Best Action Movies of 1952

To ensure a full profitable season, circus manager Brad Braden engages The Great Sebastian, though this moves his girlfriend Holly from her hard-won center trapeze spot. Holly and Sebastian begin a dangerous one-upmanship duel in the ring, while he pursues her on the ground.

A tough cop meets his match when he has to guard a gangster's widow on a tense train ride.

Burt Lancaster plays a pirate with a taste for intrigue and acrobatics who involves himself in the goings on of a revolution in the Caribbean in the late 1700s. A light hearted adventure involving prison breaks, an oddball Scientist, sailing ships, naval fights, and tons of swordplay.

Sir Walter Scott's classic story of the chivalrous Ivanhoe who joins with Robin of Locksley in the fight against Prince John and for the return of King Richard the Lionheart.

Wile E. Coyote, genius, announces to Bugs Bunny that he is going to catch him and eat him, and then employs a variety of gadgets and plans in an attempt to do so.

Retired rodeo champion Jeff McCloud agrees to mentor novice rodeo contestant Wes Merritt against the wishes of Merritt's wife who fears the dangers of this rough sport.

A boisterous sea captain in the Pacific Coast, circa 1850, has a plan to buy Alaska from the Russians… if they don’t kill him first.

A gang of claim jumpers is infesting the territory, gaining ownership of undermanned mining operations through extortion...and leaving no live witnesses. But one victim, quick-drawing gambler Luke Cromwell, escapes. Meanwhille, Marshal Lightnin' Tyrone is also after the gang; recovering from one raid, he meets femme fatale Opal Lacy, who may not be healthy for him to know. When Luke, now calling himself the Silver Kid, joins forces with Marshal Tyrone, the gang had better watch out ...unless something drives a wedge between the new allies.

During the Cold War, diplomatic courier Mike Kells must retrieve a dispatch containing top-secret intelligence. But when he arrives at the meeting point, a train station in Salzburg, his contact turns up dead, and the message is nowhere to be found. With no clear suspect in sight, Kells must sort through his uncertain relationships with two women, while sidestepping the pitfalls of subterfuge, sabotage and spies in his search for the documents.

Special prosecutor John Conroy hopes to combat organized crime in his city and appoints his cop father Matt as chief investigator. John doesn't understand why Matt is reluctant, but cynical reporter Jerry McKibbon thinks he knows: he's seen Matt with mob lieutenant Harrigan. Jerry's friendship with John is tested by the question of what to do about Matt, and by his attraction to John's girl Amanda. Meanwhile, the threatened racketeers adopt increasingly violent means of defense.

In 1865, a troop of Confederate soldiers led by Major Matt Stewart attack the wagon of gold escorted by Union cavalry and the soldiers are killed. The only wounded survivor tells that the war ended one month ago, and the group decides to take the gold and meet their liaison that knew that the war ended but did not inform the troop. The harsh Rolph Bainter kills the greedy man and the soldiers flee in his wagon driven by Major Stewart. When they meet a posse chasing them, Stewart gives wrong information to misguide the group; however, they have an accident with the wagon and lose the horses. They decide to stop a stagecoach and force the driver to transport them, but the posse returns and they are trapped in the station with the passenger. They realize that the men are not deputies and have no intention to bring them to justice but take the stolen gold.

Young Robin Hood, in love with Maid Marian, enters an archery contest with his father at the King's palace. On the way home his father is murdered by henchmen of Prince John. Robin takes up the life of an outlaw, gathering together his band of merry men with him in Sherwood Forest, to avenge his father's death and to help the people of the land that Prince John are over taxing.

After being released from prison, ex-gunfighter John Wesley Hardin hopes to have his autobiography published in order to rehabilitate his tarnished reputation.

A small-town newspaper editor defies threats to expose the mob.

British Naval Officer fights pirates on Madagascar.

