20 best movies like The Late Show (1977)

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

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.

A petty thief posing as an actor is brought to Los Angeles for an unlikely audition and finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation along with his high school dream girl and a detective who's been training him for his upcoming role...

Juliet Forrest is convinced that the reported death of her father in a mountain car crash was no accident. Her father was a prominent cheese scientist working on a secret recipe. To prove it was murder, she enlists the services of private eye Rigby Reardon. He finds a slip of paper containing a list of people who are 'The Friends and Enemies of Carlotta'.

Director Billy Wilder adds a new and intriguing twist to the personality of intrepid detective Sherlock Holmes. One thing hasn't changed however: Holmes' crime-solving talents. Holmes and Dr. Watson take on the case of a beautiful woman whose husband has vanished. The investigation proves strange indeed, involving six missing midgets, villainous monks, a Scottish castle, the Loch Ness monster, and covert naval experiments. Can the sleuths make sense of all this and solve the mystery

At Oceanfront High School, female students are being targeted by an unknown serial killer. Meanwhile, a married teacher hides his flings with nubile students, and an awkward male is frustrated by the plethora of uninhibited freewheeling young girls.

In Los Angeles at the turn of the 1970s, drug-fueled detective Larry "Doc" Sportello investigates the disappearance of an ex-girlfriend.

Christopher Gill is a psychotic killer who uses various disguises to trick and strangle his victims. Moe Brummel is a single and harassed New York City police detective who starts to get phone calls from the strangler and builds a strange alliance as a result. Kate Palmer is a swinging, hip tour guide who witnesses the strangler leaving her dead neighbor's apartment and sets her sights on the detective. Moe's live-in mother wishes her son would be a successful Jewish doctor like his big brother.

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

Lionel Twain invites the world's five greatest detectives to a 'dinner and murder'. Included are a blind butler, a deaf-mute maid, screams, spinning rooms, secret passages, false identities and more plot turns and twists than are decently allowed.

After making a 3-hour fiasco about New York City's water supply, a two-man film crew decides to take it up a notch by documenting life in the private investigator offices of "Boone and Murphy". Cheating husbands and missing dogs fail to bring in the big bucks however, and after sleeping with the wife of one of their clients Murphy leaves. To stop Boone from having to close down the business the two film-makers must resort to a hands-on approach in the investigations to ensure the completion of their movie.

A phobic con artist and his protege are on the verge of pulling off a lucrative swindle when the con artist's teenage daughter arrives unexpectedly.

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.

Police investigate when a man having an affair with his brother's wife disappears suddenly.

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.

Supernatural private eye, Dylan Dog, seeks out the monsters of the Louisiana bayou in his signature red shirt, black jacket and blue jeans.

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 Broadway playwright puts murder in his plan to take credit for a student's script.

In a world where human beings and puppets live together, when the members of the cast of a children's television show aired during the 1990s begin to get murdered one by one, puppet Phil Philips, a former LAPD detective who fell in disgrace and turned into a private eye, takes on the case at the request of his old boss in order to assist detective Edwards, who was his partner in the past.

Lorna is a strong-willed Texas woman who’s had enough of her untrustworthy husband, Dale’s, criminal acts and lack of husbandry. Fed up, she enlists the help of her old friend, Tiny, to help her figure out what to do with Dale after his latest double-cross involving the theft of $100,000 from a bank.

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.

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.

A psychiatrist with intense acrophobia (fear of heights) goes to work for a mental institution run by doctors who appear to be crazier than their patients, and have secrets that they are willing to commit murder to keep.

Detective Inspector Richard Poole is transferred to Sainte Marie, an island in the Caribbean. Totally unsuited to the Caribbean way of life, Richard hates the sun, sea and sand and isn't used to the Sainte Marie style of policing. Working with the exotic Camille each week Richard investigates intricate and intriguing murders.

When shadowy U.S. intelligence agents blackmail a reformed computer hacker and his eccentric team of security experts into stealing a code-breaking 'black box' from a Soviet-funded genius, they uncover a bigger conspiracy. Now, he and his 'sneakers' must save themselves and the world economy by retrieving the box from their blackmailers.

Failed actress Alex Sternbergen wakes up hungover one morning in an apartment she does not recognize, unable to remember the previous evening -- and with a dead body in bed next to her. As she tries to piece together the events of the night, Alex cannot totally rely on friends or her estranged husband, Joaquin, for assistance. Only a single ally, loner ex-policeman Turner Kendall, can help her escape her predicament and find the true killer.

This sequel to the classic Chinatown finds private detective Jake Gittes still haunted from the events of the first film. Hired by a man to investigate his wife's infidelities, Jake once again finds himself involved in a complicated plot involving murder, oil, and even some ghosts from his past.

A convicted thief in Dartmoor prison hides the location of the stolen Bank of England printing plates inside three music boxes. When the innocent purchasers of the boxes start to be murdered, Holmes and Watson investigate.

