Little Known Private Detectives Private Investigators of B Movies or Softcore Movies or Erotica of any kind

Franco Nero as the Private Detective "Cobra".

An American narcotics agent is murdered in Italy. The head of the department decides to hire Larry Stanziani, 'The Cobra'. Larry, a former agent and now a third-rate private detective, uses the opportunity to get even with an old enemy, but soon he finds out he's facing a relentless organization

Dan Turner fanatic John Wooley scripted an original story for The Raven Red Kiss-Off (1990) wherein Turner (Marc Singer) gets involved with a movie mogul, a beautiful starlet named Vala DuValle (Tracy Scoggins) and, as usual, blackmail.

If you liked Phillip Marlowe movies or Humphrey Bogart Movies, or "The Cheap Detective" starring Peter falk, then you'll love this movie.

A man with a fixation on Humphrey Bogart gets plastic surgery to make him look exactly like Bogart. Then he changes his name to Sam Marlowe (after Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe, two of Bogart's most famous characters), hires a ditzy blonde secretary, and opens up a detective agency. His first case is one that would do Bogie proud... Starring Franco Nero, Olivia Hussey, Herbert Lom, Sybil Danning.

Chuck Norris as a Phillip Marlowe Clone minus the dialogues.

John Shepherd is not a cop’s cop. He used to be, but he killed too many bad guys with firearms and his hands while a homicide detective in Spoken, Washington, and the city wanted him gone. So did the bad guys. Now he’s a private investigator specializing in finding people who don’t want to, or can’t, be found. Dirk is not his real name, just one that’s convenient at the moment. He’s a free-lance killer with more identities than Interpol, the FBI, the CIA, and the Mossad know about. He is hired by a former Nazi SS colonel, Gustav Speerman, now passing in Spoken as Simon Heschel, to find an ancient Hebrew artifact known as Aaron‘s Breastplate, which contain two of the most storied stones-----diamonds-----known to man.. Dirk finds the breastplate in the desert of Israel, killing five archeologists in the process. He must now track down a diamond cutter to cut the two stones for Heschel in a pattern called the Tolkowsky Modification. Liz Greene is the protégé of an old Hasidic diamond cutter, Isaac Teller, and both work in Spoken downtown. Isaac is a Holocaust survivor, a man with a past he won’t talk about. While in the camps he developed a cut of diamond he called the Tolkowsky Modification. Liz is kidnapped by two thugs working for Zach, but Shepherd, attending the same Shiva as Liz, foils the kidnapping and kills both thugs. Liz, not knowing who is who, escapes the scene, leaving a bag of small uncut diamonds on the ground. Shepherd discovers the diamonds. Posing as a Hasid from Tel Aviv, Zach lures Isaac to a secure warehouse to consult on the two rough diamonds. He tells him the stones must be cut in the Tolkowsky Modification, and until they are finished, Liz will be kept hostage. If Isaac refuses, Liz will be killed. Liz, after reporting to the police that Isaac is missing, realizes that Shepherd is the one who saved her life---and “stole” her diamonds. She ends up hiring him to find Isaac, and the two start a journey that

Charles Dexter Ward's wife enlists the help of a private detective to find out what her husband is up to in a remote cabin owned by his family for centuries. The husband is a chemical engineer, and the smells from his experiments (and the delivery of what appear to be human remains at all hours) are beginning to arouse the attention of neighbors and local law enforcement officials. When the detective and wife find a diary of the husband's ancestor from 1771, and reports of gruesome murders in the area begin to surface, they begin to suspect that some very unnatural experiments are being conducted in the old house. Based on an H.P. Lovecraft story.

An international crime syndicate absconds with over $5 million in precious jewels. Police are baffled. The insurance companies are outraged. When dashing Tony Driscoll-private investigator-is called in, the robbery investigation quickly becomes a murder case. And Driscoll is suspect #1. Dodging cops as well as criminals, Driscoll steps into a subterranean world. A world of beautiful women, exotic ports and sleek fast cars. Where hunter becomes hunted-and romance is heartbeats away from death.

A small, seemingly innocuous plastic reel of film leads surveillance specialist Tom Welles down an increasingly dark and frightening path. With the help of the streetwise Max, Welles relentlessly follows a bizarre trail of evidence to determine the fate of a complete stranger. As his work turns into obsession, he drifts farther and farther away from his wife, family and simple life as a small-town private eye.

