Best Crime Movies of 1962

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.

After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.

Josef K wakes up in the morning and finds the police in his room. They tell him that he is on trial but nobody tells him what he is accused of. In order to find out about the reason for this accusation and to protest his innocence, he tries to look behind the façade of the judicial system. But since this remains fruitless, there seems to be no chance for him to escape from this Kafkaesque nightmare.

A man with an asthmatic voice telephones and assaults clerk Kelly Sherwood at home and coerces her into helping him steal a large sum from her bank.

A woman is found murdered in a house along the coast from Brighton. Local detectives Fellows and Wilks lead an investigation methodically following up leads and clues mostly in Brighton and Hove but also further afield.

What secret lay behind the dreaded Marsh Phantoms, the ghostly riders whose silent approach in the darkness of the bleak, unwelcoming Romney Marshes causes men to die of fright? Are they a genuine manifestation or a cover for illegal smuggling activities. Perhaps Dr. Blyss, the benign vicar of the quiet village of Dymchurch, knows the truth about the ruthless pirate and smuggler who lies buried in the village graveyard and can unravel the phenomenon of the curse of Captain Clegg.

A man recalls the sad, short life of his narcotics-addicted brother.

Immediately after Lisa declares that she is leaving her immature, abusive, but easy-going husband Robert, he is reported dead in a plane crash. Secretly still alive, he convinces her to collect his life insurance, although she knows that it's a bad idea. Lisa must contend with the complications of the scheme, which involve an aggressive suitor, Robert's jealousy, and her own guilt.

Penniless Fred Bancroft, along with his new wife Molly, visits a sinister uncle he hasn't seen in years in hopes of living rent-free in his musty, decaying mansion.

A night watchman at a garage is found murdered, and four teddy boys are put on trial for the crime. Witnesses and suspects give differing accounts of the lead-up to the crime, and the truth emerges.

During a bank robbery, the manager and a cashier are locked in the strongroom, while the crooks escape. Later, when the gang realise that their plan to release the pair has gone wrong, they return to the bank to try and release them before the police turn up.

A group of prisoners are encouraged to form a jazz band and vow to go straight when they are released to tour the country. However, the trumpets and clarinets are just a cover for a series of robberies. Musical comedy, starring British jazz star Acker Bilk as himself, alongside Jimmy Thompson and Jennifer Jayne.

A criminal gang sets out to pull off the heist of a large army payroll.

Scotland Yard is thrown into an uproar when a mad killer begins knocking off beautiful young blondes.

A former burglar trying to go straight joins a rehabilitation scheme using much the same methods as AA. Through the process, he takes work as a department store Santa, where the endless parade of goods and money, not to mention the pretty young shop hands have him like a moth to a flame in no time flat.

After serving three years in prison for a bank robbery, Joe Dasco is released and reunited with his son. Together they both go looking for work in the Texas oil fields. Not being able to hold a steady honest job, Joe Dasco along with a few men that he befriends along the way attempt to kidnap an oil baron's son. The kidnapping fails and Joe Dasco is shot and killed. His son Joey is then left alone but inherits what his father fought and died for.

A gang of jewel thieves rob a house which has just become empty following the recent death of it's rich lady owner. The robbery is not a complete success and one of the gang hides the jewels in the house as he's about to be captured. Later the house is put up for sale and events lead the estate agent to conclude that the jewels may still be there.

Eighteen-year-old Harry Jukes is literally holding a smoking gun in his hand. His lawyer thinks he did it, but his psychiatrist disagrees -- and sets out to prove she is right.

A group of inmates escape from Dartmoor prison. They hide out in the English country side but are doggedly chased by police.

Vincent Price stars in this early '60s adaptation of Thomas De Quincey's thriller about an opium addict trying to solve a mystery in San Francisco's Chinatown.

After his death sentence is commuted to life in prison, John Resko is transferred from Sing-Sing to Dannemora where, with the help of a humane prison guard, he becomes a rehabilitated man and a successful painter.

Arson is the way out for a failing cosmetics company.

