Best Mystery Movies of 1971

Three children evacuated from London during World War II are forced to stay with an eccentric spinster. The children's initial fears disappear when they find out she is in fact a trainee witch.

A high-priced call girl is forced to depend on a reluctant private eye when she is stalked by a psychopath.

People in the future live in a totalitarian society. A technician named THX 1138 lives a mundane life between work and taking a controlled consumption of drugs that the government uses to make puppets out of people. As THX is without drugs for the first time he has feelings for a woman and they start a secret relationship.

When one member of a mystery writing team wants to break from his less talented partner, he becomes the victim in a real-life murder mystery.

A Scotland Yard investigator looks into four mysterious cases involving an unoccupied house.

Newly released from a mental ward, Jessica hopes to return to life the way it was before her nervous breakdown. But when Jessica moves to a country house with her husband and a close friend, she finds a mysterious girl living in there. Jessica's terror and paranoia resurface as evil forces surround her.

Dr. Bock, the chief of medicine at a Manhattan hospital, is suicidal after the collapse of his personal life. When an intern is found dead in a hospital bed, it appears to Bock to be a case of unforgivable malpractice. Hours later, another doctor, who happens to be responsible for another case of malpractice, is found dead. Despondent, Bock finds himself drawn to Barbara, the daughter of a comatose missionary.

A war hero shoots and kills his business partner; an easily manipulated young divorcée is the only witness.

Every hero has a weakness, and Sherlock Holmes' weakness was Moriarty. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson solve mysteries and search for Moriarty in 1970s New York City. The fact that Sherlock Holmes is a psychotic paranoid and Dr. Watson is a female psychiatrist fascinated by his case is almost beside the point.

In the English countryside, Sarah Rexton, recently blinded in a horse riding accident, moves in with her uncle's family and gallantly adjusts to her new condition, unaware that a killer stalks them.

An insane Swedish farmer escapes from an asylum to get revenge on his sister, her husband and others.

A would be private eye gets mixed up in a smuggling case.

Two middle-aged women move to Hollywood, California after their sons are convicted of a notorious murder and open a dance school for children eager to tap their way to stardom.

At Oceanfront High School, female students are being targeted by an unknown serial killer. Meanwhile, a married teacher hides his flings with nubile students, and an awkward male is frustrated by the plethora of uninhibited freewheeling young girls.

A man experiences a night-time world that is part foreboding nightmare, part sexual fantasy.

A new schoolteacher learns that the previous teacher was killed by his students, and he fears the same fate will befall him.

A newlywed painter and his wife move into his family's ancestral home and find themselves plagued by spirits of past residents.

Four elderly ladies with a lot of time on their hands get the idea to create a fictional "girl" for a computer dating service. However, things take a turn for the worse when their description of the "girl" attracts a psychopath.

In Paris, in the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Cesar Charron owns a theater at the Rue Morgue where he performs the play "Murders in the Rue Morgue" with his wife Madeleine Charron, who has dreadful nightmares. When there are several murders by acid of people connected to Cesar, the prime suspect of Inspector Vidocq would be Cesar's former partner Rene Marot. But Marot murdered Madeleine's mother many years ago and committed suicide immediately after.

A prank that starts with a group of college students creating a fictitious person so they can get a credit card develops into a plot that leaves three of them dead.

A prostitute is murdered on the streets of a tough, low-income neighborhood. A diabetic retired boxer who knew her is appalled by the lack of interest shown in the case by the police or anybody else in the neighborhood, and decides to investigate the case himself.

A small-town district attorney is saddled with several major investigations, including a gambler's murder and a possible insurance scam.

Lieutenant Columbo matches wits against Investigator Brimmer, a former cop turned private sleuth who tries to blackmail a client's wife. When she refuses, he accidentally kills her and it's up to Frank Columbo to nail him.

When one member of a mystery writing team wants to break from his less talented partner, he becomes the victim in a real-life murder mystery. Columbo is on the scene (even if he’s not on the same page).

A disillusioned housewife on a vacation in the woods is disturbed by her husband continually trying to get her to come home and, more ominously, a mysterious howling at night.

