100 best film noir movies

A list of the best film noir films, selected by visitors to our site: My Name Is Julia Ross, Backlash, Death of a Scoundrel, Flame of the Islands, The Gun Runners, Johnny Eager, The Saxon Charm, Ride the Pink Horse, Lady in the Lake, Jamaica Run
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Markimdb: 6.1
Genredrama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

A former GI gets his old job back working for a bookie after returning from serving in the military. Unfortunately, he loses the $20,000 he was supposed to deliver to gambling and a con artist. His attempts to get the money back leads to bigger problems including a murder plot.

Markimdb: 6.6
Genreaction, thriller, drama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

Prisoners battle each other -- and the police -- when they escape the Colorado State Penitentiary.

Markimdb: 5.5
Genrethriller, drama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

A plane carrying a sheriff and a man indicted for manslaughter is wrecked on a lonely California beach and the prisoner manages to escape, after a struggle, only to be taken in hand by the female manager of a remote sheep ranch.

Markimdb: 6.8
Genrethriller, drama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

A fatally shot female gangleader recounts her sordid life of crime to a police officer just before she dies.

Markimdb: 7.7
Genredrama, crime, film noir, music
CountryFrance

Jenny Lamour sings in a music hall in postwar Paris, accompanied by her husband, Maurice Martineau, on piano. When Martineau notices his wife flirting with an older businessman named Georges Brignon, he follows her to Brignon's house with the intent to kill him. At the house, Brignon is found murdered -- but by someone else. Inspector Antoine conducts an investigation that implicates Martineau, whose planned alibi comes loose.

Markimdb: 6.4
Genredrama, crime, film noir, sport
CountryUSA

A tough street kid attempts to rob a post office and is caught. In order to avoid reform school, he takes a job as a messenger with the post office. He finds that he likes it, and when his brother is released from prison, attempts to help his brother go straight. However, the two of them get mixed up with a local gangster, who has plans to start robbing post office branches and using the messenger and his brother to do it.

Markimdb: 6.1
Genrethriller, drama, film noir
CountryUSA

Brooke's marital life with Eric takes a downturn when she starts suspecting that her husband, Eric, is starving his son from a prior marriage to death in order to claim his inheritance.

Markimdb: 6.1
Genredrama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

In the Windy City, the mob infiltrates a powerful union.

Markimdb: 5.8
Genrethriller, drama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

William Castle directed this Sam Katzman production, a gritty crime thriller about a newly-discharged sailor who gets a job as a longshoreman in The Big Easy. He swiftly discovers mob corruption throughout the docks, and when a friend is killed by the gangsters, he convinces the police to let him go undercover and take matters into his own hands. Filmed on location on the docks and in the French Quarter.

Markimdb: 5.5
Genremelodrama, drama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

After several years of supporting parts, Victor McLaglen once more landed a leading role in Republic's City of Shadows. McLaglen plays Big Tim Channing, an ageing but powerful gangster who raises young newsboy Dan Mason as his own son. Upon reaching adulthood, Mason (John Baer) becomes a law student, with the covert (and illegal) help of Channing. Despite his checkered past, Mason opts for honesty when he falls in love with Fern Fellows (Kathleen Crowley). This decision ultimately spells the doom for Mason's mentor Big Tim.

Markimdb: 6.8
Genrethriller, drama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

Eddie Rico, the erstwhile bookkeeper for a big Mafia boss, is now making a living as an honest merchant in Florida with his family. Things go sour when the police start a search for his syndicate-linked brothers who are on the lam after a big hit, forcing Eddie to get involved with the Mafia again.

Markimdb: 7.3
Genrethriller, drama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA
Duration01:39

A down-on-his-luck ex-GI finds himself framed for an armored car robbery. When he's finally released for lack of evidence--after having been beaten up and tortured by the police--he sets out to discover who set him up, and why. The trail leads him into Mexico and a web of hired killers and corrupt cops.

Markimdb: 7.2
Genredrama, crime, detective, film noir
CountryUSA

A mystery woman is a murder suspect's only alibi for the night of his wife's death.

Markimdb: 7.2
Genredrama, crime, film noir, sport
CountryUSA

A young prizefighter finds himself being squeezed on all sides to throw a fight.

Markimdb: 6.2
Genreaction, drama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

A pastry-shop girl (Penny Edwards) sees a priest's (Ross Elliott) and a lawyer's (Rick Vallin) brother take part in a jewel heist.

Markimdb: 5.5
Genrethriller, drama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

Johnny One-Eye was adapted from one of Damon Runyon's lesser-known stories. Pat O'Brien and Wayne Morris star as Martin Martin and Dane Cory respectively, former partners in crime who have long since split up. When a new district attorney puts the heat on, Cory, anxious to save his own hide, accuses Martin of an unsolved murder. Holed up in abandoned house, Martin is befriended by a little girl (Gayle Reed) and her dog. It so happens that the girl is the daughter of the crusading DA, and thereby hangs the rest of this tale. Produced by Benedict Bogeaus, Johnny One-Eye co-stars Bogeaus' wife Dolores Moran as a moll named Lily White. The film represented the last directorial assignment of Robert Florey, who retired shortly afterward.

Markimdb: 7.6
Genrethriller, melodrama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

In New York City, an insolent pickpocket, Skip McCoy, inadvertently sets off a chain of events when he targets ex-prostitute Candy and steals her wallet. Unaware that she has been making deliveries of highly classified information to the communists, Candy, who has been trailed by FBI agents for months in hopes of nabbing the spy ringleader, is sent by her ex-boyfriend, Joey, to find Skip and retrieve the valuable microfilm he now holds.

