Best Action Movies of 1955

Escaped convicts terrorize a suburban family they're holding hostage.

The story of the conception of a new British weapon for smashing the German dams in the Ruhr industrial complex and the execution of the raid by 617 Squadron 'The Dam Busters'.

Police Lt. Leonard Diamond vies to bring a clever, well connected, and sadistic gangster to justice all the while obsessing over the gangster's girlfriend.

The true WWII story of Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in U.S. history. Based on the autobiography of Audie Murphy who stars as himself in the film.

Legends (and myths) from the life of famed American frontiersman Davy Crockett are depicted in this feature film edited from television episodes. Crockett and his friend George Russel fight in the Creek Indian War. Then Crockett is elected to Congress and brings his rough-hewn ways to the House of Representatives. Finally, Crockett and Russell journey to Texas and the last stand at the Alamo.

Western that starts when a man (Matt Dow) is mistaken as a train robber. After the town's sheriff shoots the kid he's riding with, Dow clears his name and ends up as the new sheriff. He romances a Swedish woman and settles in to a peaceful life only to find that the boy has a few secrets of his own.

As the Second World War breaks out, German freighter captain Karl Ehrlich is about to leave Sydney, Australia with his vessel, the Ergenstrasse. Ehrlich, an anti-Nazi but proud German, hopes to outrun or out-maneuver the British warship pursuing him. Aboard his vessel is Elsa Keller, a woman Ehrlich has been ordered to return to Germany safely along with whatever secrets she carries. When Ehrlich's fiercely Nazi chief officer Kirchner commits an atrocity, the British pursuit becomes deadly.

A tough and realistic crime drama unfolds as merciless kidnapper Jerry Barker (Ralph Meeker) demands ransom paid against a young runaway whose fate lands Barker in Casabel Island Prison.

Former buffalo hunter and entrepreneur Wyatt Earp arrives in the lawless cattle town of Wichita Kansas. His skill as a gun-fighter makes him a perfect candidate for Marshal, but he refuses the job until he feels morally obligated to bring law and order to this wild town.

Set in the eighteenth century, Moonfleet is about John Mohune, a young orphan who is sent to the Dorset village of Moonfleet to stay with an old friend of his mother's, Jeremy Fox. Fox is a morally ambiguous character, an elegant gentleman involved with smugglers and pirates.

The story of the peace mission from the US cavalry to the Cheyenne Indians in Wyoming during the 1870s. The mission is threatened when a civilian surveyor befriends the chief's son and falls for the chief's daughter.

Packaged and sold as an outdoor actioner, Many Rivers to Cross is as much a comedy as anything else. Robert Taylor stars as 18th century trapper Bushrod Gentry, who is himself entrapped into marriage by the spunky Mary Stuart Cherne (Eleanor Parker). Escaping his marital responsibilities (which were impressed upon him on threat of death), Gentry heads into the North Country, with Mary in hot pursuit. Hero and heroine spend the rest of the picture taking turns rescuing each other from hostile Indians. Some of the humor is predicated upon the wholesale slaughter of the "redskins", and as such is a bit hard to take when seen today. Supporting Taylor and Parker are Victor McLaglen as the heroine's burly father, and TV-stars-to be James Arness (Gunsmoke) and Russell Johnson and Alan Hale Jr. (Gilligan's Island).

A scout leading a wagon train through hostile Indian country gets involved with a Sioux chief's daughter.

Virginia, 1803. After the United States of America acquires the inmense Louisiana territory from France, a great expedition, led by William Lewis and Meriwether Clark, is sent to survey the new lands and go where no white man has gone before.

Air Force reservist Lt. Col. Robert (Dutch) Holland is recalled into active duty at the peak of his baseball career.

In 1927, a Kansas City, Missouri cornet player and his band perform nightly at a seedy speakeasy until a racketeer tries to extort them in exchange for protection.

Three trappers become scouts for a cavalry captain who loses his fort to a hated colonel.

