious travelers arrives during a stormy night. What starts as a character drama about past regrets and hard-earned independence gradually turns into a pressure-cooker thriller involving crime and rekindled emotions.

Join us as we continue or Tribute To Bud Cort series his wonderful performance in Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude, making its annual return to The Frida Cinema. 

The young Harold (Bud Cort) lives in his own world of suicide-attempts and funeral visits to avoid the misery of his current family and home environment. Harold meets an 80-year-old woman named Maude (Ruth Gordon) who also lives in her own world yet one in which she is having the time of her life. When the two opposites meet they realize that their differences don’t matter and they become best friends and love each other.

Beloved for its quirky humor and tender tone, Harold and Maude is fondly remembered as a black comedy with serious heart.

Beloved character actor Bud Cort built a career out of making the unusual unforgettable. From his odd bird performance in Brewster McCloud to his tender, offbeat turn in Harold And Maude, he gave us a lifetime of bringing humanity to the outsiders he inhabited. Join us in March 2026 as we pay tribute to his work.

Join us for the final film of our Pre-Code Day celebration as we present a brand new 4K restoration of Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat! Joining us for a special pre-screening introduction for the film will be Kim Luperi, the co-author of the TCM/Running Press book Pre-Code Essentials: Must-See Cinema from Hollywood’s Untamed Era, 1930-1934!

Unlike the gothic fantasy tone of many early Universal horrors, The Black Cat leans into a modern, post-World War I despair. The story is steeped in trauma and betrayal, with Boris Karloff playing one of the era’s coldest villains and Bela Lugosi giving a truly haunted performance.

For a 1934 studio horror, it’s shockingly dark and less of a monster movie as it is a morbid meditation on war and human corruption.

Our second Volunteer Of The Month takes a dark detour courtesy of Maggie, who has chosen Crimson Peak, Guillermo del Toro’s 2015 gothic romance.

The film follows Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), an aspiring writer haunted by the ghostly warning to “Beware of Crimson Peak.” After a whirlwind romance, she marries the enigmatic Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and moves to his decaying ancestral mansion, Allerdale Hall, alongside his mysterious sister, Lady Lucille (Jessica Chastain). As Edith unravels the sinister history of the Sharpe family and the house itself, she discovers dark truths lurking beneath its beautiful, crumbling facade.

Combining haunting performances and atmosphere dripping with suspense, Crimson Peak is a masterful blend of romance and horror that pays homage to the classic gothic storytelling that its maker grew up obsessed with.