Cousins Thomas and David, owners of a mobile restaurant, team up with their friend Moby, a bumbling private detective, to save the beautiful Sylvia, a pickpocket. Action and humor abound in the streets of Barcelona, culminating with a battle in the castle hideout of the evil gang.

A private detective is hired to find a missing stripper. A simple job turns complicated when everyone he questions ends up dead.

The 1968 Pete McGrath book, Lie a Little, Die a Little, featuring Brett was actually used as the basis for a trippy, trashy soft-core film entitled Cry Uncle! Allen Garfield, the star of such other soft-core classics as Orgy Girls and Roommates, plays a private eye (McGrath is now called "JAKE MASTERS") hired to track down a porn actress. Supposedly a cut above most films of its ilk, it boasts a few good yucks, a totally tasteless necrophilia scene, a little hardcore (including one scene involving a 65-year-old man) and Paul Sorvino in a small role as "The Coughing Cop." Oh, and the director, John G. Avildsen, went on to make Rocky and The Karate Kid.

Supersonic Man doesn't waste any energy on originality. A super-powered alien called Supersonic is sent by his superiors to Earth to intervene in Man's war-like, nuclear aspirant ways. Once there, he assumes human guise as the luxuriantly mustached private detective Paul [who] lacks Supersonic's super abilities, and is, in fact, extremely susceptible to head trauma, which makes it all the more baffling that he so often insists upon taking on the bad guys on his own without assuming his infinitely more powerful alter ego. This never works out for him, and, as a result, he ends up spending a lot of time unconscious in the trunks of henchmen's cars.

A woman is convinced by her lover to poison her cruel husband, a rich businessman. However, she becomes terrified when she finds the lover dead as well. A sinister PI(Robert Mitchum), who's investigating her husband's disappearance, contacts her. Also Starring Sybil Danning.

Somebody's running a takeover on crime lord King Lathrop's (Owen Watson) operation using bogarts in Hannibal Lector lookin’-like masks. Clueless, King Lathrop calls private detective Velvet Smooth (Johnnie Hill) for help. With the help of her friends Ria (Elsie Roman), a lawyer, and Frankie (René Van Clief), she infiltrates the criminal underworld to investigate.

Velvet finds this may be an inside job led by King Lathrop's man Calvin (James Durrah). When Velvet reports this to Lathrop, he denies it at first but the problems come closer to Calvin. Hurt by it all, Lathrop fires Calvin. Although Lathrop thinks Calvin masterminded the take-over on his own, Velvet remains unconvinced and seeks further to find out who was the man behind the man.

A doctor attempts to restore his sisters looks when her face is severely burned when acid is thrown on it. He abducts young women and conducts experiments with skin grafts but it fails. Later he is assisted by an ex Nazi doctor who has experience of it. Meanwhile the rich father of one of the kidnapped women hires a private detective to find his daughter.

A young man has to take over the ruined detective agency of his father and his uncle. There are two major difficulties to manage: His uncle and his new job.

Al Pereira, the private detective in atleast 13 movies directed by Jesus Franco was best played by Howard vernon in this movie.

A micro-budgeted affair even by Robert De Nesle standards, looks like it was shot in a few days while everyone was holed up at the HOTEL CATALINA. Grim and grimy, it’s a sleaze-fest even by Jess Franco standards. This is a hopeless nightclub world populated by desperate men, strippers, career criminals, transsexuals, lesbians, sadists, masochists, transvestites and a universe of LGBT personages all competing for the attention of the pathetic Al Pereira. Played by Howard Vernon, who follows Eddie Constantine (CARTES SUR TABLE) in the role, this PI is neither entertaining to watch nor is it possible to care about him. He’s just there. But there’s no there there. Vernon exudes a vibe of palpable disgust, perhaps the actor’s comment on having to play this role.

Some critics have slammed this title but I give it high marks for an overwhelming ambiance of desperate lust converted into despair. The most sympathetic character, the elegant exotic dancer Valentina (Montserrat Prous) meets the most horrendous fate when she’s slowly tortured to death by Kali Hansa and co. Franco spares us no detail of the pain of this character. Her elegant striptease features very little stripping but a lot of showstopping posing and striking gestures which approach a kind of erotic sculpture. The setting which houses all this depravity seems a series of impersonal cubicles where elaborate perversions are performed for paying customers. One of them is occupied by Jess Franco, who seems to be getting stoned while bathed in crimson light.

