Best Crime Movies of 1974

Private eye Jake Gittes lives off of the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-World War II Southern California. Hired by a beautiful socialite to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together.

Surveillance expert Harry Caul is hired by a mysterious client's brusque aide to tail a young couple. Tracking the pair through San Francisco's Union Square, Caul and his associate Stan manage to record a cryptic conversation between them. Tormented by memories of a previous case that ended badly, Caul becomes obsessed with the resulting tape, trying to determine if the couple is in danger.

In New York, armed men hijack a subway car and demand a ransom for the passengers. Even if it's paid, how could they get away?

An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.

In this rough-and-tumble yarn, filmed on-location at the Georgia State Prison, the cons are the heroes and the guards are the heavies. Eddie Albert is the sadistic warden who'll gladly make any sacrifice to push his guards' semi-pro football team to a national championship.

After his wife is murdered by street punks, a pacifistic New York City architect becomes a one-man vigilante squad, prowling the streets for would-be muggers after dark.

With the help of an irreverent young sidekick, a bank robber gets his old gang back together to organise a daring new heist.

An ambitious reporter gets in trouble while investigating a senator's assassination which leads to a vast conspiracy involving a multinational corporation behind every event in the world's headlines.

Married small-time crooks Lou-Jean and Clovis Poplin lose their baby to the state of Texas and resolve to do whatever it takes to get him back. Lou-Jean gets Clovis out of jail, and the two steal their son from his foster home, in addition to taking a highway patrolman hostage. As a massive dragnet starts to pursue them across Texas, the couple become unlikely folk heroes and even start to bond with the captive policeman.

A voluptuous black woman takes a job as a high-class prostitute in order to get revenge on the mobsters who murdered her boyfriend.

Harry Kilmer returns to Japan after several years in order to rescue his friend George's kidnapped daughter - and ends up on the wrong side of the Yakuza, the notorious Japanese mafia...

The life and times of Dawn Davenport, showing her progression from bratty schoolgirl to crazed mass murderer - all of which stems from her parents' refusal to buy her cha-cha heels for Christmas.

A melon farmer battles organized crime and a hit man who wants to kill him.

Insurance investigator Maindrian Pace and his team lead double-lives as unstoppable car thieves. When a South American drug lord pays Pace to steal 48 cars for him, all but one, a 1973 Ford Mustang, are in the bag. As Pace prepares to rip-off the fastback, codenamed "Eleanor", in Long Beach, he is unaware that his boss has tipped off the police after a business dispute.

New York City English professor Axel Freed outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling addiction that threatens to destroy him.

Bowie, a youthful convicted murderer, and bank robbers Chicamaw and T-Dub escape from a Mississippi chain gang in the 1930s. They hole up with a gas station attendant and continue robbing banks. Bowie, who is injured in an auto accident, takes refuge with the daughter of the gas station attendant, Keechie. They become romantically involved but their relationship is strained by Bowie's refusal to turn his back on crime. The film is based on the novel Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson. The novel is also the source material for the 1949 film They Live by Night, directed by Nicholas Ray.

Truck Turner and his partner Jerry, who make their living as bounty hunters in Los Angeles, are hired to hunt down Gator, a pimp who has skipped bail.

A terrorist demands a huge ransom in exchange for information on how to disarm the seven bombs he has planted aboard a trans-Atlantic cruise ship.

Down-on-their-luck racers Larry and Deke steal from a supermarket manager to buy a car that will help them advance their racing chances. Their escape does not go as planned when Larry's one-night stand, Mary, tags along for the ride.

A murder plot by a terminally ill English teacher, to capitalize on the double indemnity clause in his life insurance, hires one of his students to do the deed.

Two San Francisco detectives want to bring down a local hijacking boss. But they'll have to get to him before a hitman does.

Willie Dynamite is a pimp who operates in New York City. Willie was a big success as a pimp, but now, just as fast as he rose to the top, he has hit bottom. A former prostitute who has become a social worker tries to get Willie to clean up his life while it is still possible.

Agent Melvin Purvis is placed in charge of running down notorious killer Machine Gun Kelly, and sets out to do just that.

A British agent's son is kidnapped and held for a ransom of diamonds. The agent finds out that he can't even count on the people he thought were on his side to help him, so he decides to track down the kidnappers himself.

Two Los Angeles vice squad officers find themselves up against their corrupt superiors when they try to bring a crime boss to justice. During the course of their investigation, the two cops disguise themselves as gay men and raid a gay bar.

A horror movie star returns to his famous role after years in a mental institution. But the character seems to be committing murders independent of his will.

Police Lieutenant Lon McQ investigates the killing of his best friend and uncovers corrupt elements of the police department dealing in confiscated drugs.

After one of its members witnesses a political assassination, an outlaw motorbike gang becomes the target of a string of murders, prompting a cop to join their ranks to determine who is responsible.

A man living in rural Wisconsin takes care of his bed-ridden mother, who is very domineering and teaches him that all women are evil. After she dies he misses her, so a year later he digs her up and takes her home. He learns about taxidermy and begins robbing graves to get materials to patch her up, and inevitably begins looking for fresher sources of materials. Based closely on the true story of Ed Gein.

