Best Mystery Movies of 1944

A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he's investigating.

A newlywed fears she's going mad when strange things start happening at the family mansion.

A seductive woman gets an innocent professor mixed up in murder.

After being hired to find an ex-con's former girlfriend, Philip Marlowe is drawn into a deeply complex web of mystery and deceit.

A brother and sister move into an old seaside house that has been abandoned for many years on the Cornwellian coast only to soon discover that it is haunted by the ghost of the mother of their neighbor's granddaughter, with whom the brother has fallen in love.

A mystery woman is a murder suspect's only alibi for the night of his wife's death.

Stephen Neale is released into WWII England after two years in an asylum, but it doesn't seem so sane outside either. On his way back to London to rejoin civilization, he stumbles across a murderous spy ring and doesn't quite know to whom to turn.

Amy, the young, friendless daughter of Oliver and Alice Reed, befriends her father's late first wife and an aging, reclusive actress.

On a trip to visit his parents, detective Nick Charles gets mixed up in a murder investigation.

A woman lies on the sand, left there by the tides and waves (and in a pose that would be copied in From Here to Eternity). She reaches up across tree roots and makes a difficult climb. Only to discover herself climbing horizontally along a long dinner table as bourgeoise black-tie guests chat and drink and smoke, oblivious to her. At the top of the table, a man is playing chess but abandons the game. Fascinated, she gazes at board, the pieces moving unaided. The woman chases a pawn as it falls to the floor. Falls down a waterfall. Is lost.

Three modern day pilgrims investigate a bizarre crime in a small town on the way to Canterbury.

The famous Borgia Pearl, a valuable gem with a history of bringing murder and misfortune to its owner since the days of the Borgias, is brought to London, thanks in part to Sherlock Holmes. But before long the jewel is stolen, due to an error on Holmes' part, and shortly thereafter, a series of horrible murders begin, the murderer leaving his victims with their spines snapped and surrounded by a mass of smashed china.

When a woman is found dead with her throat torn out, the local villagers blame a supernatural monster. But Sherlock Holmes, who gets drawn into the case from nearby Quebec, suspects a human murderer.

A mystery writer is intrigued by the tale of notorious criminal Dimitrios Makropolous, whose dead body was found washed up on the shore in Istanbul. He decides to follow the career of Dimitrios around Europe, in order to learn more about the man. Along the way he is joined by the mysterious Mr. Peters, who has his own motivation.

Passengers on an ocean liner can't recall how they got onboard or where they are going. Soon it becomes apparent that they all have something in common.

In Victorian era London, the inhabitants of a family home with rented rooms upstairs fear the new lodger is Jack the Ripper.

Don't be fooled by the title. Christmas Holiday is a far, far cry from It's a Wonderful Life. Told in flashback, the story begins as Abigail Martin marries Southern aristocrat Robert Monette. Unfortunately, Robert has inherited his family's streak of violence and instability, and soon drags Abigail into a life of misery.

Chinese detective Charlie Chan solves a murder linked to the occult. This movie had an alternative title: Meeting at Midnight.

A naive small-town girl comes to New York City to meet her husband, and discovers that he may be a murderer.

To solve the murder of a man shot in a locked room, Chan must wade through a Fun House, the writings of an unscrupulous author, and chess pieces.

Leslie Calvin, the sole survivor of a submarine accident, goes to her relatives in order to recover emotionally. Unfortunately, she encounters various scam artists led by Mr. Sydney who intend to kill her and steal the family assets. Dr. George Grover helps Leslie to defeat Sydney.

After bringing his beautiful new wife Paula home to America from a remote island on which she was raised, Professor Norman Reed begins to feel the clash between his world of rational science and hers of bizarre dancing and freaky voodoo rituals. Norman's stuck-up friends also sense Paula's strangeness, and soon their meddling gossip and suspicious scheming push the poor woman to use her magic to defend herself and her husband – and maybe even to kill! Or is it just the power of suggestion...?

A guilt-ridden man blames himself for his wife's death and secretly pays an assassin to kill him. But then he finds out that his wife isn't dead at all. And now the assassin is on his trail, with no way to call off the hit.

Charlie Chan is an agent of the US government working in Washington DC and he is assigned to investigate the murder of the inventor of a highly advanced torpedo. Aiding Chan is his overeager but dull-witted son Tommy and his daughter Iris.

Young female models are being strangled. Will law enforcement be able to stop the crime wave before more women become victims?

An insurance salesman, Albert Tuttle, is hired as a body guard for a millionaire.