This is a rather delirious enterprise but one also feels the need to shower after viewing. The density of the malignant atmosphere is ultimately overwhelming. Al Pereira is on a steep downward spiral here and his pent up rage and disgusts explodes as he stabs to death the performer (Glenda Allen aka Dany Sam) who he has used to help him retrieve some evidence. She seems a seductive woman but is actually a devious sex change who has just knifed Anne Libert in the midst of more sleazy sex. The implication being that Al hates himself and when he finds out he has been having relations with someone born as another man, he kills what he hates most, the feminine lurking within the masculine.

Franco’s deploys his performers in imaginative, stylized set ups in very close quarters here. A world of tattered dreams, penny ante glitz and endless erotic shows for the edification of an unappreciative audience. Al Pereira looks in the mirror and hates what he sees in this entry.

Jess Franco would play Pereira next in DOWNTOWN. Ultimately Antonio Mayans, the definite interpreter of this role, would play the PI in such 1980s masterpieces as BOTAS NEGRA, LATIGO DE CUERO (1982) and CAMINO SOLITARIO (1983). Mayans would also return in the role for the last completed Jess Franco film, AL PEREIRA VS THE ALLIGATOR LADIES (2012), an 81/2 style final farewell from the dying auteur. In those later films the character was both threatened and sometimes saved by females. If he let his guard down, he was dead meat. In LA MASON DU VICE, Al is the walking dead, waiting for the bullet which never comes. The bilious intensity of Kali Hansa lingers long after the film is over, like a superb performance of a very nasty number.

BOTAS NEGRAS, LATIGO DE CUERO seems to be a kind of remake of this, but it’s a much more personal and resonant work, even though it has an even more downbeat conclusion. By the 1980s Jess Franco had achieved a long delayed personal and artistic freedom working on his Golden Films Internacional and Manacoa productions in which he didn’t have any thematic/stylistic constraints or post-production meddling with his output. He did have severe budgetary limitations which he managed to overcome and turned out some of his most personal and interesting work.

Other movies where this character can be seen are :- http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0381628/

The 2002 "erotic thriller" Wicked Temptations was re-titled "Sex, Secrets and Lies 2" for its DVD release, although it doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with the original Sex, Secrets and Lie that came out a year earlier. Not the same cast, characters, writers, producers or plot -- the only thing the two films seem to share is a slightly noirish vibe, some soft core sex and the same production company, MRG Entertainment, a company that specializes in this sort of fare.

SAMANTHA "SAM" SHARPE is an ambitious but lonely (but, of course, drop dead gorgeous) private eye whose cases aren't exactly going to make any headlines, but that changes when she's hired to track down a publishing mogul's missing trophy wife. But when a corpse turns up at the bottom of a pool, Sam decides to set a trap for the killer.

Yes, along the way there's plenty of steamy -- but not too steamy -- sex. In fact, it seems like there's a (simulated) sex scene about every five minutes or so. And even more amazing is that, in a refreshing change for this sort of flick, the detective isn't a participant in every sex scene -- Sam really only gets her man in the end. Although the single most common complaint in online "customer reviews" is that the sex isn't explicit enough.

As one wag pointed out, "I don't think these films were ever considered hardcore porn to begin with, so I don't know who the knucklehead was who thought it would be a good idea to release these as "cleaned-up" versions. What--they actually thought customers were gonna buy these just for the plots and the great acting?"

Still, it would have been interesting to scrap all the heavy breathing and grunting, and see this film done as a more-or-less straight P.I. flick Sam is actually a pretty appealling detective. Yeah, yeah, she's pretty easy on the eyes, and yes, I looked when she finally dropped trou, but she's also got a little more grit to her than usual for this sort of thing. She's got a rather curt, no-nonsense approach to business, and she makes no attempt to hide her ambitions -- although she's working out of her apartment when we first meet her, she makes no bones about hoping to milk the case for enough to finally get her own office.

