Best Movies of 1927

Two young men, one rich, one middle class, both in love with the same woman, become US Air Corps fighter pilots and, eventually, heroic flying aces during World War I. Devoted best friends, their mutual love of the girl eventually threatens their bond. Meanwhile, a hometown girl who's the lovestruck lifelong next door neighbor of one of them, pines away.

London. A mysterious serial killer brutally murders young blond women by stalking them in the night fog. One foggy, sinister night, a young man who claims his name is Jonathan Drew arrives at the guest house run by the Bunting family and rents a room.

A criminal on the run hides in a circus and seeks to possess the daughter of the ringmaster at any cost.

A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer. This is the first full length feature film to use synchronized sound, and is the original film musical.

In Puritan Boston, seamstress Hester Prynne and kindly Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale fall in love. After Dimmesdale must go away for a time to England, he returns to discover that Hester has given birth to their child and is the focus of local censure.

A dejected Parisian sewer worker feels his prayers have been answered when he falls in love with a street waif.

Boisterous gangster kingpin Bull Weed rehabilitates his former lawyer from his alcoholic haze, but complications arise when he falls for Weed's girlfriend.

The most important family in Hickoryville is (not surprisingly) the Hickorys, with sheriff Jim and his tough manly sons Leo and Olin. The timid youngest son, Harold, doesn't have the muscles to match up to them, so he has to use his wits to win the respect of his strong father and also the love of beautiful Mary.

Comedy starring Jack Duffy and Anne Cornwall, featured in James Roots' 100 Essential Film Comedies

Rich old Cyrus West's relatives are waiting for him to die so they can inherit. But he stipulates that his will be read 20 years after his death. On the appointed day his expectant heirs arrive at his brooding mansion. The will is read and it turns out that Annabelle West, the only heir with his name left, inherits, if she is deemed sane. If she isn't, the money and some diamonds go to someone else, whose name is in a sealed envelope. Before he can reveal the identity of her successor to Annabelle, Mr. Crosby, the lawyer, disappears. The first in a series of mysterious events, some of which point to Annabelle in fact being unstable.

A flapper shopgirl woos her rich boss with animal magnetism, otherwise known as "it."

The abandoned Balfour House, which former owner was found dead five years earlier, comes back to life with the arrival of two suspicious sinister-looking tenants. (This movie was lost in 1965 during a fire.)

Brilliant in his studies and dismissive of athletics, Ronald finishes high school at the top of his class. But in college his uptight attitude doesn't win him any points with his sports-loving classmates, and pretty coed Mary ignores him in favor of brutish jock Jeff. Hoping to impress Mary, Ronald makes a buffoon of himself at every sport imaginable.

The King of Kings is the Greatest Story Ever Told as only Cecil B. DeMille could tell it. In 1927, working with one of the biggest budgets in Hollywood history, DeMille spun the life and Passion of Christ into a silent-era blockbuster. Featuring text drawn directly from the Bible, a cast of thousands, and the great showman’s singular cinematic bag of tricks, The King of Kings is at once spectacular and deeply reverent—part Gospel, part Technicolor epic.

Director Allan Dwan’s excellent use of New York locations enlivens a rags-to-riches tale that fully exploits star George O’Brien’s championship boxing prowess.

Max and his son Asher are invited to a party, where Max meets a rich widow, but Asher keeps annoying all of the guests, so Max refuses to speak to him. 10 days later he has married the widow, but hasn't told her about Asher. Asher doesn't like the situation either, and enters the home disguised as the new maid, that leeds to a growing suspicion of his step mother, who has her own little secret.

A servant girl plays matchmaker for the local burgomaster's daughter while setting her own sights on a visiting Irishman.

Fight manager takes out an insurance policy on his puny pugilist and then proceeds to try to arrange for an accident so that he can collect.

An escaped convict is out to kill the judge who sentenced him. Two inept detectives are hired to guard the judge.

John Livingston is a rich mama's-boy, who owns a blooded dog named Paul. Paul meets Maggie Mutt, and Paul, being a pedigree canine and somewhat of a cad, lures trusting Maggie to the barn to have his way. He then departs for his palatial doghouse at the Livingston estate. Meanwhile Maggie is broken-hearted and also finds that she is in a "family way", and gives birth to a pup she names Hank. Maggie tells Hank to find his "human ", and departs the scene. Hank goes to the park, meets a "human" named Mary Kelly, who is a homeless waif and sweetheart of poverty, and the two adopt each other. Later on in the park Paul comes strolling along with his 'human', John. A child falls into the lake and Paul and Hank team up to save her.

Joe Merrill, son of the millionaire owner of a chain of 5 and 10 cent stores, poses as Joe Grant, and takes a job in the stockroom of one of his father's stores, to prove that he can be a success without his father's influence. There he meets stockroom girl Maggie Johnson, and they fall in love. This causes problems, because Mrs. Merrill had planned for her son to marry Millicent Rogers, a high society girl.

