20 best movies like The Drowning Pool (1975)

Handsome, unflappable U.S. Congressman Stephen Collins is the future of his political party: an honorable appointee who serves as the chairman of a committee overseeing defense spending. All eyes are upon the rising star to be his party's contender for the upcoming presidential race. Until his research assistant/mistress is brutally murdered and buried secrets come tumbling out.

A short Arizona motorcycle cop gets his wish and is promoted to Homicide following the mysterious murder of a hermit. He is forced to confront his illusions about himself and those around him in order to solve the case, eventually returning to solitude in the desert.

A woman who survived the brutal killing of her family as a child is forced to confront the events of that day.

After Washington DC detective Alex Cross is told that a family member has been murdered, he vows to track down the killer. He soon discovers that she was not his first victim and that things are not what they seem.

A dabbler-in-crime and his assistant hire an ex-police reporter to recover some stolen papers.

An interpol agent and an attorney are determined to bring one of the world's most powerful banks to justice. Uncovering money laundering, arms trading, and conspiracy to destabilize world governments, their investigation takes them from Berlin, Milan, New York and Istanbul. Finding themselves in a chase across the globe, their relentless tenacity puts their own lives at risk.

The gruesome death of a prostitute brings suspicion on one of her clients, James Wayland, a brilliant, self-destructive and epileptic heir to a textile fortune. So detectives Braxton and Kennesaw take Wayland in for questioning, thinking they can break the man. But despite his troubles, Wayland is a master of manipulation, and during the interrogation, he begins to turn the tables on the investigators, forcing them to reveal their own sinister sides.

Eight years after fleeing the Congo following his assassination of that country's minister of mining, former assassin Jim Terrier is back, suffering from PTSD and digging wells to atone for his violent past. After an attempt is made on his life, Terrier flies to London to find out who wants him dead -- and why. Terrier's search leads him to a reunion with Annie, a woman he once loved, who is now married to an oily businessman with dealings in Africa.

When 4 year old Amanda McCready disappears from her home and the police make little headway in solving the case, the girl's aunt, Beatrice McCready hires two private detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. The detectives freely admit that they have little experience with this type of case, but the family wants them for two reasons - they're not cops and they know the tough neighborhood in which they all live. As the case progresses, Kenzie and Gennaro face drug dealers, gangs and pedophiles. When they are about to solve the case, they are faced with a moral dilemma that tears them apart.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

A British college professor, working in Russia, investigates certain mysteries surrounding the life and death of Joseph Stalin.

Mike Kendall, a disgraced ex-cop, is fighting a losing battle with the bottle. When he finds a woman left for dead at the side of a road, Kendall turns private eye to track down her killers, taking one last shot at redemption.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A gritty crime saga which follows the lives of an elite unit of the LA County Sheriff's Dept. and the state's most successful bank robbery crew as the outlaws plan a seemingly impossible heist on the Federal Reserve Bank.

An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.

A DEA agent investigates the disappearance of a legendary Army ranger drill sergeant and several of his cadets during a training exercise gone severely awry.

A seasoned police detective and his partner have just uncovered a string of unusual murders that lead them to a serial killer, who believes that he is the descendant of Judas.

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.

A sheriff begins an investigation into the death of a local transsexual after hearing that high ranking politicians may have been involved. Although he is homophobic, his investigation causes him to be rejected by others, forcing him to seek help from the people he once despised.

Guy Luthan, a British doctor working at a hospital in New York, starts making unwelcome enquiries when the body of a man who died in his emergency room disappears. After the trail leads Luthan to the door of an eminent surgeon at the hospital, Luthan soon finds himself in extreme danger people who want the hospital's secret to remain undiscovered.

Alice is a withdrawn 12-year-old who lives with her mother and her younger sister, Karen, who gets most of the attention from her mother, leaving Alice out of the spotlight. When Karen is found brutally murdered in a church, suspicions start to turn toward Alice. But could a 12-year-old girl really be capable of such savagery?

A year after Sheila is killed in a hit-and-run, her multimillionaire husband invites a group of friends to spend a week on his yacht playing a scavenger hunt-style mystery game. The game turns out to be all too real and all too deadly.

A newspaper photographer, Jean, researches the lurid and sensational axe murder of two women in 1873 as an editorial tie-in with a brutal modern double murder. She discovers a cache of papers that appear to give an account of the murders by an eyewitness.

When Watson reads from the newspaper there have been two similar murders near Whitechapel in a few days, Sherlock Holmes' sharp deductive is immediately stimulated to start its merciless method of elimination after observation of every apparently meaningless detail. He guesses right the victims must be street whores, and doesn't need long to work his way trough a pawn shop, an aristocratic family's stately home, a hospital and of course the potential suspects and (even unknowing) witnesses who are the cast of the gradually unraveled story of the murderer and his motive.

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.

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

An attorney is terrorized by the criminal he put away years ago when he was a cop.

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.

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

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

Lila, a grief-stricken mother reeling from her son’s murder, attends a support group where she meets Eve, who urges her to take matters into her own hands to track down her son’s killers.

A high-priced call girl is forced to depend on a reluctant private eye when she is stalked by a psychopath.

When a plot against a prominent Middle Eastern politician is uncovered, David Pollock, a professor of ancient hieroglyphics at Oxford University, is recruited to help expose the scheme. Pollock must find information believed to be in hieroglyphic code and must also contend with a mysterious man called Beshraavi. Meanwhile, Beshraavi's lover, Yasmin Azir, seems willing to aid Pollock -- but is she really on his side?

Charlie Cox should have stopped for gas in California. While he's on a cross-country trip with his teenage daughter, Joleen, his car hits empty in a creepy town in Nevada. With nary a drop of fuel to be found, Charlie and Joleen stop for the night at a dilapidated trailer park. There, Joleen catches the eye of two teenage boys, Jimmy and Pinky -- either of whom could be the serial killer currently terrorizing the town.

Detective Andrea Cornell is a tough, thorough Homicide Detective who leaves no stone unturned. Her unwavering dedication to her job makes her the most formidable opponent - or a highly valuable ally.

Ernest (Stick) Stickley just out of prison agrees to help a friend deliver a package. It's a setup and his friend is killed. Stick is going to find out why!

Henry Petosa and Freddy Ace are twins who were separated being babies, and they do not know each other. Henry was adopted by a honest man, while Freddy becomes a gangster. Henry is very shy and has a lot of mental troubles. The film melts the two stories by a young writer who discovers that they were sons of an european noble and they own a large inheritance.

After a break-in at their house, a couple gets help from one of the cops that answered their call. He helps them install the security system, and begins dropping by on short notice and unofficial patrol, and spends a lot of time discussing the couple's problems with the wife. The husband begins wondering if they're getting too much help.

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.

A troubled detective travels to Memphis in order to track down a pair of serial killers.

A murdered hotel millionaire's son finds himself tangled up in a game of seduction and murder after a raunchy night with three beautiful women.