20 best movies like Dead Reckoning (1947)

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.

Leona Stevenson is confined to bed and uses her telephone to keep in contact with the outside world. One day she overhears a murder plot on the telephone and is desperate to find out who is the intended victim.

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

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.

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.

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.

With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.

Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called "the Swede". When the killers find the Swede, he's expecting them and doesn't put up a fight. Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, an investigator, on a hunch, decides to look into the murder. As the Swede's past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman who may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man.

Private detective and former football player Harry Moseby gets hired on to what seems a standard missing person case, as a former Hollywood actress whose only major roles came thanks to being married to a studio mogul wants Moseby to find and return her daughter. Harry travels to Florida to find her, but he begins to see a connection between the runaway girl, the world of Hollywood stuntmen, and a suspicious mechanic when an unsolved murder comes to light.

In war torn Calcutta during the 1940's, Byomkesh Bakshy, fresh out of college, pits himself against an evil genius who is out to destroy the world.

Kafka, an insurance worker gets embroiled in an underground group after a co-worker is murdered. The underground group is responsible for bombings all over town, attempting to thwart a secret organization that controls the major events in society. He eventually penetrates the secret organization and must confront them.

Frank Bigelow is about to die, and he knows it. The accountant has been poisoned and has only 24 hours before the lethal concoction kills him. Determined to find out who his murderer is, Frank, with the help of his assistant and girlfriend, Paula, begins to trace back over his last steps. As he frantically tries to unravel the mystery behind his own impending demise, his sleuthing leads him to a group of crooked businessmen and another murder.

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

Uncle John revolves around the struggle to keep a mysterious disappearance unsolved

An aspiring actress begins to suspect that her temperamental boyfriend is a murderer.

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.

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.

In late 1940s Los Angeles, Easy Rawlins is an unemployed black World War II veteran with few job prospects. At a bar, Easy meets DeWitt Albright, a mysterious white man looking for someone to investigate the disappearance of a missing white woman named Daphne Monet, who he suspects is hiding out in one of the city's black jazz clubs. Strapped for money and facing house payments, Easy takes the job, but soon finds himself in over his head.

Soon after a veteran's return from war his cheating wife is found dead. He evades police in an attempt to find the real murderer.

One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.

A recently released ex-con gets involved in a fake kidnapping scheme that turns very real.

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

After an attack leaves him in limbo -- invisible to the living and also near death -- a teenager discovers the only person who might be able help him is his attacker.

Richard spots a man dumping a body, and decides to expose the man he thinks is the culprit with his friend Alex Cutter.

The intriguing relationship between three desperados, who try to kidnap a wealthy child in hope of turning their lives around.

Lee Blanchard and Bucky Bleichert are former boxers-turned-cops in 1940s Los Angeles and, when an aspiring young actress turns up dead, Blanchard and Bleichert must grapple with corruption, narcissism, stag films and family madness as they pursue the killer.

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

A young stage hopeful is murdered and suspicion falls on her mentor, a Broadway producer.

One-armed war veteran John J. Macreedy steps off a train at the sleepy little town of Black Rock. Once there, he begins to unravel a web of lies, secrecy, and murder.

A tight-knit team of FBI investigators, along with their District Attorney supervisor, is suddenly torn apart when they discover that one of their own teenage daughters has been brutally murdered.

Shy and reserved, Claire Decker, 30ish, is a part-time investigator for Social Services. Typically, she solves cases where senior citizens have died alone, leaving no indication of who must handle their estate. This time however, Claire is reluctantly drawn into a puzzling murder case. The local police have been unable to solve the horrific crime, or even decipher the victim's true identity. A beautiful and enigmatic young blond, known only as "The White Orchid," has been brutally murdered. As Claire is drawn deeper and more intimately into the dead woman's life, she finds herself taking dangerous chances and pushing personal and professional boundaries. As she gets closer to the truth, Claire must effectively become the charismatic "White Orchid" in order to solve the mysterious crime.

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.

A college student tries to get rich quick by wooing two wealthy sisters.

Based on true events, The Wannabe, a story about Thomas, a man obsessed with Mafia culture during the 1990s in New York City. When Thomas’s failed attempts to fix the trial of infamous mobster John Gotti gets him rejected by the people he idolizes most, he sets off on a drug infused crime spree with his girlfriend and longtime mob groupie, Rose, by brazenly robbing the local Mafia hangouts.

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

After years of investigation, Assistant District Attorney Martin Ferguson has managed to build a solid case against an elusive gangster whose top lieutenant is about to testify.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 1916, a shadowy serial killer is targeting women with "afflictions". One night, during a thunderstorm, the mute Helen feels menaced.

After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.

A nightclub singer enlists her brother-in-law to track down her husband's killer.

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

Will Graham, a former London crime boss who has left his former life to live as a recluse in the forest. Haunted by the blood of those he has murdered, Will wishes never to return. But when his brother commits suicide, following a sexual assault at the hands of a volatile car dealer, Will returns to London to discover the cause of his brother's death and administer justice to those responsible.

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.

After losing an acting role and his girlfriend, Jake Scully finally catches a break: he gets offered a gig house-sitting in the Hollywood Hills. While peering through the beautiful home's telescope one night, he spies a gorgeous blonde dancing in her window. But when he witnesses the girl's murder, it leads Scully through the netherworld of the adult entertainment industry on a search for answers -- with porn actress Holly Body as his guide.

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...

Mourning the accidental death of his wife and having just moved to New York with his young son, laconic police psychologist Cal Jamison is reluctantly drawn into a series of grisly, ritualistic murders involving the immolation of two youths.