A nobleman studying for the priesthood abandons his vocation in 18th Century France when he falls in love with a beautiful, but reluctant, courtesan.

Both Jack Sander and Bob Corby are boxers in love with Mabel. Jack and Mabel wed, but their marriage is flat. The young wife looks to Bob for comfort.

Our doggy hero is abandoned in the desert while in pup-hood. Upon reaching maturity, Tin Tin has undeservedly earned the reputation as a killer canine. Thus, the human characters spend most of their time hunting down the dog in hopes of collecting a huge bounty.

The film focuses on the naval warfare around the Battle of Coronel and Battle of the Falkland Islands during the First World War. It was the last in a successful series of documentary reconstructions of First World War battles by British Instructional Films made between 1921 and 1927.

Roddy, first son of the rich Berwick family, is expelled from school when he takes the blame for his friend Tim's charge. His family sends him away and all of his friends leave him alone. Through many life choices that don't work out in his favor, Roddy begins to find his life slowly spiraling out of his control.

Kelly's employer, Waters, is such a keen golfer that he asks Kelly to help him improve his game at an exclusive country club.

Directed by Oskar Fischinger.

A young divinity student helps and protects a down and out prostitute, at the cost of his own standing in the community.

Lone wolf, who is stirring up the Indians against the wishes of his elders, gets the job of scout at the fort. When he hears of the approval of the new reservation, he sends his men to trap Scott and his troop before they can deliver the information.

Mabel plays an out-and-out crook, a "Girl Bandit," no less. And she quickly hooks up with a male partner in crime, in this case a Gentleman Crook played by perpetually grinning Creighton Hale. Mabel seems a little livelier in this film than in some of her other late works. In the very first scene we find her hitch-hiking, and she's forced to make a mad dash for cover when Hale's car nearly hits her. Soon they team up and crash a swanky party in a mansion to steal a jewel from the host's safe.

Patsy Brand is a chorus girl at the Pleasure Garden music hall. She meets Jill Cheyne who is down on her luck and gets her a job as a dancer. Jill meets adventurer Hugh Fielding and they get engaged, but when Hugh travels out of the country, she begins to play around.

In San Francisco, a villainous landowner with underworld connections seeks to steal the property of an old Spanish family.

The story takes place in Milwaukee during the early 1900s with a bank clerk named August Schiller who is happy with both his job and his family. He is tasked with transporting $1,000 in securities to Chicago. On the train he meets a blond seductress who convinces him to buy her a bottle of champagne, and takes him to a saloon. The next morning he awakes alone in a dilapidated bedroom and without the securities.

The Laguna Dam is to be built in Arizona to supply water to desert-land unfit for cultivation or stock-raising. Rival companies bid for the building contract, which leads to violence and danger for Bob Owen and his dog Satan.

There is hunger in Siberia during the Russian Civil War. One day while dim-witted peasant Sergei is searching corpses for food, he meets a young woman looking for the town of Novokursk. She asks Sergei to help her get there, and to tell anyone they might meet that he is her husband.

An amateur boxing champion stops at West Point to see a dress parade and falls for the commandant's daughter. He wins an appointment to the Academy and begins a rivalry for her affection.

A fresh young beauty becomes an old maid waiting for her suitor to return from the Napoleonic wars. When he returns, clearly disappointed, she disguises herself as her own niece in order to test his loyalty.

François Villon, in his lifetime the most renowned poet in France, is also a prankster, an occasional criminal, and an ardent patriot.

A young working-class girl causes a stir when she sneaks off for a romantic getaway with the wealthy heir of the mill where she works.

Oswald plays a cop who woos a nurse who wanders into the park. Pete then gets Oswald drunk and woos the nurse wearing Oswald's stolen uniform.

Charles Bowers is once again an eccentric inventor. This time, he has only a matter of hours to debut his extraordinary new invention in order to collect a huge bequest from his deceased father. Along the way, his evil uncle tries to sabotage the machine, so the inheritance will go to him.

A con artist and a midget dressed as her infant son, are unmasked aboard a ship by a steward.

In 1856, slave Eliza plans to marry George with the consent of the Shelbys, her masters, but George's owner prevents the wedding. A few years later, Eliza flees with her son, Harry, after learning the Shelbys plan to hand them over to a crooked creditor to prevent foreclosure. George also escapes and goes on the run while Eliza and Harry are captured and brought back home. Mother and son are separated as George tries to find them both.

A wealthy young businessman consecutively falls in love with a classy English woman (Pearl), a Russian sculptress (Athalia), and a naive working-class girl (Lucie).

Can Neil Hamilton, the first flying policeman on the force, save his dad from stop-at-nothing jewel thieves?

A young woman at life's crossroads is granted mystic visions of how her decisions will affect her future life.

Elephants disrupt the lives of a family deep in the jungles of Northern Siam, and an entire village.

Norma Talmadge plays a Mexican saloon singer, known as 'The Dove.' She is romanced by a young caballero and menaced by a Villa-like brute of a dictator, played by Noah Beery.