The younger brother of director Robert Siodmak, Dresden-born author, screenwriter, and director Curt Siodmak broke into the film business as an extra in Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis (1926). Siodmak was a newspaper reporter at the time and was mainly interested in writing a story about Lang and his film. But screen work appealed to Siodmak's sense of adventure and in 1929, he and Billy Wilder co-wrote Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday) directed by brother Robert and the young Edgar C. Ulmer. Curt Siodmak enjoyed some success with the German science fiction thriller F.P. 1 Antwortet Nicht (Platform 1 Does Not Answer), but like so many of his contemporaries, he was forced to flee Nazi Germany in favor of first Great Britain and then Hollywood, where he finally arrived in 1937. Through a friend, German expatriate director Joe May, Siodmak landed with Universal where he wrote or co-wrote screenplays for a series of genre films that included The Invisible Man Returns (1940), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1942), the intelligent Son of Dracula (1942), and I Walked With a Zombie (1944). The last, written for producer Val Lewton, contains perhaps Siodmak's most haunting work and remains a classic of the horror genre. In 1942, Siodmak published the influential science fiction novel Donovan's Brain in which a scientist manages to keep alive the brain of a tyrannical industrialist with unexpected and horrifying results. Based in part on Siodmak's screenplay for Black Friday (1940) in which benign college professor Boris Karloff turns into a vicious gangster after a brain transplant, Donovan's Brain itself was filmed in 1944 as The Monster and the Lady, in 1953 under its original title, and in England in 1965 as simply The Brain. In the 1950s, Siodmak began a brief directorial career that included the dreadful but still eminently watchable voodoo "epic" The Bride of the Gorilla (1951); The Magnetic Monster (1953), which had special effects "borrowed" from the 1934 German Gold; and The Devil's Messenger (1961) starring Lon Chaney Jr. The last was made on nearly no budget at all and was mostly recycled footage from a 1950s Swedish television series No. 13 Demon Street. Siodmak returned to Europe in the 1960s, but his work there was mediocre at best. His last assignment as a director was the German Liebesspiel im Schnee (1967) released in America in 1969 as Ski Fever and mainly of interest for the appearances of Dean Martin's daughter Claudia and European television stars Vivi Bach and Dietmar Schoenherr.
| Title | Year | Editors' Rating | User Rating | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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The Wolfman
From Screenplay by |
2010 | |||
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Ritual
From Screenplay by |
2001 | |||
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Universal Horror
Participant |
1998 | |||
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Ski Fever
Director, Screenwriter |
1965 | |||
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Vengeance
Screen Story |
1964 | |||
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Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace
Screenwriter |
1962 | |||
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The Brain
Screen Story |
1962 | |||
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The Devil's Messenger
Director |
1962 | |||
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Love Slaves of the Amazons
Director, Producer, Screenwriter |
1957 | |||
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Curucu, Beast of the Amazon
Director, Screenwriter |
1956 | |||
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Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Screen Story |
1956 | |||
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Creature with the Atom Brain
Screenwriter |
1955 | |||
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Riders to the Stars
Screenwriter |
1954 | |||
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Tales of Frankenstein
Director |
1954 | |||
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Donovan's Brain
Screen Story |
1953 | |||
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The Magnetic Monster
Director, Screenwriter |
1953 | |||
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Bride of the Gorilla
Director, Screenwriter |
1951 | |||
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Four Days Leave
Screenwriter |
1950 | |||
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Tarzan's Magic Fountain
Screenwriter |
1949 | |||
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Berlin Express
Screen Story |
1948 | |||
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The Beast with Five Fingers
Screenwriter |
1946 | |||
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The Return of Monte Cristo
Screen Story |
1946 | |||
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Frisco Sal
Screenwriter |
1945 | |||
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Shady Lady
Screenwriter |
1945 | |||
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House of Frankenstein
Screenwriter |
1944 | |||
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The Climax
Screenwriter |
1944 | |||
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The Lady and the Monster
Screen Story |
1944 | |||
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False Faces
Screenwriter |
1943 | |||
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I Walked with a Zombie
Screenwriter |
1943 | |||
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Son of Dracula
Screen Story |
1943 | |||
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The Mantrap
Screenwriter |
1943 | |||
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The Purple V
Screenwriter |
1943 | |||
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Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman
Screenwriter |
1942 | |||
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Invisible Agent
Screenwriter |
1942 | |||
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London Blackout Murders
Screenwriter |
1942 | |||
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Aloma of the South Seas
Screenwriter |
1941 | |||
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Pacific Blackout
Screen Story |
1941 | |||
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The Wolf Man
Screenwriter |
1941 | |||
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Black Friday
Screenwriter |
1940 | |||
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The Ape
Screenwriter |
1940 | |||
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The Invisible Man Returns
Screenwriter |
1940 | |||
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The Invisible Woman
Screen Story |
1940 | |||
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Her Jungle Love
Screen Story |
1938 | |||
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The Loves of Madame Dubarry
Screenwriter |
1938 | |||
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Non-Stop New York
Screenwriter |
1937 | |||
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It's a Bet
Screenwriter |
1935 | |||
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Transatlantic Tunnel
Screenwriter |
1935 | |||
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Girls Will Be Boys
Screen Story, Screenwriter |
1934 | |||
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F.P. 1 Antwortet Nicht
Screen Story |
1933 | |||
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F.P.1
Screenwriter |
1933 | |||
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Marion, das Gehoert Sich Nicht
Screen Story |
1933 | |||
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Der Mann, Der Seinen Moerder Sucht
Screenwriter |
1931 | |||
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Le Bal
Screenwriter |
1931 | |||
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The Shot in The Talker Studio
Screen Story |
1930 | |||
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Mascottchen
Screenwriter |
1929 |