Best Crime Movies of 1982

A hard-nosed cop reluctantly teams up with a wise-cracking criminal temporarily paroled to him, in order to track down a killer.

A young artist is commissioned by the wife of a wealthy landowner to make a series of drawings of the estate while her husband is away.

Frank Drebbin leads his bungling detective squad in the comedy series that inspired the 'Naked Gun' films. This comedy classic mercilessly spoofed every detective show convention known and was the blueprint for the irreverent, 'anything might happen' formula. Full of ridiculous moments such as when the weekly special guest star is introduced during the opening title sequence - and killed as soon as their name is read, never to be seen in the episode again.

An opulent beach resort provides a scenic background to this amusing whodunit as Poirot attempts to uncover the nefarious evildoer behind the strangling of a notorious stage star.

A Broadway playwright puts murder in his plan to take credit for a student's script.

Andy is a new teacher at an inner city high school that is unlike any he has seen before. There are metal detectors at the front door and the place is basically run by a tough kid named Peter Stegman. Soon, Andy and Stegman become enemies and Stegman will stop at nothing to protect his turf and drug dealing business.

Paul Kersey is again a vigilante trying to find five punks who murdered his housekeeper and daughter in Los Angeles.

After being sent to a detention centre, a teenage skinhead clashes with the social workers who want to conform him to the status quo.

The Pink Panther diamond is stolen once again from Lugash and the authorities call in Chief Inspector Clouseau from France. His plane disappears en-route. This time, famous French TV reporter Marie Jouvet sets out to solve the mystery and starts to interview everybody connected to Clouseau.

New York police are bemused by reports of a giant flying lizard that has been spotted around the rooftops of New York, until the lizard starts to eat people. An out-of-work ex-con is the only person who knows the location of the monster's nest and is determined to turn the knowledge to his advantage, but will his gamble pay off or will he end up as lizard food?

Two cabbies search San Francisco's Chinatown for a mysterious character who has disappeared with their $4000. Their quest leads them on a humorous, if mundane, journey which illuminates the many problems experienced by Chinese-Americans trying to assimilate into contemporary American society.

A penniless thief gets involved in a scheme to obtain money and sex by using his resemblance to a wealthy family scion.

A relatively boring Los Angeles couple discover a bizarre, if not murderous way to get funding for opening a restaurant.

In this fact-based made-for TV film, Gary Gilmore, an Indiana man who just finished serving a lengthy stay in prison, tries to start anew by moving to Utah. Before long, Gary begins an ill-advised romance with the troubled Nicole Baker, a teenage single mother. As their relationship quickly deteriorates, Gary goes on a murderous rampage, leaving two dead. During his trial, he demands capital punishment; a media circus ensues and outsiders look to profit from his story.

Chinatown, San Francisco, 1928. Former private detective Dashiell Hammett, a compulsive drinker with tuberculosis who writes pulp fiction for a living, receives an unexpected visit from an old friend asking for help.

An unlikely Hollywood hooker helps a detective set a trap for a mutilator pimp.

A corrupted border agent decides to clean up his act when an impoverished woman's baby is put up for sale on the black market.

Clarissa, the wife of a Foreign Office diplomat, is given to daydreaming. 'Supposing I were to come down one morning and find a dead body in the library, what should I do?' she muses. Clarissa has her chance to find out when she discovers a body in the drawing-room of her house in Kent.

Jack Williams was the best friend of Vietnam veteran and detective Mike Hammer. When Jack is murdered, Mike makes it his business to solve the crime. He is helped by his secretary Velda, and partly helped, partly hindered by the Chief of Police, Pat Chambers. On the trail of the killer, Mike discovers government conspiracies, and plots used by the CIA and the Mafia.

A locker room janitor at the train station notices that a suitcase was put in a locker by a man, but pulled out by another man. This suitcase appeared to be stuffed with money. This incident allows a police detective to uncover a huge criminal organization responsible for theft, smuggling and murder.

The complete innocent, Michael Jordon, is drawn into a web of secrecy and government secrets when a girl carrying a mysterious package gets into a taxi with him. When she is later murdered, Michael is the chief suspect and on the run.

Benson is a police detective. After a series of murders in the Gay community he is ordered to go undercover with a gay police clerk named Kerwin as his partner. In order to be noticed they have to be flamboyant enough to attract attention which Benson finds rather disturbing. Can an uptight heterosexual and a mousey homosexual form a meaningful relationship?

Superstar bouncer Steve Donovan is pulled back into the world of gang violence when he accepts the role of door protector at an upmarket club in Manchester.

The classic Dickens tale of an orphan boy who escapes the horrors of the orphanage only to be taken in by a band of thieves and pickpockets.

A coroner's assistant, who is also a law student, gets involved in a strange case involving his girlfriend's place of employment (a hospital), prostitutes, a defrocked priest, and vampires.

