10 Horror Films That Beat Genre Prejudice To Win Oscars

3. Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1931) - Best Actor

The very first horror film to win any Oscars was at the fifth ceremony in 1932 when the Academy Awards were a significantly smaller scale affair. There were only 12 prizes in total and no film won more than two.

When it came to awarding the Best Actor Oscar the choice was between just three nominees and two of them ended up sharing the prize anyway: Wallace Beery as a washed up boxer in The Champ and Frederic March for the eponymous dual role of Paramount's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Did It Deserve To Win?

Yes. Comfortably the best version of Robert Louis Stevenson's split personality scientist on screen, the Paramount Jekyll and Hyde was made, like Universal's first Frankenstein, before the introduction of the rigorous censorship of the Hays Code and, thus, can surprise modern audiences with how provocative it is in places. March's Jekyll is clearly tempted to transform into his more licentious alter-ego by the seductions of barely clothed women.

He plays Jekyll's repressed attitude with aplomb. Where the film was really pioneering, though, was in the actual transformation from staid doctor to monstrous killer, happening almost entirely on screen thanks to make up and colour filters. Had there been Oscars for editing and make up at the time Jekyll and Hyde would surely have deserved them and March is great in this sequence, completely selling the transformation process.

To be honest, his Hyde is a little too bestial, a little cartoonish for modern audiences, but this is the only flaw in what is otherwise one of the best monster pictures of the '30s.