Writer Harry Street reflects on his life as he lies dying from an infection while on safari in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Brothers Dan and Neil Hammond return to Texas after the Civil War. Ambitious Dan turns to rustling and then shady land deals to build an empire. Being held for a murder, he is rescued from a lynch mob by Neil, who is now the Marshal, but there is eventually a falling out between the brothers, good triumphing over evil.

The brother (House Peters Jr.) of rancher Bill Martin (Bill Elliott) is killed in a stampede started by cattleman. Bill returns to the Fargo country to take his brother's place and is welcomed by law-abiding cattleman MacKenzie (Jack Ingram)) and his daughter Kathy (Phyllis Coates). The leader of the ruthless cattle interests are townsman Austin (Arthur Space) and his henchmen Red (Myron Healey), Link (Robert J. Wilke) and Albord (Terry Frost). Bill has the idea of putting up barbed wire to keep the herds from been driven over the land cultivated by the farmers. He, aided by Tad Sloan (Fuzzy Knight), produces the wire by make-shift methods, but it proves effective. The cattleman charge in court that the wire is dangerous to their herds but lose the case. Austin orders his men to seize Bill, bale him in strands of the wire, and throw him on the stage of the town hall during a fall festival. Bill doesn't take kindly to this and it precipitates open war.

House Un-American Activities Committee investigators Jim McLain and Mal Baxter come to post war Hawaii to track Communist Party activities even though belonging to the party was legal at the time. They are interested in everything from insurance fraud to the sabotage of a U.S. naval vessel.

August 1944: proceeding with the invasion of France, Patton's Third Army has advanced so far toward Paris that it cannot be supplied. To keep up the momentum, Allied HQ establishes an elite military truck route.

Major Jim Colton is a sympathetic leader who has a working relationship with Apache leader Cochise. Colton is undermined by corrupt and politically ambitious Indian agent Neil Baylor who sets up a false attack, and the abduction of a local farmer's son. While Colton is away investigating the matter, Baylor convinces Lieutenant Bascom that Cochise's band is to blame, and incites him to lead an expedition against the Apache band to return the boy.

Based on the story of Australia's colonization, this atmospheric drama stars Alan Ladd as Hugh Tallant, an American medical student falsely convicted of robbery and sent on a torturous voyage with other prisoners to the penal colony at Botany Bay. Because of his attempt to escape, evil Captain Gilbert decides to return him to England on charges of mutiny.

In 1875 Argentina, after killing a man, a gaucho is sentenced to harsh army duty but he deserts the army and becomes a bandit leader.

Commando Cody, 'Sky Marshal of the Universe', works with American scientists Joan Gilbert and Ted Richards in the development of a flying suit and a rocket to the Moon. When the nation's defences are being sabotaged and destroyed, Cody learns that an atomic-gun is being used and that the men on the moon are the culprits.

The only white survivor of a Crow Indian raid on a wagon train is a young boy. He is rescued by the Sioux, and the Sioux chief raises him as an Indian in very way. Years later, the white men and the Sioux threaten to go to war and the Indian-raised white man is torn between his racial loyalties and his adopted tribe.

Rip-roaring big star, big budget semi-historical story about cattle baron Devereaux Burke, who is enlisted by an aging Andrew Jackson to dissuade Sam Houston from establishing Texas as a republic. Burke must fight state senator Thomas Craden, in the process winning the heart of Craden's newspaper-editor girlfriend Martha Ronda.

In ancient Persia the son of Ali Baba (of forty thieves fame), Kashma Baba is a military cadet by day and a party goer by night. He falls for a girl who he later finds is an escaped slave girl belonging to the wicked Caliph. They flee to his father's palace. But alas, there's more to her than meets the eye. Will the evil schemers succeed? The sons of the Forty Thieves to the rescue!

Bomba decides to find out who his parents were. He starts with Cody Casson's diary and follows the trail to a native village. An ancient blind woman tells him his parents and the village's true ruler were murdered by the current chieftain and his daughter.

South Sea freebooters fight for hidden treasure and the love of the beautiful Luana.

