TO WATCH 40s, 50s, 60s Psychological Thrillers
by janhaas-00773 | created - 16 Nov 2022 | updated - 17 Nov 2022 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. The Velvet Touch (1948)
Approved | 100 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A Broadway star unintentionally kills her impresario but keeps mum about it after the police investigator targets a rival actress.
Director: Jack Gage | Stars: Rosalind Russell, Leo Genn, Claire Trevor, Sydney Greenstreet
Votes: 1,284
2. Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)
Approved | 81 min | Crime, Drama, Fantasy
After phony stage mentalist Triton mysteriously acquires supernatural powers of precognition, he becomes frightened and abandons his act to live in anonymity.
Director: John Farrow | Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell, John Lund, Virginia Bruce
Votes: 1,743
3. Wanted for Murder (1946)
Approved | 103 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A woman becomes the target of a man who is gradually becoming insane, unable to resist his urge to strangle women to death, but who appears to be purposely leaving pieces of evidence behind.
Director: Lawrence Huntington | Stars: Eric Portman, Dulcie Gray, Derek Farr, Roland Culver
Votes: 805
4. Strange Illusion (1945)
Passed | 87 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Paul dreams that his father's fatal accident actually was murder. When details of his dream repeat themselves in reality he seeks the help of psychiatrist Dr. Vincent, and they attempt to solve the riddle - with dangerous consequences.
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer | Stars: Jimmy Lydon, Sally Eilers, Warren William, Regis Toomey
Votes: 1,131
5. Laura (1944)
Passed | 88 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery
A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he is investigating.
Directors: Otto Preminger, Rouben Mamoulian | Stars: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price
Votes: 51,425 | Gross: $4.36M
6. Out of the Past (1947)
Approved | 97 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A private eye escapes his past to run a gas station in a small town, but his past catches up with him. Now he must return to the big city world of danger, corruption, double crosses, and duplicitous dames.
Director: Jacques Tourneur | Stars: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming
Votes: 40,924
7. The Lost Moment (1947)
Not Rated | 89 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Romance
A publisher insinuates himself into the mouldering mansion of the centenarian lover of a renowned but long-dead poet to find his lost love letters.
Director: Martin Gabel | Stars: Robert Cummings, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, Joan Lorring
Votes: 1,332
8. The Unsuspected (1947)
Approved | 103 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery
The secretary of an affably suave radio mystery host mysteriously commits suicide after his wealthy young niece disappears.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Claude Rains, Joan Caulfield, Audrey Totter, Constance Bennett
Votes: 3,636
9. Sleep, My Love (1948)
Passed | 97 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery
Chronic sleepwalker Alison Courtland thinks that a mysterious man wearing horned-rimmed eye glasses is out to kill her but her husband blames her tired imagination.
Director: Douglas Sirk | Stars: Claudette Colbert, Robert Cummings, Don Ameche, Rita Johnson
Votes: 2,189 | Gross: $1.80M
10. House of Strangers (1949)
Approved | 101 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
After years in prison, Max promises revenge on his brothers for their betrayal. His lover Irene and memories of his past yield him a broader perspective.
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz | Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Susan Hayward, Richard Conte, Luther Adler
Votes: 4,188
11. Man on the Run (1949)
82 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
In post-war Britain, an army deserter unwittingly gets involved in murder and armed robbery and enlists the aid of a war widow to help clear his name.
Director: Lawrence Huntington | Stars: Derek Farr, Joan Hopkins, Edward Chapman, Laurence Harvey
Votes: 448
12. The Prowler (1951)
Approved | 92 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller
After Susan Gilvray reports a prowler outside her house police officer Webb Garwood investigates and sparks fly. If only her husband wasn't in the way.
Director: Joseph Losey | Stars: Van Heflin, Evelyn Keyes, John Maxwell, Katherine Warren
Votes: 4,092
13. Witness to Murder (1954)
Approved | 83 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A woman's sanity comes into question, after she claims to have witnessed a murder from her apartment window.