Charles Hilary is in love with Kathy Forrester, a beautiful television personality, but is married to Louise, an alcoholic with as many lovers as whisky bottles. His pleas for a divorce are met with threats and abuse. "You'll have to murder me first", Louise tells him and three hours later she is found dead, shot with her husband's pistol. When Charles is arrested, Kathy desperately sets to work to prove his innocence.

Walt Sherill is attacked and beat down by a group of juvenile delinquents on his way home from work one night. The boys who attacked him are not previously known by the police and are therefore hard to track down. As Sherill starts getting impatient he begins his own investigation. Meanwhile, Detective Sergeant Koleski does his best to track down the culprits.

An innocent, pregnant prison inmate (Shirley Knight) becomes the bad warden's (Andrew Duggan) personal favorite.

A millionaire businessman's brain is kept alive after a fatal accident, and communicates clues to a doctor on the trail of the killer

A private eye is hired to go undercover at a health farm, but before he can find out why his client is murdered.

A girl tracks down the gang who had her detective brother killed.

In this thriller, two gangs of jewel thieves battle it out in a deserted cottage. Murder ensues when the owners of the cabin show up. Listed as lost by the BFI.

An honest news agent realizes that his 2 sons are corrupt. When one criminal son is in jail, the other breaks him out to help with a job.

An avaricious, ambitious fellow, desiring to hold the reins for a major auto company, must frame someone for murder before he can get what he wants. He chooses a reformed embezzler who works for the company.

A policeman is accused of manslaughtering a 14-year-old boy but is acquitted of all charges. Still, he feels a lot of guilt and begins to doubt if he really is innocent after all.

Hot shot teen Sonny Martin stops to help the victim of an auto accident but quickly realizes he’s stepped into a murder in progress.

When a woman is forced by a murderer to drive him to safety, she deliberately passes up chances to escape.

A victim's boyfriend sneaks into a blackmailer's flat to sort him out, but another man's already there, and both don't realise the crook has been murdered before they got there. The police soon arrive, tipped off in advance.

A young policeman becomes involved with a glamorous German woman in London, to his cost.

An international criminal arrives in London, and a detective is anxious to pin something on him for some unprovable murders of former lovers. The villain starts to suspect servants and henchmen of being a police spy known as "Number Six".

A group of crooks accidentally kill an elderly shop assistant while stealing the keys to the jewellery shop where she works. When his superiors think that the case is better handed over to Scotland Yard, the local detective inspector, Sparrow (Glyn Houston), decides to go solo to investigate the crime himself.

This episodic detective film presents the cases of two New Orleans gumshoes. In once case they preserve the good name of a patrolman who is suspected of murdering a kleptomaniacal socialite. They then find the murderer of a bank robber whose corpse was found in a swamp. After that, they catch a psycho hitchhiker. Finally, they bring in the killer of a cabbie's wife and her little dog.

L.A. detective Sgt. Castle and his two partners investigate the theft of a valuable Fragonard painting by a thief who pilots a helicopter.

A young woman commits suicide. Her sister is not ready to let the death go without someone answering a few questions. Namely, was it really suicide, and where is the large amount of money her sister withdrew from the bank the day before her death.

A gang of high class corporate thieves use blackmail to induce their victims to sell property at knock-down prices.

A shady business man has perpetrated a fraud that has resulted in the death of a large number of people. His business partner has evidence of the fraud and threatens the fraudster with exposure in the event of any further dishonest dealing. But when the fraudster suddenly receives death threats he decides to fake his own murder in a plan both to get his hands on the evidence.

Greedy young thugs kidnap a dead man's wife in hopes that she can lead them to the location of a hidden fortune.

An attorney's former mistress and his friend feign her death in order to bilk his new bride of 2,000 pounds.

A scrap dealer is making a profit out of wrecked cars, but trouble starts when one of his men demands more money.

A writer, Arnold Reed, goes back to his former boyhood home in the East End, and there, finding it about to be torn down, he revisits his attic room, and stumbles on evidence of the operations of dealers in illegal traffic. He breaks his ankle and has to hide from the criminals, one of whom is a murderer.