Best Action Movies of 1944

Olivier mustered out of the navy to film this adaptation of Shakespeare’s history. Embroiled in World War II, Britons took courage from this tale of a king who surmounts overwhelming odds and emerges victorious.

A woman is found dead -- with her throat torn out. Villagers blame a supernatural source but Holmes has other ideas.

Construction workers in World War II in the Pacific are needed to build military sites, but the work is dangerous and they doubt the ability of the Navy to protect them. After a series of attacks by the Japanese, something new is tried, Construction Battalions (CBs=Seabees). The new CBs have to both build and be ready to fight.

An aircraft carrier is sent on a decoy mission around the Pacific, with orders to avoid combat, thus lulling Japanese alertness before the battle of Midway.

Scout William F. Cody (Joel McCrea) marries a U.S. senator's daughter (Maureen O'Hara), fights the Cheyenne and leads a Wild West show.

Copy boys Muggs and Glimpy investigate a murder. They locate the ex-wife of the murdered man and become convinced she is innocent. They hide her from the police while they investigate.

Secret Command features Pat O'Brien as a onetime foreign correspondent in the wartime employ of the FBI. Under an assumed name, O'BRIEN goes to work at a shipyard, intending to keep both eyes open for potential saboteurs. To maintain the cover, O'BRIEN is given a "wife" (Carole Landis) and two children. When O'BRIEN's brother Chester Morris shows up, he can't comprehend the charade and nearly spills the beans to the Nazi spies O'BRIEN hopes to trap. Based on the short story The Saboteurs by John and Ward Hawkins, Secret Command offers a graying but still feisty Pat O'Brien doing what he does best.

As the Japanese sweep through the East Indies during World War II, Dr. Wassell is determined to escape from Java with some crewmen of the cruiser Marblehead. Based on a true story of how Dr. Wassell saved a dozen or so wounded sailors who were left behind when able bodied men were evacuated to Australia.

This is the story of the crew of a downed bomber, captured after a run over Tokyo, early in the war. Relates the hardships the men endure while in captivity, and their final humiliation: being tried and convicted as war criminals.