Director: Roy Rowland | Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, George Sanders, Gary Merrill, Jesse White
Votes: 3,434
14. Suspicion (1941)
Approved | 99 min | Film-Noir, Mystery, Thriller
A shy young heiress marries a charming gentleman, and soon begins to suspect he is planning to murder her.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce
Votes: 42,441 | Gross: $4.50M
15. Suddenly (1954)
Unrated | 77 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
In the city of Suddenly, three gangsters trap the Benson family in their own house, on the top of a hill nearby the railroad station, with the intention of killing the president of the USA.
Director: Lewis Allen | Stars: Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden, James Gleason, Nancy Gates
Votes: 7,380 | Gross: $1.40M
16. Mirage (1965)
Approved | 108 min | Mystery, Thriller
An accountant suddenly suffers from amnesia. This appears related to the suicide of his boss. Now some violent thugs are out to get him. They work for a shadowy figure known simply as The Major.
Director: Edward Dmytryk | Stars: Gregory Peck, Diane Baker, Walter Matthau, Kevin McCarthy
Votes: 5,946 | Gross: $3.27M
17. Chance Meeting (1959)
95 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
In 1950s London, Dutch painter Jan Van Rooyen has an affair with a rich married Frenchwoman who is supposedly murdered, resulting in Van Rooyen becoming Scotland Yard's prime suspect.
Director: Joseph Losey | Stars: Hardy Krüger, Stanley Baker, Micheline Presle, John Van Eyssen
Votes: 905
18. The Dark Mirror (1946)
Approved | 85 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A man is found murdered, and witnesses are sure about the woman they saw leaving his apartment. However, it becomes apparent that the woman has a twin, and finding out which one is the killer seems impossible.
Director: Robert Siodmak | Stars: Olivia de Havilland, Lew Ayres, Thomas Mitchell, Richard Long
Votes: 5,680
19. Peeping Tom (1960)
Not Rated | 101 min | Drama, Horror, Thriller
A young man murders women, using a movie camera to film their dying expressions of terror.
Director: Michael Powell | Stars: Karlheinz Böhm, Anna Massey, Moira Shearer, Maxine Audley
Votes: 39,267 | Gross: $0.08M
20. Cape Fear (1962)
Passed | 106 min | Drama, Thriller
A lawyer's family is stalked by a man he once helped put in jail.
Director: J. Lee Thompson | Stars: Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, Lori Martin
Votes: 31,889
21. Maniac (1963)
Not Rated | 86 min | Crime, Horror, Mystery
An American painter has an affair with a bar owner in a French village and agrees to help murder her husband, who has escaped from a prison for the criminally insane.
Director: Michael Carreras | Stars: Kerwin Mathews, Nadia Gray, Donald Houston, Liliane Brousse
Votes: 1,550
22. Games (1967)
Not Rated | 100 min | Thriller
A young couple who are into kinky "mind games" get more than they bargained for when a mysterious woman comes into their lives.
Director: Curtis Harrington | Stars: Simone Signoret, James Caan, Katharine Ross, Don Stroud
Votes: 1,504
23. Diabolically Yours (1967)
G | 93 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A wealthy amnesiac begins to suspect that his devoted wife is not really his wife and that he is not the man people keep telling him he is.
Director: Julien Duvivier | Stars: Alain Delon, Senta Berger, Peter Mosbacher, Claude Piéplu
Votes: 1,763
24. The Mad Room (1969)
M | 93 min | Drama, Horror
Ellen Hardy gets a rude awakening when she discovers that her brother and sister are scheduled to leave the mental institution where they were put as young children after they killed their parents.
Director: Bernard Girard | Stars: Stella Stevens, Shelley Winters, Skip Ward, Carol Cole
Votes: 627
25. Dangerous Crossing (1953)
Approved | 75 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery
When a beautiful bride boards an ocean liner with her new husband, he goes into hiding, and she becomes the target of a murder conspiracy.
Director: Joseph M. Newman | Stars: Jeanne Crain, Michael Rennie, Max Showalter, Carl Betz
Votes: 2,434
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