Best Crime Movies of 1973

A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.

Frank Serpico is an idealistic New York City cop who refuses to take bribes, unlike the rest of the force. His actions get Frank shunned by the other officers, and often placed in dangerous situations by his partners. When his superiors ignore Frank's accusations of corruption, he decides to go public with the allegations. Although this causes the Knapp Commission to investigate his claims, Frank has also placed a target on himself.

A small-time hood must choose from among love, friendship and the chance to rise within the mob.

During the Great Depression, a con man finds himself saddled with a young girl—who may or may not be his daughter—and the two forge an unlikely partnership.

This is the year 2022. Overcrowding, pollution, and resource depletion have reduced society’s leaders to finding food for the teeming masses. The answer is Soylent Green.

Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.

An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town and her older greaser boyfriend embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota badlands.

Charley Varrick robs a bank in a small town with his friends, but instead of obtaining a small amount of money, they discover they stole a very large amount of money belonging to the mob. Charley must now come up with a plan to not only evade the police but the mob as well.

An aging hood is about to go back to prison. Hoping to escape his fate, he supplies information on stolen guns to the feds, while simultaneously supplying arms to his bank robbing chums.

"Dirty" Harry Callahan is a San Francisco Police Inspector on the trail of a group of rogue cops who have taken justice into their own hands. When shady characters are murdered one after another in grisly fashion, only Dirty Harry can stop them.

After her younger sister gets involved in drugs and is severely injured by contaminated heroin, a nurse sets out on a mission of vengeance and vigilante justice, killing drug dealers, pimps, and mobsters who cross her path.

A burned-out British police detective finally snaps while interrogating a suspected child molester.

A year after Sheila is killed in a hit-and-run, her multimillionaire husband invites a group of friends to spend a week on his yacht playing a scavenger hunt-style mystery game. The game turns out to be all too real and all too deadly.

After being run out of Las Vegas, reporter Carl Kolchak heads for Seattle and another reporting job with the local paper. It's not long before he is on the trail of another string of bizarre murders. It seems that every 21 years, for the past century, a killer kills a certain number of people, drains them of their blood and then disappears into the night. Kolchak is on his trail, but can he stop him?

After a shoot-out kills five FBI agents in Kansas City the Bureau target John Dillinger as one of the men to hunt down. Waiting for him to break Federal law they sort out several other mobsters, while Dillinger's bank robbing exploits make him something of a folk hero. Escaping from jail he finds Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson have joined the gang and pretty soon he is Public Enemy Number One. Now the G-men really are after him.

An ugly girl undergoes plastic surgery and becomes beautiful. She then takes revenge on all the people who mistreated her when she was ugly.

A short Arizona motorcycle cop gets his wish and is promoted to Homicide following the mysterious murder of a hermit. He is forced to confront his illusions about himself and those around him in order to solve the case, eventually returning to solitude in the desert.

A black man plays Uncle Tom in order to gain access to CIA training, then uses that knowledge to plot a new American Revolution.

A two-bit criminal takes on the Mafia to avenge his brother's death. Earl Macklin is a small time criminal who is released from prison after an unsuccessful bank robbery only to discover that a pair of gunmen killed his brother.

Ex-wrestler and Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser walks tall and carries a big stick as he tussles with county-wide corruption and moonshining thugs.

Bill Bixby stars in this NBC pilot movie as a famous stage magician and escape artist who solves crimes.

Kidnappers making a ransom demand dial a wrong number and reach a struggling actor instead. He decides to cut himself in for some of the money.

A tough detective who is part of an elite New York City unit is trying to find out who killed his partner, but uncovers a plot to kidnap mobsters for money.

Rogue intelligence agents, right-wing politicians, greedy capitalists, and free-lance assassins plot and carry out the JFK assassination in this speculative agitprop.

An abused autistic boy is the sole witness to the kidnapping of a teenage heiress.

An ex con teams up with federal agents to help them with breaking up a moonshine ring.

When a gunman opens fire on a crowded city bus in San Francisco, Detective Dave Evans is killed, along with the man he'd been following in relation to a murder. Evans' partner, Sgt. Jake Martin, becomes obsessed with solving the case.

