Best Mystery Movies of 1935

Sir Borotyn, a prominent Prague resident, is discovered murdered in his home, with all indications pointing to a vampire assault. The victim's friend, Baron Otto, and the physician who analyzes the body are certain that the vampire is the mysterious Count Mora, or perhaps his daughter, but receive little help from the law. Professor Zelen, an expert in the occult, is called in to assist with the investigation.

Charlie's visit to Paris, ostensibly a vacation, is really a mission to investigate a bond-forgery racket. But his agent, apache dancer Nardi is killed before she can tell him much. The case, complicated by a false murder accusation for banker's daughter Yvette, climaxes with a strange journey through the Paris sewers.

While investigating the theft of antiquities from an ancient tomb excavation , Charlie discovers that the body of the expedition's leader concealed inside the mummy's wrappings.

When a dancer disappears from a theater, Clay Dalzell is asked to investigate, leading him on a trail of murder and deception.

When a prominent official is murdered at a banquet honoring Charle Chan, the detective and son Lee team up to expose an opium-smuggling ring.

After giving the District Attorney another stinging defeat, Perry plans to take a vacation in China. That is, he was, until Rhoda, his old flame, meets him at a restaurant. It seems that her husband Moxley, who had been allegedly dead for four years, is alive and demanding money as she has married into wealth. The case escalates when the police find the body of Moxley and charge her with the murder.

A fake psychic suddenly turns into the real thing when he meets a young beauty. (TCM)

A con man who stages phony "lucky legs" beauty contests and leaves town with the money is found with a surgical knife in his heart by Mason.

When Paul Madvig, a successful politician who fights his rivals to seize the city, becomes implicated in a murder, Ed Beaumont, his friend and right-hand man, must decide which side he is on.

A schoolteacher and amateur sleuth suspects foul play when a fellow passenger on a seaplane gets sick and dies. The third and final film with Edna May Oliver and James Gleason as the astute schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers and the New York Police Inspector Oscar Piper busy solving crimes.

A murder happens when greedy relatives gather to await the demise of their wealthy and very ill family patriarch.

Once a jewel thief always a jewel thief? Yes and no. Yes if you consider the fact that Michael Lanyard also known as the Lone Wolf once retired from the "trade" but relapses back into his old habits when he is tempted by the emerald pendant of beautiful socialite Marcia Stewart. The trouble (?) is that he falls for the belle and he soon gets more interested in getting the girl than the jewels that adorn her. What he wants now is to return the pendant but a rival gang interfere and force him to take part in a big-time caper.

A writer, looking for some peace and quiet in order to finish a novel, takes a room at the Baldpate Inn. However, peace and quiet are the last things he gets, as there are some very strange goings-on at the establishment.

When Philo Vance receives a note that harm will befall Lynn at the casino that night, he takes the threat seriously while the DA dismisses it. At the casino owned by Uncle Kinkaid, Lynn is indeed poisoned under the watchful eye of Philo. However, he recovers, but the same cannot be said for Lynn's wife Virginia, who is at the family home. Only a family member could have poisoned Lynn and Virginia and everyone has their dark motives. Philo will follow the clues and find the perpetrator.

While filling in for injured supersleuth Bulldog Drummond (Atholl Fleming), world-class cricket player Jack Pennington (Jack Hulbert) attempts to foil a criminal mastermind's (Ralph Richardson) impending heist that's targeting a valuable jewel necklace held within the British Museum. This comedic 1930s mystery features daring rescues, intense fistfights and an exciting edge-of-your seat finale aboard a runaway train.

A Stumped insurance company is forced to re-hire the most expensive, most big-headed, but best arson investigator to solve a string of major losses.

A major newspaper publisher dies in suspicious circumstances during a parlour game at a dinner party. The publishers secretary is the obvious suspect, but the inspector isn't so sure ...

A choirmaster addicted to opium and obsessed with a beautiful young woman will stop at nothing to possess her.

Julie Fresnel is a co-ed at Redgate University and her father, Dr. Henri Fresnel, is the new French professor. Julie attraction from the make students drops a bit when two of her admirers are found murdered. When an attempt on the life of a third one is made. Seth Dunlap, an instructor at the school, decides to turn detective and find the killer. Assisted by his sister, who is in love with the third student, Dunlap begins to follow the the small trail of clues left by the killer.

Eccentric tycoon Jasper Whyte hosts a dinner at his mansion and announces that he will divide his money and give each guest a million dollars before the stroke of midnight. When his long-lost granddaughter suddenly arrives, Whyte changes his mind and proclaims that she will receive his entire fortune. A second lady appears at the estate, claiming that she is actually Whyte's granddaughter, Doris Waverly, and the first woman is found murdered in her room! With each guest possessing a motive, the mystery of the killer's identity briskly unfolds through a stirring series of surprises.

A small, independent air delivery service is menaced by a mad scientist with a death ray machine that blows up planes in mid-flight.

In a spooky hotel on the coast of France, two bands of crooks are working independently of the other in an attempt to steal the inherited fortune of an American girl, Sue Tally. Along the way the heiress is kidnapped, three murders are committed, a girl appears in two places at once, mysterious persons roam about the old hotel at night and mysteriously disappear, and there is a hidden room without any doors.

Criminals pose as ghosts to scare a lighthouse keeper on the Welsh coast, in attempt to distract him. Jim Pearce deliberately maroons himself on the rock along with Alice Bright. When the light is later smashed, Jim reveals that his brother’s ship is the wreckers’ latest target, while Alice is a detective sent to investigate.

A whodunit set in Budapest, starring Edmund Lowe as a detective investigating the murder of an unemployed vaudeville actor.

Ellery Queen's vacation is interrupted when murder strikes next door to his oceanside cabin.