By the way, the actress who plays Sam is billed as "Scarlet Johansing," although her real name is apparently Monique Parent, -- about as as French-Canadian a name as you can get, although her IMDB bio insists she was born in California. Then again, several of her early film credits were in Canadian productions, and the bio says she was once married to someone whose last name was Johansing, whose only credit seems to be a documentary of the porn industry that was filmed in English and French... in Canada.

Private detective Fix Cleary (Robert Davi) gets involved, via girlfriend Rikki Rennick (Tanya Roberts), who with her brother Bud (Charles McCaughan) runs a bar with an illegal medium-stakes poker game in the back room, in the L.A. drug trade orchestrated by Malcolm Connery (Morton Downey, Jr.), the psychotic owner of a corrupt savings-and-loan called "The Hearth and Home."

Maria Ford's sister who is a PI is killed and she investigates her murder.

Unbeknownst to her adoring public, Delilah is carrying on a same-sex relationship with her blond companion, Reena Jacobs (Chanda), while continuing to sleep with her manager, Danny (Paolelli). On top of that, her mobster record label owner (McFarland) just might kill her for an insurance policy if she fails to resign with him. If those elements weren’t dangerous enough, a crazed military veteran named John Sweet (Broome) is stalking Delilah and leaving a trail of severed fingers and dead hookers in his wake. Who in the world has the balls to take on someone so sadistic?

Rather fortunately, Delilah finds those balls hanging from Brit Alwood (Spradling), a bad-ass private investigator whose fondness for dark aviators is second only to her love for giving piggish men free vasectomies with kicks to the crotch. Her toughness runs in the family too; Brit’s younger sister, Jo (Ford) is a tough-as-manicured-nails undercover cop who finds it easiest to rough up the scum of society while dressed in tight jeans and navel-exposing tube tops. While Brit initially takes Delilah’s case, it’s Jo who ends up performing the grunt work of protecting her. The saucy Internet rumor posits that the role of Spradling’s character was diminished due to her refusal to partake in a specific scene we’ll discuss in a couple of ‘graphs.

BAsed on story by John Dahl.

It appears that Joey Bradley (Clayton Rohner), a budding architect, is having a day that is turning out poorly: he unjustly fails to gain a promotion with his firm (a decidedly curious plot element that has no apparent connection with the remainder of the tale), and when he enters his apartment he discovers that a dead man is in his shower stall and that a mysterious audio tape has been placed within his telephone answering unit. This tape relates a message from his father, Charles Bradley (Anthony Zerbe), a newspaper editor who is preparing to publish an exposé of the local police department that will reveal department personnel trafficking in narcotics that have been purloined from police property storage. The found body is of a private investigator who planted the tape immediately before being slain, it being intended to be heard by Joey, thereby drawing him into the scandalous affair. The p.i.'s killer is Detective Ryan (Ray Sharkey) of the police force who spends the remainder of the film in clumsy attempts to assassinate the younger Bradley while endeavouring to seize the audio tape in order to obviate information upon the tape for its department-damning nature. In the course of fleeing from a persistently homicidal Ryan, Joey is run down by a young woman driver, Jenny Fox (Talia Balsam), who then brings him to her apartment for the ostensible purpose of dressing his wounds, succeeded by the ineludible bonding of the two in a passionate relationship as together they attempt to ascertain who is trying to murder Joey, and why, Jenny's support being much welcomed by her harried lover who is doggedly determined in his efforts to triumph over the sinister Forces of Evil that confront him.

Is anyone who he says he is in this caper that moves from Hong Kong and Las Vegas to Tokyo? Ken doesn't show up in Vegas for his wedding; his disconsolate bride, Macy, heads home for Hong Kong and finds John, an interior decorator, waiving a check of Ken's that has bounced. She leaves immediately for Tokyo to find her businessman boyfriend, and John tags along. Ken's flat is teeming with members of the Ito gang, who are also looking for Ken. John and Macy escape, with the help of a crew of look-alike cuties who work for Lin, who claims to be a private investigator. He too is looking for Ken. Where is Ken, why has he disappeared, and who will find him first?

Michael is a private investigator with special psychic powers allowing him to subconsciously see clues in a case. He is hired to investigate the death

A seeming good Samaritan (Debra Winger) hires a private detective (Nolte) to prove a teen sitting in prison on a murder charge is innocent. His investigation discovers deep corruption in a Connecticut town and finds the woman isn't everything she pretends to be.