A woman in need comes to visit a private dick. She hires Johnny Wadd to find her girlfriend and offers him $1000 plus her body. Later, the missing girl's sister shows up and offers to double his fee and her body too so he won't find her sister.

A U.S. Senator is spirited away to a secret New Mexico medical lab after a serious car crash. His injuries are completely healed by a secret organization that has developed advanced medical technology. What does the organization want in exchange for saving his life? Meanwhile, a reporter who witnessed the accident decides to investigate the senator's disappearance.

After one schoolgirl is raped while taking a short cut through the local woods, and another is murdered in the same woods a few days later, the local police are baffled. With the help of a reporter from one of the local papers, and against the wishes of a psychologist at the local hospital, a young teacher at the school the girls attended uses herself as bait to lure the perpetrator out. Could it be the creepy husband of the head mistress at the school, the psychologist who seems to be taking an unusual interest in the case, or something altogether more sinister?

A state senator is murdered outside his home, and the police arrest a strange man described as having "icy eyes" for the crime. An Italian reporter finds a stripper who claims to have been an eyewitness to the assassination and saw the man with the icy eyes commit it. At his trial she testifies against him, and he's sentenced to death. However, the reporter soon begins to find holes in the stripper's story, and other circumstances arise which makes him believe that the wrong man may have been convicted

Private eye Johnny Wadd relentlessly sets out to solve the murder of a former girlfriend, and encounters various female suspects leading him to the leader of a vicious gang that runs San Francisco's Chinatown.

A detective discovers his son-in-law is cheating on his wife. He confronts the other woman and accidentally kills her, then tries to pin the crime on a local derelict.

An extended, feature-length episode of the show The Name of the Game, a pioneering sci-fi/drama series that had a narrative that rotated between three primary characters. Glenn Howard, while driving to a Pollution Summit meeting, falls unconscious and finds himself somehow in the future year 2017 where remaining society lives underground due to contaminated air. Can he somehow return to 1971?

Private detective Jack Masters takes on a case and gets mixed up in murder, sex and blackmail.

In this pilot film to the TV series, Cannon investigates the murder of a war buddy to clear the man's wife of suspicion in his death.

A nightclub singer has nightmares about being involved in adultery and murder, only to wake up and find that they may not be nightmares.

Chris Robinson plays an eyepatched Vietnam vet named Ross Archer, who comes home to find that his wife had left him and become involved with some shady business dealings.

Early Mitchell Brothers' Classic

A mad scientist named Dr. Dreadful leads a terrorist organization called the Hand of Pleasure.

Detective Ellery Queen has to solve a series of murders where the victims were killed in numerically descending ages, the male victims were strangled with blue cords and the female victims with pink ones.

A rich old man hires a security expert to put cameras in his home and see if his trophy wife is cheating on him. Is it the chauffeur, doctor, lesbian masseuse or even his own daughter?

When one member of a mystery writing team wants to break from his less talented partner, he becomes the victim in a real-life murder mystery.

After a scientific experiment goes horribly wrong during a demonstration, a scientist finds himself trapped in an alternate reality that bears some similarities to our own, but also has some striking differences. In this other reality the Second World War had never occurred, mankind had not yet traveled into Space and Mt. Everest had not yet been conquered, just to name a few things. Also in this other reality he is no longer a scientist but rather a well known author. After a personal tragedy in this alternate world, he finds himself back in his own world and desperately trying to locate the woman he fell in love with in the other world. Little does she know, however, that her life depends on him finding her.

When one member of a mystery writing team wants to break from his less talented partner, he becomes the victim in a real-life murder mystery.

In order to qualify to inherit the family fortune, the four heirs must spend the night in the family estate. However, during the night someone starts killing them off.

When one member of a mystery writing team wants to break from his less talented partner, he becomes the victim in a real-life murder mystery.

When one member of a mystery writing team wants to break from his less talented partner, he becomes the victim in a real-life murder mystery.

Columbo matches his skills against Brimmer, a former cop turned private investigator with a quick temper who tries to blackmail a client's wife. When she refuses, he accidentally kills her and it's up to Columbo to nail him.