20 best movies like Born to Kill (1947)

Jeff Bailey seems to be a mundane gas station owner in remote Bridgeport, CA. He is dating local girl Ann Miller and lives a quiet life. But Jeff has a secret past, and when a mysterious stranger arrives in town, Jeff is forced to return to the dark world he had tried to escape.

Gumshoe Philip Marlowe is hired by the oafish Moose Malloy to track down his former girlfriend. He's also hired to accompany an effeminate playboy buy back some jewels. When the exchange results in the playboy's murder, Marlowe can't leave the case alone, and soon discovers it's related to Malloy's. As he gets drawn deeper into a complex web of intrigue by a mysterious blonde, the detective finds his own life in increasing jeopardy.

A tough cop meets his match when he has to guard a gangster's widow on a tense train ride.

Kathy leaves the newspaper business to marry homicide detective Bill, but is frustrated by his lack of ambition and the banality of life in the suburbs. Her drive to advance Bill's career soon takes her down a dangerous path.

Eddie Miller struggles with his hatred of women, he's especially bothered by seeing women with their lovers. He starts a killing spree as a sniper by shooting women from far distances. In an attempt to get caught, he writes an anonymous letter to the police begging them to stop him.

Sadistic killer-for-hire Raven becomes enraged when his latest job is paid off in marked bills. Vowing to track down his double-crossing boss, nightclub executive Gates, Raven sits beside Gates' lovely new employee, Ellen, on a train out of town. Although Ellen is engaged to marry the police lieutenant who's hunting down Raven, she decides to try and set the misguided hit man straight as he hides from the cops and plots his revenge.

Dan Merrick comes out from a shattering car accident with amnesia. He finds that he is married to Judith who is trying to help him start his life again. He keeps getting flashbacks about events and places that he can't remember. He meets pet shop owner and part time private detective Gus Klein who is supposedly done some work for him prior to the accident. Klein helps Merrick to find out more...

One night in the New Orleans slums, vicious hoodlum Blackie and his friends kill an illegal immigrant who won too much in a card game. Next morning, Dr. Clint Reed of the Public Health Service confirms the dead man had pneumonic plague. To prevent a catastrophic epidemic, Clint must find and inoculate the killers and their associates, with the reluctant aid of police captain Tom Warren, despite official skepticism, and in total secrecy, lest panic empty the city. Can a doctor turn detective? He has 48 hours to try...

A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife.

A man working for the War Crimes Commission suspects that an important Nazi official has folded himself into a quaint Connecticut town.

Concentration camp survivor Victoria Kowelska finds herself involved in mystery, greed, and murder when she assumes the identity of a dead friend in order to gain passage to America.

Stroud, a crime magazine's crusading editor has to post-pone a vacation with his wife, again, when a glamorous blonde is murdered and he is assigned by his publishing boss Janoth to find the killer. As the investigation proceeds to its conclusion, Stroud must try to disrupt his ordinarily brilliant investigative team as they increasingly build evidence (albeit wrong) that he is the killer.

Newspaper men compete against each other to find a serial killer dubbed "The Lipstick Killer"

A homicide detective teams up with a criminal profiler to catch a serial killer whose crimes are inspired by the children's game, Hangman.

A woman fights to convince the police that she witnessed a murder while looking out her bedroom window.

Three friends head to the seafront for a drunken weekend, only to be imprisoned on the top floor of their holiday apartment by a malevolent paranormal force.

The savage murders of three young children sparks a controversial trial of three teenagers accused of killing the kids as part of a satanic ritual.

The daughter of a Nevada casino owner gets involved with a racketeer, despite everyone's efforts to separate them.

During the campaign for reelection, the crooked politician Paul Madvig decides to clean up his past, refusing the support of the gangster Nick Varna and associating to the respectable reformist politician Ralph Henry. When Ralph’s son, Taylor Henry, a gambler and the lover of Paul’s sister Opal, is murdered, Paul’s right arm, Ed Beaumont, finds his body on the street. Nick uses the financial situation of The Observer to force the publisher Clyde Matthews to use the newspaper to raise the suspicion that Paul Madvig might have killed Taylor.

A young promoter is accused of the murder of Vicky Lynn, a young actress he "discovered" as a waitress while out with ex-actor Robin Ray and gossip columnist Larry Evans.

Paratroopers Captain 'Rip' Murdock and Sergeant Johnny Drake are mysteriously ordered to travel to Washington, DC. When Drake learns that he is to be awarded the Medal of Honor, he disappears before newspaper photographers can take his picture. Murdock follows the clues and tracks him down, where he learns Drake is dead. Further investigations reveal unexpected twists. Rip learns that Johnny had been accused of murder and sets out to find out whatever he can. He falls in love with Coral whose husband Johnny is supposed to have killed.

After being found wandering the streets of Los Angeles, a severely catatonic woman tells a doctor the complex story of how she wound up there.

Private investigator Matthew Scudder is hired by a drug kingpin to find out who kidnapped and murdered his wife.

Struggling artist Geoffrey Carroll meets Sally while on holiday in the country. A romance develops, but he doesn't tell her he's already married. Suffering from mental illness, Geoffrey returns home where he paints an impression of his wife as the angel of death and then promptly poisons her. He marries Sally but after a while he finds a strange urge to paint her as the angel of death too and history seems about to repeat itself.