An American woman arrives in Hong Kong to unravel the mystery of her missing photographer husband. After getting nowhere with the authorities, she is led by some underground characters to an American soldier of fortune working in the area against the Communists. He promises to help find her husband.

A Marshal must face unpleasant facts about his past when he attempts to run a criminal gang out of town.

A merchant marine captain, rescued from the Chinese Communists by local visitors, is "shanghaied" into transporting the whole village to Hong Kong on an ancient paddle steamer.

A frontiersman and his son fight to build a new home in Texas.

Former war-time Army buddies now students in college decide to rip off a Reno casino.

Director Robert Parrish's 1955 drama, spanning many years, stars Jane Wyman as a spirited western shopkeeper who watches as her small store flourishes and grows into a hugely profitable business empire. The cast also includes Charlton Heston, Claire Trevor, Thelma Ritter, William Demarest and Wallace Ford.

In this film's version of the story, four of the Reno Brothers are corrupt robbers and killers while a fifth, Clint is a respected Indiana farmer. A sister, Laura, who has inherited the family home, serves the outlaw brothers as a housekeeper and cook. One brother is killed when they go after a bank, the men of the town appear to have been waiting for them…

India. The spoilt and stubborn Edwina Esketh, comes to a small town with her husband. She falls in love with an indian doctor, Dr. Safti. She also meets an old friend of hers, the alcoholic Tom Ransome. An awful earthquake is followed by days of rain.

Two scuba divers find a shipwreck which may contain undiscovered treasure, however, their attempt to salvage it is threatened by scavengers.

A tough, womanizing high-stakes gambler known only as Tennessee has an uneasy relationship with Duchess, madam of a thinly-disguised bordello, and no other friends at all. But he's saved from murder by a lonesome cowpoke ('My friends call me Cowpoke'), in town to meet his fiancée Goldie on the steamboat. When she arrives, there's a mysterious undercurrent between Goldie and Tennessee, whose newfound friendship with Cowpoke is destined to be severely tried...

To redeem his father's wrongdoings, Ericson joins the law to fight outlaws.

A part-Indian mining engineer looks for gold in an Arizona ghost town with his socialite bride.

An aboriginal girl is brought up by a white family that adopts her. As a young woman, she is mysteriously drawn to go "Walkabout" as people of her tribe have for hundreds of years.

Capt. Harper's cavalry patrol returns to the fort to find it besieged by Ute Indians. The apparent cause is the recapture of Army traitor Brett Halliday, who deserted to the Utes in a previous war; but Brett has a different story. With capture imminent, the only chance for the surviving men (and one woman) is to boat down a wild, uncharted river, where Harper and Halliday must pull together, like it or not.

Edward, Prince of Wales, son and heir to his father King Edward III of England, leads an English army to the French province of Aquitaine to protect the inhabitant from the ravages of the French. After defeating the French in battle, the defeated French plot to kill the prince. Failing in this, they kidnap his lady, the lovely Lady Joan Holland. Of course Prince Edward has to ride to the rescue, adopting numerous guises to save his paramour, which ultimately end in him leading his men into one final climactic battle against the French. (Also known as "The Warriors" and "The Black Prince").

Still seeking revenge against ranch owner Tuck Ordway for publicly whipping him years earlier and breaking up his relationship with Ordway's daughter, cowboy Larry Madden plans to oust Ordway from his ranch by having his claim to the land declared invalid. Ordway's daughter Corinna, believing Madden to be the cause of the family's recent misfortunes, is unaware that the local saloon owner also has designs upon the Ordway holdings.

Jim "Tex" Wall, searching for the last of the three men who raped and killed his wife, joins a gang of cattle rustlers led by Hank Hays. Both Hays' outlaws and a rival gang headed by Heesman, have been hired as ranch hands by "Bull" Herrick, a cripple who owns a large cattle ranch and wants to get his large herd to market. He theorizes that the two gangs will be kept busy watching each other and neither will rustle his cattle. Helen has little faith in her brother's contrived plan, and hates and distrusts both groups. She begins to soften toward Jim, but abruptly changes when she sees a reward poster which says he has killed two men.