A small time diamond merchant jumps at the chance to supervise the purchase and cutting of a large first class diamond. But when the diamond is stolen from him, he is blackmailed into pulling off a major heist at the Diamond Exchange, located at 11 Harrowhouse.

An important drug lord settled in Marseille is suspected of having ordered the killing of an American agent, but it is impossible to impute him due to his political influences, so the dead agent's boss decides to hire the services of a hitman to kill him.

A young American girl on her way to visit friends in rural England is brutally attacked and raped. After spending the next few months in a mental institution trying to recover from her ordeal, she is released into the care of her friends. The police assure her that they have the man responsible in custody, and she begins to rest easy. That is until she sees her attacker wandering the streets of the town. After planning her revenge she follows the man and kills him. This, she thinks, is the end of her ordeal. That is until the man she thinks she has killed arrives at the house she is staying in.

Two episodes of the TV series "The Persuaders" joined into a movie. Two playboys investigate crimes along the French Riviera.

When her boyfriend is brutally murdered, after refusing to be shaken down by the local gangsters running their protection racket, Sugar Hill, decides not to get mad, but BAD! Calling upon the help of aged voodoo queen Mama Maitresse, Sugar entreats her to call upon Baron Zamedi, the Lord of the Dead, for help in gaining a gruesome revenge. In exchange for her soul, the Dark Master raises up a zombie army to do her bidding. The bad guys who thought they were getting away clean are about to find out that they're DEAD wrong.

Ten people are invited to a hotel for a weekend getaway by a Mr. U. N. Owen, who mysteriously isn't in attendance. When the group gets together for their first dinner, a record is played in which Mr. Owen accuses each guest of committing various unpunished crimes, which sets off a series of murders in the hotel.

Mama and daughters get forced by circumstances into bootlegging and bank robbing, and travel across the country trailed by the law.

Dimwitted but sweet high school girl of easy virtue and the most popular boy in the school share an improbable romance.

A small southern town has just been rocked by a tragedy: a young woman has been violently raped. The white town fathers immediately declare that the attacker had to be black, and place the blame on Garth, a young black man. Assuming that the men in white sheets aren't intent on holding a fair and impartial trial, Garth takes to the woods as the Klansmen lynching party hunts him down.

When petty criminals start turning up murdered, a detective discovers they are being killed by a group of his fellow officers who think the criminals were treated too leniently by the courts.

Luc Merenda gives the performance of his career as a highly regarded police detective who is taking syndicate money in exchange for departmental favors. His father, a simple man, also works for the department but on a lower rung; he isn't jealous of his son, but rather proud of him, little knowing that he's a crooked cop. A series of events leads the young detective to ask his father for a favor (he wants a certain police report that is desired by the syndicate) and it doesn't take long for the detective's father to realize his son is on the take... which leads to numerous complications.

A bank temporarily housed in a mobile home while a new building is built, looks like an easy target to break into. On the other hand, why not steal the whole bank, and rob it in a safer location.

Andrew Angus Dalrymple's realistic portrait of a British soldier, his Irish lover and her twin sister amidst the strife of Northern Ireland.

Three vicious thugs are on the run in rural America after robbing a local bank. They seek refuge at the home of a reclusive farmer, but he is prepared for their arrival and holds them at gunpoint. Unable to let them simply wait for the law, he decides to take them into into his cellar and torture them a little before the police arrive.

Wealthy widow Helen Mercer hires a young woman, Gretchen Addison, to act as her personal assistant and companion. Unfortunately, Helen is a poor judge of character, as Gretchen is part of a murderous extortionist duo with her boyfriend, Jay. However, Gretchen has second thoughts when she develops genuine affection for Helen. When Gretchen informs Jay that she wants to call off their plot, he refuses and carries on with the plan. Now both Helen and Gretchen may be in grave danger.

The true story of two New York City cops. Greenberg & Hantz fought the system, became detectives and were known on the streets as "Batman & Robin".

Harry Orwell has been retired from the force ever since he caught a bullet that lodged inoperably in his back. But that doesn’t mean the man called Harry O is out of the action. Moonlighting as a private sleuth, fighting off daily back pain and typically traveling by public bus instead of his own car (“It gives a man a chance to think”), he’s on the trail of the lowlife who murdered his pal’s son-in-law. It won’t be the only time the killer strikes before Harry closes in. David Janssen (The Fugitive) portrays dogged detective Harry in the telefilm that was the second of two pilots preceding his memorable Harry O series. Among the highlights: young Jodie Foster as Liberty, the wise-beyond-her-years homeless waif Harry befriends.

An ex-police officer operating a private detective business comes face to face with a syndicate-backed dope ring.

A small-town police chief investigating a murder is offered help by a self-described psychic. However, when the chief discovers that the "psychic" is in possession of information known only to the police, he suspects that the man may be more involved in the case than he lets on.

Two rural West Virginia brothers leave home, rob an armored car and become fugitives.