Markimdb: 6
Genredrama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

Crime drama in which a man unknowingly helps a gang pull off a big heist. The gang discovers that the man is more trouble than he is worth and as a result, things don't go as smoothly as planned.

Markimdb: 6.3
Genreaction, adventure, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

Marc Hill is the attorney for Emmet Devrey, a real estate developer with a past, who is being blackmailed by his former partner Sam Baggett. When Sam's unfaithful wife Marge cooks up a scheme with her used car salesman lover Jeff Calder to bilk both Devrey and her alcoholic husband, Sam is killed and Devrey is accused of the crime. Mark is called to prove his employers innocence.

Markimdb: 5.7
Genrethriller, drama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

Gunner O'Hara is about to be released from prison after serving a five-year sentence, and receives a visit from his twin brother John, a divinity student soon to be ordained as a priest. Aware that Gunner plans to resume his criminal career, John decides to stop him.

Markimdb: 6
Genredrama, crime, film noir, sport
CountryUSA

The final feature in the "Dead End Kids" film series finds a youth trying to adjust to life at a military school.

Markimdb: 5.7
Genreaction, melodrama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

A private detective is offered a job protecting a rich business man from suspected blackmail. Before he can accept the case a murder is uncovered.

Markimdb: 5.8
Genrecrime, film noir, biography
CountryUSA
Duration01:19

In the 1930s, amoral blonde tommy-gun girl Bonnie Parker cut a swath of bodies across the South-West. Starting out on gas stations and bars with side-kick Guy Darrow she graduated to bank hold-ups with Darrow's brother and, after bloodily springing him, her jailed husband. But there was never any doubt who was in charge.

Markimdb: 4.4
Genrehorror, thriller, film noir
CountryUSA

A facially disfigured and mentally unhinged man wreaks his revenge on those he blames for his condition.

Markimdb: 6.6
Genrethriller, drama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

Louisiana's governor asks war hero Francis C. Grevemberg (Keith Andes) to lead the state police against corruption.

Markimdb: 5.4
Genredrama, film noir
CountryUSA

A naive young girl, looking to escape from a bad family situation, falls in love with a man who turns out to be a cad, and leads her down the road to ruin.

Markimdb: 6.5
Genrethriller, drama, crime, film noir, biography
CountryUSA

The life of American public enemy number one who was shot by the police in 1934.

Markimdb: 6.5
Genredrama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

Bit player Sherry Stewart gets miffed when director Walter Darman turns her down after she reads for a small part in his picture. She and her boy friend, Ronnie, devise a plan to lure Darman to her apartment, where she gives him a drugged drink. She tells Darman they had been intimate and blackmails him for $50,000. More than a little distracted by his situation, his wife senses something is wrong and he gets into a violent argument with his father-in-law who owns the producing company Darman works for, and discontinues the picture. Sherry informs Darman she is going to tell his wife all about them. Darman tells his secretary that he is going to work late and is not to be disturbed, sets the moviola runnings, and exits by the back door and hot-foots it to Sherry's apartment.

Markimdb: 5.2
Genredrama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

A Psycho stalks the streets of Greenwich Village, killing and cutting off their hair!

Markimdb: 6.5
Genredrama, crime, detective, film noir
CountryUSA

Cop Andy Doyle investigates a car-bombing murder and the killing of a sleazy modeling agency owner. Are they connected?

Markimdb: 7.5
Genremelodrama, drama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

A blue-collar worker on New York's depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide.

Markimdb: 6.8
Genredrama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

A newspaper man uses a mobster's tips to get the scoop on gangster activities.

Markimdb: 6.5
Genrethriller, detective, film noir
CountryUSA

Don Gale is a detective hired by Edward Stillwell to find a girl, Elora Lund. Edward doesn't tell him why he wants to find Elora. After a series of events, Gale gets arrested for a thief's murder.

Markimdb: 6.3
Genredrama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

A crooked crime boss tries to put a crony into office.

Markimdb: 6.4
Genrecrime, detective, film noir
CountryUSA

A lawyer uncovers secrets behind a 12-year-old murder case.

Markimdb: 6.8
Genredrama, crime, detective, film noir
CountryUSA

Molly's husband Rick was a gang leader somewhere in the middle west. When he's shot, the tough woman moves to S.F. with a couple of the gang to start anew. Disguised as a noble woman, she and her gang rob security transports. But when one day Rob confesses to her that he killed Rick out of jealousy, she shoots him down immediately. In lack of proof she can't be convicted for the murder, but she goes to jail for the robberies. It's a new and very open female prison, where she learns a profession for the first time in her life.

Markimdb: 6.9
Genrethriller, drama, detective, film noir
CountryUSA

A young bride is set to begin her honeymoon aboard a luxury liner. Her happiness does not last when she finds that her husband has disappeared. Trouble is, no one else ever saw him board the ship with her and his name has mysteriously dropped from the passenger list.

Markimdb: 5.4
Genredrama, crime, film noir, sport
CountryUSA

Frankie Thomas plays Bob Lewis, leader of a gang consisting of Sailor (Harris Berger), Murph (Hally Chester), Monk (Charles Duncan), Trouble (Billy Benedict) and Yap (David Gorcey). The son of disgraced police officer Lt. Lewis (Harry Carey), Bob vows to clear his dad's name, and also to prove that accused murderer Tommy Shay (Paul Fix) is innocent.

Markimdb: 6.7
Genredrama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

In this silent film, a renegade police captain sets out to catch a sadistic mob boss.

Markimdb: 5.4
Genredrama, crime, film noir
CountryUSA

On parole after three years in prison, a football player (Robert Kent) encounters the man (Sidney Blackmer) who framed him.

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