Los Angeles, 1958: a detective holes up in a downtown hotel awaiting killers to come get him. During the course of one night he will meet various occupants of the hotel and the truth of how he came to be in his present situation will be revealed.

Al Goddard, a detective who works for the United States Postal Inspection Service, is assigned to arrest two criminals who've allegedly murdered a U.S. postal detective.

How can a split-second decision change your life? While investigating noises in his house one balmy Texas night in 1989, Richard Dane puts a bullet in the brain of low-life burglar Freddy Russell. Although he’s hailed as a small-town hero, Dane soon finds himself fearing for his family’s safety when Freddy’s ex-con father, Ben, rolls into town, hell-bent on revenge.

A retired ex-cop and private detective gets mixed up in murder when he is asked to deliver blackmail money and walks into a 20 year old case involving the mysterious disappearance of an actress' former husband.

A seductive woman gets an innocent professor mixed up in murder.

The complicated life and controversial suicide of George Reeves is investigated by a fictional private detective who finds that there are reasons to suspect that Reeves may not have killed himself after all. The detective also finds that there is a little of George Reeves in himself, and maybe, each of us.

Massachusetts, 1892. An unmarried woman of 32 and a social outcast, Lizzie lives a claustrophobic life under her father's cold and domineering control. When Bridget Sullivan, a young maid, comes to work for the family, Lizzie finds a sympathetic, kindred spirit, and a secret intimacy soon blossoms into a wicked plan.

A corrupt D.A. with governatorial ambitions is annoyed by an investigative reporter's criticism of his criminal activities and decides to frame the reporter for manslaughter in order to silence him.

A slightly unhinged former Navy SEAL lands a job as a police officer in Los Angeles where he's partnered with a veteran detective trying to keep maintain a low stress level in his life.

George Taylor returns from the WWII with amnesia. Back home in Los Angeles, he tries to track down his old identity, stumbling into a 3-year old murder case and a hunt for a missing $2 million.

After Police Captain Dan McLaren becomes police commissioner, former detective Johnny Blake publicly punches him, convincing rackets boss Al Kruger that Blake is sincere in his effort to join the mob. "Bugs" Fenner, meanwhile, is certain that Blake is a police agent.

Clarinettist Stan has a nightmare about killing a man in a mirrored room. But when he wakes up and finds blood marks on himself and a key from the dream, he suspects that it may have truly happened.

A married woman and a drifter fall in love, then plot to murder her husband.

In 1949 composer Roman Strauss is executed for the vicious murder of his wife Margaret with a pair of scissors. In 1990s Los Angeles a mute amnesiac woman shows up at an orphanage and private eye Mike Church is called in to investigate. Under hypnosis both the woman and Church seem to have a strange link back to the Strauss murder.

Davis and Rains shine in a romantic melodrama set in the world of concert music. Davis is a pianist torn between her wealthy, jealous patron and her cellist husband.

Set in Stalin-era Soviet Union, a disgraced MGB agent is dispatched to investigate a series of child murders -- a case that begins to connect with the very top of party leadership.

Spiritualist Blanche Tyler is asked to locate a missing heir, whom she pursues with her cab driver boyfriend George Lumley, an unemployed actor.

Los Angeles private-eye Philip Marlowe is trying to locate the brother of his new client, a woman named Orfamay Quest. The trail leads to two men who deny any knowledge of the brother's existence. Both are soon killed by an ice pick, so Marlowe deduces that there's much more to this than a simple missing-person case. Marlowe's path crosses that of a blackmailed movie star, Mavis Wald, and her friend, exotic dancer Delores. A mobster sends karate expert Winslow Wong to bust up Marlowe's office and warn him off the case, while Lieutenant French also cautions the detective to stay out of the police's way.

Rachel Watson, devastated by her recent divorce, spends her daily commute fantasizing about the seemingly perfect couple who live in a house that her train passes every day, until one morning she sees something shocking happen there and becomes entangled in the mystery that unfolds.

Harper is brought to Louisiana to investigate an attempted blackmail scheme. He soon finds out that it involves an old flame of his and her daughter. He eventually finds himself caught in a power struggle between the matriarch of the family and a greedy oil baron, who wants their property. Poor Harper! Things are not as straight-forward as they initially appeared.

While on a train, Nikki Collins witnesses a murder as they pass a building. When she tells the police, they think she's crazy since she can't tell exactly where the crime happened. She then enlists a popular mystery writer to help with her sleuthing.

A Los Angeles detective and his Japanese partner woo an artist while solving a stripper's murder.

Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.

A hurricane swells outside, but it's nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There, sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco holes up - and holds at gunpoint hotel owner James Temple, his widowed daughter-in-law Nora, and ex-GI Frank McCloud.

Hard-nosed liberal lawyer Roman J. Israel has been fighting the good fight forever while others take the credit. When his partner – the firm’s frontman – has a heart attack, Israel suddenly takes on that role. He soon discovers some unsettling truths about the firm – truths that conflict with his values of helping the poor and dispossessed – and finds himself in an existential crisis that leads to extreme actions.

When Baton Rouge police detective Bud Carter busts contract killer Jesse Weiland, he convinces Jesse to become an informant and rat out the South's most powerful crime ring.