Pogue is a private eye with a problem: every morning when he wakes up, he has total amnesia, waking up with a 'blank slate'. Since he is in the middle of a hot investigation and has a developing romance, this is less than convenient.

The mysterious Jane Janzen hires private detective Barry Haven to find her younger runaway sister Jessica who has been missing for the last three months. He travels to a remote small town called Lost Lake where he meets the free-spirited Trix and together they start to investigate the whereabouts of Jessica. As the investigation progresses Barry becomes involved with an occult sect of strange women called the Daughters of Darkness led by the beautiful, seductive Connie. Each night Barry is drugged and forced to undergo sexual rituals with different members of the sect in preparation for the solstice when Damien will arise again to spread his seed among the Daughters of Darkness, an event that occurs only once every 33 years. However, all is not it seems and little does Barry realize that he is in fact the bait and the real reason that the women have lured him to this town will be revealed on the night of the solstice!

Pregnant porn star Elektra Luxx is trying to make a split from the adult film industry by making a living teaching sex classes to housewives. But her life is thrown into disarray when a flight attendant with ties to Elektra's past approaches her for a favor. Chaos and hilarity ensue as fiancees, private investigators, a twin sister, best selling authors and even the Virgin Mary force her to face up to an unexpected series of decisions and revelations.

Starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, Carla Gugino

Hideous!, a movie about some dam workers who fish a weird deformed creature (WDC) out of the water, one of whom sells it to a broker for WDCs that sells to freaky rich people who collect WDCs. She sells it first to a man named Napoleon Lazar, who is then robbed by a topless woman named Sheila in a gorilla mask, who then delivers it to her boss, Dr. Lorca, another collector of WDCs. Lazar gets a private investigator involved to track the WDC, and he, the PI, and the broker show up at Dr. Lorca's castle where all hell breaks loose, as Lorca's collection of "dead" WDCs come to life and wreak havoc.

It's hard to believe Trader Horne (1970, Entertainment Ventures Inc), ever qualified as racy stuff. Maybe everyone was thirteen back in 1970 when this piece of softcore cinematic cheese was released on an unsuspecting public. Billed as "a bawdy sex and jungle romp" that turns into "a hilarious parody of the genre", what this really is is a lame excuse to have young women flash their tits.

This excuse in this one has HAMILTON HORNE, a sexy young private eye who acts like Jungle Jim when he's hired to track down Algona, the missing daughter of two zoologists killed in Africa, in order to settle the sizable family estate.

Joining Horne (the 'e' is silent -- yeah, right) on his quest are ther usual gang of hot-to-trot crazies, including a lesbian journalist, and two of Algona's greedy (but kinky) loving relatives. Hot on the trail, they soon hook up with the Meshpokas, natives who are lead by a mysterious White Goddess. Hornee soon puts two and two together, and surmises that Algona may be the one they are looking for. Well, d'uh!

That startlingly brilliant and intuitive piece of deduction is more than matched by the cutting edge comedy bits offered here: wacky cannibals, a witch-doctor with a large pot of boiling water and that good ol' stand-by: blacks eating watermelon. But unoriginality and questionable taste aren't all this classic has going for it -- it also has bad acting and a lame plot that features a lot of people walking around and some stock footage of African wildlife leftover, it looks like, from old Tarzan films. Oh, and not much more sex than your average MTV video.

Low-rent private dick Sam Drake is called on to identify which heir is trying to kill a wealthy old man. At the old gentleman's mansion, he encounters an assortment of beautiful women who in turn engage him in all sorts of unpredictable and zany sexual situations spoofing the detective genre clichés.

A businessman gets shot while he is enjoying covering his prostitute girlfriend with shaving cream. His wife decides to hire a private detective to track down the killers.

Cody Abiliene is a semi-successful private detective desperately in need of a big (and well-paying) case. When he's hired to solve the murder of Contessa Luciana's husband, he jumps at the chance. In between investigating the many women around the Contessa's estate, Abilene eventually uncovers a complex case of espionage and blackmail.

Private Eye Gunner Sloan is frustrated by a brutal, psychotic serial killer of Boston's "combat zone" girls. Somehow the killer has inside information on his own case and manages to stay ahead of not only the police but also a step ahead of the brilliant, albeit "tough guy", Private Detective.