It's an extraordinarily touching true-story about Terry Jean Moore, the determined, independent and young woman who is imprisoned for 7 years on account of a "five dollar" robbery. In the prison she will be pregnant by a jailer and she has to fight for bear and keep her child.

The true story of Ray Johnson, a convict who spent most of his life in and out of prison until he finally decided to turn his life around.

Saxophonist Art Pepper (1925-1982) lived the kind of jazz life only found in Hollywood movies. His prodigious talent led him to top gigs as a teenager, but drugs and attendant criminal activity knocked him out of commission for virtually all of the 1960s and early 1970s. This documentary, shot shortly after his searing memoir, {-Straight Life}, was published in 1979, shows Pepper in the full flower of a remarkable comeback. His third wife, Laurie, is featured prominently; they met in the drug treatment facility Synanon in 1969 and were married in 1974. She took over his business affairs and helped him write {-Straight Life}. Pepper tells his own story here, but the emphasis is on an evening's performance at a club in Malibu, with the musician in fine form, backed by a terrific trio. (Tom Wiener, Rovi)

A divorced mother, her young son and her new boyfriend set out on a road trip through Death Valley and run afoul of a local serial killer.

Two young kids in love, one young graffiti artist and the other a foster-child, find trouble on the mean streets on the other side of the river in New York City. Officer Charles Banks finds young Danny tagging subway cars and then catches Teiresa selling drugs for another mislead teen, Kirk. The officer, instead of turning both of them in, gives both teens a chance to make more of their lives together. Changing their ways turns out to be more challenging than first thought.

Two young couples decide to run away from home and go to Athens in order to find the exciting life that they couldn't live at the country. The guys get busted for robbing a gas station while the girls start working at a night club. Daisy meets a young and handsome man named Panos. He is a motorcycle racing driver. They immediately start a destructive relationship. Panos tastes his first joint with her and soon they become heroin-addicts, willing to do anything in order to get their daily fix. The film goes on describing their downfall until the apocalyptic ending.

A crisis helpline assistant attracts the attention of a serial killer who delights in feeding her cryptic, nursery-rhyme style riddles when planning his next murder!

A dirty corrections officer gets involved in a murder plot involving one of the inmates.

The young and self-confident Danny bluffs at the local police-station that he will escape from prison within an hour. What follows is a flashback showing his childhood with his uncle and aunt, who are 'vaudeville'-artists themselves.

Three violent escaped convicts on the run from the law break into a house where a young woman is being given a wedding shower, and they proceed on a rampage of violence, rape and sexual assaults.

Jess Tyler lives a quiet life next to an abandoned mining factory by himself in the desert. His life is turned upside down when a sexually provocative young woman comes to visit him and tells him she's his daughter. Jess finds it hard to adapt to his newly found parenting role, as a mutual attraction grows between them.

Ron, a young man in his late teens or early 20s, but emotionally younger, has no visible, employable assets, yet rails at his status in life -- blaming everyone for the fact that his dreams are not coming true.

Three young friends trying to break into the entertainment business inadvertently anger a mob boss, setting in motion a chain of events that results in their being hunted by every thug and killer in town.

An unfortunate and naive girl is set-up by her boyfriend and convicted of drug smuggling. She is sent to a women's correctional facility where she must constantly struggle to survive.

Two uneasy friends, a police officer and a TV talk show host, each pursue the mysterious "handcuff killer" with the aid of an artist who sees - and draws - the killer's crimes before they're committed.

The year is 1995 and Michael Stringer is the only private eye left on Earth. One day, he is assigned by a woman to investigate Eden Isle, a complex for people who want a perfect life started by an industrialist named Korter. Interestingly, Korter is found on a beach and is 20 years younger than he was before. When he gets into the complex, he is caught in a web of mystery.

The same night as a girl is slain in the woods, the teenagers Sam and Les are robbed of all of their hard earned hens. In the quest for their hens they cross the murderer's path.

A group of college students accidentally see a local redneck kill his wife. A deadly game of cat-and-mouse ensues, with the students trying to escape the area while the killer sets out to eliminate the witnesses who can tie him to the murder.

A veteran pilot finds himself knee-deep in trouble when his ex-girlfriend shows up at his doorstep in a terrible state. She knows the whereabouts of an immense fortune, and the Mafia is hot on her trail.

As film-maker Harlan Hollis drives to a James Dean festival, he's unaware that killers are tracking his every move. The fast and furious race to avoid their net, stay alive and discover who is behind this lethal plan, will take Hollis through a fiery battle, turning highways and city streets into a blazing junkyard.

An Italian deli owner forms a vigilante group to rid his Philadelphia neighborhood of street punks.

A computer genius is confined to a penthouse after a car accident, with only a nurse to look after him. But the advanced computer systems designed to make his life easier appear to be taking control.

A cop who became deaf as the result of a fight tries to break up a drug ring run by bikers.

Two dorky Nevada worm wranglers are kidnapped by a gang of beautiful women as part of a plot to steal platinum from the Mafia.