Based on a successful comic book that began in 1941, the Blackhawks were seven flyers who banded together during WW II to fight the Nazis. After the war, they continued to fight evil where ever they find it. In this movie, they are battling a group of spies and saboteurs bent on destroying democracy. The Blackhawks foil a succession of plots, with a cliff hanger ending in each episode.

The jungle king's cousin tries to get him to help find a diamond treasure.

In this biopic, Jim Bowie goes to New Orleans, where he falls for Judalon and befriends her brother, Narcisse. Soon, Jim is forced to avenge Narcisse's murder, but Judalon takes up with another man. Jim eventually has another romantic interlude with Judalon and is forced to kill one of her suitors in self-defense. Jim leaves town, and falls for the daughter of a Texas politician, but his entanglement with Judalon continues to bedevil him.

Chills and spills in the fast-paced world of motorcycle racing.

On the eve of their return to the states, the crew of the U.S.S. Blake is unpleasantly surprised when their new captain, Lt. Commander Hale, announces that they've been reassigned to the upcoming invasion of Okinawa. With the news turning the crew against him, Hale must rise to the occasion to keep his men inline.

Mike Wein, an Alaskan bush pilot operating the the Bering Sea area, makes friends with John W. Wetherby, posing as a wealth United States businessman. But, in reality, he is a Russian spy on his way to Siberia carrying microfilms of the United States' defense installations. (imdb)

Lieutenant Johnson, a U. S. Air Force pilot, on the tip of Alaska, a few miles from the Bering Straits from Siberia, helps foil a Soviet plot to test a new secret weapon by loyal Alaskan Eskimos. He is aided by Sergeant Koovuk, an Alsaka native Eskimo also in the U.S. military service. Along the way there is an ice-floe evacuation, an air-ice rescue and a fight with a polar bear.

A rock hard commander trains Navy Carrier Pilots during the Second World War

British railway workers in Kenya are becoming the favorite snack of two man-eating lions. Head engineer Bob Hayward becomes obsessed with trying to kill the beasts before they maul everyone on his crew.

U.S. Marshal Rocky Lane (Allan Lane) arrives to help his friend Nugget (Eddy Waller) whose shipments are being robbed. Learning the gang only goes for incoming shipments, he figures they are repacking the loot and having Nugget ship it out. So he hijacks the next outgoing shipment finding a box labeled tools contains gold bars. Then posing as an outlaw he makes a deal with the gang hoping to round them up. But the boss learns he is a Marshal and he is made a prisoner.

Nancy Cartwright is determined to collect an $1,800 feed bill owed to her father Harry Cartwright by a rodeo association. Instead, she is talked into assuming management of the rodeo by Slim Martin and the other performers when they learn the promoter has run off with the cash receipts.

Having sent Deuce Rago to prison in Frontier Revenge (1948), Lash finds he's out and his outlaw gang are at it again. This time he has the Lawyer Leonard and Joan to help him out and Lash and Fuzzy must bring him in once more.

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.

Estranged brothers (John Payne, Richard Arlen) find themselves on the same lumberjack crew hired by a feisty widow to clear the timber from her Nevada property.

The Bowery Boys are enrolled in a fancy college by a pair of rich snobs who think they can turn the Boys into classy guys. Sach becomes a football star, and is kidnapped by gangsters to keep him out of the big game.

A criminal gang provokes the local Apaches in order to divert the authorities' attention from their own activities.

Five people have a part of a map leading to Billy the Kid's treasure. When one of them is killed, Rocky Lane has a plan to find the killer.

Murder ensues when owners and hired help contrive against each other to obtain diamonds and gold ingots secretly hidden on a derelict and abandoned Japanese freighter left lying in anchor in a New Guinea cove at the end of WW II.

Race car driver Frank Cermak is in love with Jane Harris. Jane and her parents watch Frank win a tight race from Bill Peters, an army lieutenant on leave. Peters tries to foul Frank, and Frank beats him in a fist fight after the race. Frank is drafted into the army and (against staggering and overwhelming odds) finds Lt. Peters to be his commanding officer.