Detective John Shaft travels incognito to Ethiopia, then France, to bust a human trafficking ring.

Tommy Gibbs is a tough kid, raised in the ghetto, who aspires to be a kingpin criminal. As a young boy, his leg is broken by a bad cop on the take, during a payoff gone bad. Nursing his vengeance, he rises to power in Harlem, New York. Angry at the racist society around him, both criminal and straight, he sees the acquisition of power as the solution to his rage.

A Los Angeles detective is sent to New York where he must solve a case involving an old Sicilian Mafia family feud.

A master thief and his drug-addicted partner teach two aspiring crooks how to steal wallets.

After his mistress is murdered, a Mafia leader goes after the killer with a bloody vengeance. Soon after the hunt begins, a gang war ensues.

Several men hiking in the mountains discover an injured skyjacker who parachuted from a plane with $600,000. They kill him, then start fighting each other over the money.

A museum heist with an unusual twist: the three thieves are all physically disabled. The men, one confined to a wheelchair, one with prosthetic hands, and one blind, plan to steal a valuable statue. The men use teamwork and ingenuity to beat the high-tech security and get in and out with the statue. However, their plan is not foolproof, as a museum guard recognizes their M.O. and pays them a visit.

Dr. Jake Terrell, who has been training a pair of dolphins for many years, has had a breakthrough. He has taught his dolphins to speak and understand English, although they do have a limited vocabulary. When the dolphins are stolen, he discovers they're to be used in an assassination attempt. Now he is in a race to discover who is the target, and where the dolphins are, before the attempt is carried out.

After a fundraiser for a black politician is robbed, Detroit police put two detectives, one white and one black, on the case, who try to work together under boiling political pressure.

While searching for a small fortune of embezzled money, an ex-con, a small-time bandleader, his doting wife and a kooky drifter find themselves being followed. Their chase takes them to trailer camps, bingo halls, laundromats and ultimately, a showdown with a group of unconventional bad guys.

Federal agent Cleopatra Jones tries to rescue her framed boyfriend from a drug-queen pervert known as Mommy.

When various trustees of the Van Traylen Orphanage begin dying in close order, it's at first written off as a coincidence. But, when a school bus accident very nearly takes out three more of them along with a group of orphans, Col. Bingham (Christopher Lee) and his pathologist friend, Mark (Peter Cushing), begin looking into the deaths. They come to think the answer lies with one of the girls on the bus, who has vivid memories of things she could not possibly have seen.

A homicide detective begins to suspect that the black teenager accused of murdering two white girls is being framed by his fellow detectives.

Bumper Morgan is a veteran Los Angeles Police Department street cop. He is due to retire after 20 years on the job, but is not letting up on the criminal element on his beat.

The wives of three wealthy men are kidnapped and held for a $3 million ransom, but one of the men doesn't want to pay his share.

In the wake of a Supreme Court decision to outlaw the death penalty, California passes an initiative that designates San Bruno island as a dumping spot for first-degree murder convicts, free to do what they like except leave. The main camp of convicts is controlled by the tyrannical Bobby, who rules with an iron hand, and the women are used as sex slaves. A.J. and a group of more free-minded murderers have escaped and gone into hiding. When A.J. and his men liberate the women from Bobby's custody, tensions mount to an all-out confrontation for control of the island.

Two waiters in Depression-era Arkansas get involved in the numbers racket.

One man decides to wage war against a gang of teenage punks besieging an affluent California community. Based on a true incident.

A convict who managed to print $1 million in counterfeit bills in the prison print shop hatches a scheme to swap them for real money

Two disillusioned New York policemen plan a $10 million robbery to fuel their low pensions, only to run into one debacle after another in the process.

Tracy Fleming is a widowed police officer, with a young son, who has risen to the role of plainclothes operative. After six women have been raped and killed, Fleming agrees to go undercover in an effort to make herself a target for the killer. The climax places her in a life-and-death struggle with the killer.

Stranded when their car gets a flat tire, two sexy girls accept help from two hippies in a dune buggy. After sex to repay the favor, the four team up for a robbery at one of the girl's home, but it goes terribly wrong.