Hard-boiled newspaper reporter Larry Doyle (Robert Armstrong) goes a bit too far in celebrating a work bonus and wakes up on a train bound for St. Louis with only a buck on his person. To remedy the problem, Doyle pawns the revolver he's carrying. When the gun is subsequently used in a murder, Doyle's problems only multiply. In the meantime, he's also fallen in love with a comely stranger (Maxine Doyle) he convinced to impersonate his wife.

A mining engineer teams up with a crusty deputy sheriff to solve the mystery killings at an old mine where the owner's family waits for him to die, and where a valuable radium strike may have been made.

A playwright descended from the Borgias family becomes a murder suspect.

After a night of wild partying at a friend's house, a couple wake up to discover the party's host has been murdered in his bed.

During a horrific storm at sea, the crew realizes that there is a murderer among them who is killing them off one by one.

Holmes, retired to Sussex, is drawn into a last case when his arch enemy Moriarty arranges with an American gang to kill one John Douglas, a country gentleman with a mysterious past. Holmes' methods baffle Watson and Lestrade, but his results astonish them. In a long flashback, the victim's wife tells the story of the sinister Vermissa Valley.

This is a great rainy day/night murder mystery in a mansion that all whodunit lovers will appreciate. A woman reporter helps an inspector solve the deaths of four financiers on the eve of a group shareout. Based on "Les Six Hommes Morts" (Editions du Masque) by Stanislas-André Steeman.

A crazed scientist invents a serum that induces a catatonic state in anyone who gets the injection. He uses the serum to paralyze his enemies, in order to bury them alive.

A traitor is lurking somewhere aboard the USS Carolina, and Lt. Tom Randolph is determined to find the offender. First a revolutionary new piece of technology -- an electric firing device -- is sabotaged. Then one of the cruiser's crew is murdered. In order to catch the killer, the captain locks down the ship. With foreign dignitaries, corporate goons and even Tom's girlfriend, Betty, trapped on the vessel, there is no shortage of suspects.

When reporter Dan Miller is once again late to meet his girl friend, Helen Murdock, because he is working on a story, Helen breaks up with him. Later, in an effort to reconcile with her, Dan misses an appointment with the district attorney, and is fired when his editor learns that the district attorney was murdered in Dan's absence. The man suspected of the crime, Mitts Coster, is rumored to be traveling to Europe aboard an ocean liner. While Dan's friend, photographer Snapper McGillicuddy, fetches Helen to the boat, under the pretense that Dan is leaving town to forget her, Dan searches the ship for Mitts, whom he does not recognize. When Helen arrives, Dan feigns illness, and she admits her love for him. When Helen learns of Dan's ruse, however, she angrily hits him with a package that a passenger gave her when she boarded the ship. The package contains a passport for Dorothy Madden, who greatly resembles Helen, and $2,000 dollars.

A disparate group of people meet as passengers on a superspeed train crossing the U.S. Aboard are a seductive blackmailer and the stage director he intends to frame, a woman chasing her husband who is running away with the blackmail victim, and the stage director's feisty leading lady.

While a distinguished astronomer is giving a lecture in a planetarium, a shot rings out and one of the audience members is found dead. A tough detective and a brassy female reporter lock horns as they both try to break the case.

A newly hired police chief vows to clean up a notoriously corrupt police department. When he is murdered, investigators find that there is no shortage of suspects, most of them being fellow cops.

A Black night watchman at a chemical factory finds the body of a murdered white woman. After reporting it, he finds himself accused of the murder.

Private detective Donegal Dawn is summoned by the police commissioner to solve the reasons for a crime wave in Chinatown.

A feud between two gangs in Chinatown breaks out into a tong war.

Mr. Wong is a "harmless" Chinatown shopkeeper by day and relentless blood-thirsty pursuer of the Twelve Coins of Confucius by night. With possession of the coins, Mr. Wong will be supreme ruler of the Chinese province of Keelat, and his evil destiny will be fulfilled. A killing spree follows in dark and dangerous Chinatown as Wong gets control of 11 of the 12 coins. Reporter Jason Barton and his girl Peg are hot on his trail, but soon find themselves in serious trouble when they stumble onto Wong's headquarters.

James Houghland, inventor of a new method by which television signals can be instantaneously sent anywhere in the world, refuses to sell the process to television companies, who then send agents to acquire the invention any way they can. On the night of his initial broadcast Houghland is mysteriously murdered in the middle of his demonstration and it falls to Police Chief Nelson to determine who the murderer is from the many suspects present.

When a wealthy art dealer is murdered, the private investigator hired for the case discovers a web of blackmail, corruption and stolen bonds.

After an argument with his newspaper's city editor, press-photographer Jimmy Hudson quits his job and takes up free-lancing as a street-photographer for a living. He stumbles across the robbing of a jewelry store and takes a picture of one of the robbers as he is leaving the scene-of-the-crime in which murder has also been committed. At the risk of his own life, over the protests of his sweetheart, he sets a trap to catch the crook.

Foxhall Ridgeway, arriving in New York City from the West, stumbles onto a murder in the hotel room next to his. He gets tangled up into the affair, and with the aid of Phoebe, the hotel telephone operator who takes a liking to him, and also Countess Louise Browssiloff, who innocently had left some personal belongings in the murdered man's room and is most anxious to recover the incriminating evidence, Foxhall solves the murder mystery.

Crime novelist Roger Blackwood competes with hotel house detective Andy McCabe in solving a murder by poisoning at a medical convention.

Fox comedy about an adventurous young woman

There are plenty of suspects when an unscrupulous, blackmailing businessman turns up dead, especially the Police Commissioner's current paramour, who actually confessed to the killing before it was committed.