When the great potato famine hits Ireland, the diaspora begins as thousands emigrate. Among those leaving the Emerald Isle is Katie O'Neill and her husband, who decide that the promised land is South Africa and make their way there. Once there, they discover the hardships that are the reality of the homesteader experience.

After being dumped by his fiancée, hard-drinking and depressed Mark Cormack loses his job in the Los Angeles district attorney's office and serves as bouncer in a Las Vegas casino. A wheelchair-using stranger Barzland hires him to locate a ruby that disappeared in a Caribbean plane crash. He lures Cormack into doing the job by telling him it may be in the possession of the very woman who jilted him. The ex-detective flies to remote island Santo Rosario to find the stone and investigate the mystery. When he finds his old flame he finds that her husband is in prison. Cormack, again falling for Janet, is convinced into helping him break out of jail. But Janet has other plans.

Before getting nabbed by the cops, a jewel thief hides a small fortune in stolen goods aboard an empty barge. But when he later returns to claim his loot, he runs into heaps of trouble with the boat's beautiful tenants and a pair of nosy old ladies. Directed by Charles Saunders, this amusing comedy finds the cunning criminal up against far stronger and more resilient adversaries than he ever anticipated. [Netflix]

A disgraced Indian scout and his partner are hired to escort a wagonload of guns through Indian territory.

Jean Evans of an international wildlife foundation, who is known to Africa as 'the Panther Girl' because of her bravery in jungle living, stumbles on a plot by a mad scientist to frighten the natives out of a diamond-laden district by chemically growing crayfish to giant size, and enlists the aid of a game hunter friend to prevent a monster rampage and bring the culprits to justice.

There's a new doctor in old Santa Fe, and it's Greer Garson. Director Mervyn LeRoy's 1955 western also stars Dana Andrews, Cameron Mitchell, Lois Smith, Walter Hampden, Pedro Gonzales-Gonzales, Earl Holliman, Adele Jergens, Robert Wilke, Frank DeKova, Nick Adams, Douglas Kennedy, Ralph Moody and Louise Lorimer.

Priestess Oma is forever young in this Jungle Jim knockoff of "She" or the La of Opar stories from "Tarzan". The Jungle Jim-type character is played by Weissmuller using his own name.

The pilot, co-pilot, and crew of a bomber try to hit a Korean bridge in bad weather.

During the Civil War, five condemned Southern prisoners are plucked off Death Row and promised pardons on the condition that they undertake a mission to head west and bring back a double-crossing Confederate spy who has a stagecoach full of Confederate gold.

A young man seeks his father's killers among lumberjacks, and discovers that they are actually timber barons who also seek to control lumber mills. Based on the novel of the same name.

In the late 1880s, Colonel Carrington and his command are assigned the job of constructing a chain of forts in the Sious Indian territory of Wyoming. Carrington recruits former cavalry scouts Jim Bridger and "Dakota Jack" Gaines to lead the project. Bridger and Gaines are friendly with Sioux chief Red Cloud, and they feel a peace treaty with the Indians can be made. If an Indian-war breaks out, the cavalry is depending on getting a new type of Springfield rifle. Bridger, Gaines and Gaines wife, Maxine, arrive at the fort for the conference. Gaines, in a drunken fit, tries to intimidate the Indians unto signing a treaty. Chied Red Fox threatens war if his territory is invaded by any troops building forts.

A rookie reporter in pursuit of an expose gets tangled up with big-time mobsters.

A mining engineer, who is shunned by his peers for his unorthodox beliefs concerning the whereabouts of large uranium deposits, joins forces with a girl and her father to search for the mineral. When the father is hurt in an accident, daughter and engineer continue the project, aided by a Native American guide. Unbeknownst to the group, a reputable citizen of the town, really of low moral value, is shadowing themi, his intention, to jump their claim. Written by Buxx Banner