Witch’s Cradle is an unfinished Maya Deren film made in the Guggenheim Gallery during a surrealist “Art of this Century” exhibit. It was assembled long after her death by staffers within the preservation department at Anthology Film Archives.

Artist David Stuart is blinded by a jealous assistant / model. His fiance's father generously offers his eyes for a sight restoring operation. There's only one hitch: Stuart has to wait until after the man dies. Not surprisingly, when the benefactor dies a very premature death, suspicion falls on the artist.

In this Gothic tale, a returning WW2 vet goes looking for a small-town girl whom he knows only from letters. Its the pretext for an off-beat treatment of sexual frustration morphing into a dangerous delusion, and eventually murder.

Suave amateur detective Tom Lawrence--aka Michael Arlen's literary hero The Falcon--arrives in Hollywood for some rest and relaxation, only to find himself involved in the murder of a movie actor. There's no shortage of suspects: the costume designer to whom he was married, a tyrannical director, a beautiful young French starlet, a Shakespeare-quoting producer, even a New York gangster. Helping The Falcon solve the crime is a cute, wise-cracking cab driver and a pair of bumbling cops.

A police lieutenant is determined to bust the gang of crooks selling defective automobile tires.

A group of people are invited to a party at a creepy mansion where legend has it a ghost appears once a year.

Eminent psychiatrist Dr. Brenner invites cartoonist Bill Harrison and his wife, Jack, to a banquet honoring war refugees. Bill volunteers to pick up fellow psychiatrist Dr. Baumler at the train station, but the man vanishes when he has Bill stop so he can use a pay phone. At the dinner, Bill and Jack are seated with Brenner's daughter, Freda, and, to Bill's surprise, another man is introduced as Baumler -- who dies moments later.

A rich but naive young woman is in possession of some priceless jewels. She herself doesn't know it, but a gang of jewel thieves does.

A female bail-bond broker and her partner help an accused embezzler prove his innocence. Having the body of the embezzler's late business partner pop up doesn't help matters.

One of the members of a sorority is found murdered. Although the police are called in to investigate, some of the girls decide to do some sleuthing on their own to unmask the killer.

When a Texas playboy is murdered in a New York City nightclub the Falcon investigates. When he learns that the victim was slipped rattlesnake venom, the trail leads to Texas, his own kidnapping and near death.

A newsman tracks down a phantom killer of murder-trial jurors.

The Falcon travels to Mexico where he gets involved with murder and a mysterious painting.

After a rare gem is stolen from an exhibition at a posh hotel, Inspector Farraday decides to recruit former thief Boston Blackie to find the stone. Along with his assistant, "The Runt", Blackie focuses his investigation on the hotel manager, George Daley, and his sister, Eileen. Through disguises and ruses, Blackie and the Runt try to trick their way to discovering the thieves.

A private eye and his secretary probe a murder and find an international spy.

Two zanies get mixed up with a Southern colonel, his beautiful daughters, a nightclub and a haunted mansion.

Secrets of Scotland Yard is Republic's spin on a plotline first elucidated in the old E. Phillips Oppenheim novel The Great Impersonation. After losing WW I, the German high command, with remarkable foresight, prepares for the next war by planting a spy in the British Admiralty. Edgar Barrier plays the dual role of the German spy and his British twin brother. When one twin is killed, the other assumes his identity. The question: is the surviving brother the "good" one or the bad? It is up to C. Aubrey Smith, cast as Scotland Yard inspector Sir Christopher Belt, to sort out the mystery. Though it owes a great deal to the aforementioned Oppenheim yarn, Secrets of Scotland Yard is actually based on a novel by Denison Clift, who also wrote the screenplay.

Hairlock Combs, a parody of Sherlock Holmes, and his partner Dr. Gotsome bumble through an investigation of a stolen dinosaur skeleton.

William Warner is a lawyer who is famous for his skill at opening any kind of lock, making him a valuable commodity. William is unknowingly enlisted by German spies who want him to open a chest containing a secret formula. This leads to a madcap adventure involving spies, the police and lots of picked locks!

A lawyer tries to clear his wife's lover of murder charges.

A nightclub star helps trap an enemy agent on the trail of an American newsman.

Convinced that she has what it takes to be a detective, inquisitive secretary Kitty O'Day gets her chance to put her sleuthing skills to the test when her investment broker boss is mysteriously murdered. But Kitty's investigation hits a snag when Inspector Miles Clancy begins to suspect that she's the culprit.

A singer, her girlfriends and a mystery writer stay in the house where her father was killed.