Jay Austin is now a civilian police detective. Colonel Caldwell was his commanding officer years before when he left the military police over a disagreement over the handling of a drunk driver. Now a series of murders that cross jurisdictions force them to work together again. That Austin is now dating Caldwell's daughter is not helping their relationship.

Needing a new partner capable of intricate cons, Richard Gaddis, recruits Rodrigo, a crook with a perfect poker face. The two plan a big-time scam: selling a fake Silver Certificate to currency collector William Hannigan. Rodrigo distrusts his new associate, but needs money to help out his ill father. The situation becomes more complicated when Rodrigo falls for Gaddis' sister, Valerie, drawing another player into the game.

An FBI agent tracks a serial killer with the help of three of his would-be victims - all of whom have wildly different stories to tell.

Three stories adapted from the work of Edgar Allen Poe: 1) A man and his daughter are reunited, but the blame for the death of his wife hangs over them, unresolved. 2) A derelict challenges the local wine-tasting champion to a competition, but finds the man's attention to his wife worthy of more dramatic action. 3) A man dying and in great pain agrees to be hypnotized at the moment of death, with unexpected consequences.

A mentally unhinged factory worker must decide whether to listen to his talking cat and become a killer, or follow his dog's advice to keep striving for normalcy.

During a routine case in L.A., NY private investigator Harry D'Amour stumbles over members of a fanatic cult who are preparing for the resurrection of their leader Nix, a powerful magician who was killed 13 years earlier.

A blind detective, former cop, teams up with a policewoman who admires him to solve the disappearance of a girl friend of hers, years ago. Besides, he helps her to improve her skills as an investigator.

A loathsome man ends up dead, but it's not clear who's to blame. If ever a person got what he deserved, it's James Urbanksi, an abusive drunk who steals from his wife, Joyce, and promises her close friend Cynthia Kellogg that she'll be the next target of his rage. At a group outing, James bleeds to death after someone cuts his throat. But because he's such a terrible human being, police aren't sure which of his acquaintances decided to kill him.

Adrian Messenger, a famous writer, asks his friend Anthony Gethryn, a former British agent, to help him investigate the whereabouts of the people who appear on a list, without asking him the reason why he should do so.

A dark comedy about four self-absorbed twenty-somethings who become entangled in an ominous mystery when a former college acquaintance suddenly disappears.

Concerned about his friend's cocaine use, Dr. Watson tricks Sherlock Holmes into travelling to Vienna, where Holmes enters the care of Sigmund Freud. Freud attemts to solve the mysteries of Holmes' subconscious, while Holmes devotes himself to solving a mystery involving the kidnapping of Lola Deveraux.

A series of brutal murders puts the lives of three men on a collision course: The father of the latest victim now out for revenge, a vigilante police detective operating outside the boundaries of law, and the main suspect in the killings - a religious studies teacher arrested and released due to a police blunder.

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

Rita Rizzoli is a narcotics cop with a plethora of disguises. When a drug shipment is hijacked, the thieves don't know that the drug is unusually pure and packs of 'Fatal Beauty' begin turning up next to too many dead bodies. Mike works for the original owner of the drugs and tries to tell himself that since he does not handle the drugs, he is 'clean'. Mike becomes Rita's constant companion.

The lord and lady of a capacious manor are killed, and the lord's ghost seems to have returned to knock off the staff one by one, causing Inspector Winship and Dr. Tart to investigate the wacky house and its inhabitants.

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.

When a serial killer interrupts the fun at the swanky Coconut Pete's Coconut Beach Resort -- a hedonistic island paradise for swingers --- it's up to the club's staff to stop the violence ... or at least hide it!

After spending decades living in the shadow of his more famous and successful sibling, Consulting Detective Sigerson Holmes (Wilder) is called upon to help solve a crucial case that leads him on a hilarious trail of false identities, stolen documents, secret codes... and exposed backsides.

The down-and-out private detective Harry Angel is ordered, by a mysterious man named Louis Cyphre, to go on a mission to find a missing person. His routine failure soon leads to a bloody spar with himself as Harry Angel goes on a supernatural journey into his own soul.

Marcus (Philip WInchester) wakes up in the middle of a cemetery half naked and has no idea how he got there. Urgent questions pound inside his head. "Where was I last night? Who was I with?" Marcus suffers from parasomnia, a rare sleep disorder which causes him to do things in his sleep which he cannot remember the next day. His situation takes a horrifying turn when Marcus wakes up covered in blood with a knife at his side. Then, the wife of his best friend is found stabbed to death. Marcus is terrified to put together the pieces - could he have murdered her in his sleep to hide a dark secret between them? Mysterious phone calls make Marcus believe someone is watching him. He investigates his own nocturnal activities, desperate to figure out what happens after he goes to sleep at night. His journey to discover the truth ends in a shocking discovery.

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.

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.