Best Mystery Movies of 1974

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 1935, when his train is stopped by deep snow, detective Hercule Poirot is called on to solve a murder that occurred in his car the night before.

As the residents of sorority house Pi Kappa Sigma prepare for the festive season, a stranger begins to stalk the house. A series of obscene phone calls start to plague the sorority and it becomes clear that a psychopath has more than merriment on his mind. As the police try to trace the phone calls, they discover that nothing is as it seems during this Black Christmas.

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...

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.

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.

An ex-convict, and ex-cop, finds himself in the midst of drama as a murder, of a female student, is commited at the university where he works as a night watchman. He is reluctantly drawn into the criminal investigation and eventually becomes a suspect in the case. Will he be able to find the real murderer and clear his own name, or not?

Described (rather cheekily) by director Michael Snow as a musical comedy, this deft probing of sound/image relationships is one of his wittiest, most entertaining and philosophically stimulating films. In his words, the film “derives its form and the nature of its possible effects from its being built from the inside, as it were, with the actual units of such a film, i.e. the frame and the recorded syllable. Thus its ‘dramatic’ element derives not only from a representation of what may involve us generally in life but from considerations of the nature of recorded speech in relation to moving light-images of people.’”

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.

The winner of the Miss World Virginity contest marries, escapes from her masochistic husband and ends up involved in a world of debauchery.

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.

Wealthy big game hunter Tom Newcliffe has tracked and killed practically every type of animal in the world. But one creature still evades him, the biggest game of all - a werewolf.

After the death of his brother on the road, unemployed and unstable drifter Arthur Waldo stays for a while in the rural Australian town of Paris as the guest of the mayor, who hopes he will become a permanent member of the Paris population. Arthur soon realizes the quaint hamlet has a sinister secret: they orchestrate car accidents and rob the victims. Survivors are brought to the local hospital, lobotomized, and used for a local doctor's experiments.

A man accidentally runs over and kills a pedestrian outside a small town. He begins to suspect that the locals, including the sheriff, are keeping secrets about the victim.

Clifford Swimmer, an angry and abusive man cruel to his wife and son, wants out if his marriage. With the help of a scientist he clones a replacement who takes over as head of the family while the real Clifford travels the world. The clone turns out to be a gentle and sensitive husband and father, a complete opposite of the original, and the wife and son come to love him. When the real Clifford comes back and finds his family happy with the clone he becomes angry and jealous and things take a deadly turn.

Who is the father of Ann Collins’ baby? Her husband had a vasectomy years ago. And Ann hasn’t been with another man. Even more mysterious: as the baby grows inside her, Ann begins to change. She is beset by strange illnesses, pours tablespoons of salt on her food, turns the thermostat to 50 degrees, speed-reads academic tomes. But much bigger shocks are yet to come. Barbara Eden stars in this hypnotic, swiftly paced blend of horror and sci-fi from Richard Matheson, the popular and prolific writer who also penned the novel I AM LEGEND and several notable THE TWILIGHT ZONE scripts.

Pride comes before a fall in John Bowen' adaptation of MR James' tale of a treasure hunt with a sticky end. Michael Bryant plays The Reverend Somerton whose self-assured intellectual arrogance masks a naked greed.

Abridged movie version of the 1974 British TV series concerning the whereabouts of Al Capone's illegal gains, garnered during the Prohibition era.

A juror on a murder trial begins to believe that the man charged with the crime is innocent — and that the real killer is her own husband.

Several couples are notified that they have won an ocean cruise, but they actually have been lured onto a ship so that they can be murdered.

A television producer decides to find out the whereabouts of a former movie actress whose career has long since faded, then discovers that his inquiries have set off a string of murders.

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 an American scientist is severely injured and scarred in a car crash along the border with East Germany, he is captured by East German military. The scientists use metal implants to save him. Once he's back in the States, no one can tell if it's really him, so an intelligence specialist must determine who is under the "mask".

American Neil Bowman is traveling through France when he meets British photographer Lila. They are hired by French land owner Duc de Croyter to escort a Hungarian scientist to New York. But they soon realize that the job is not a cushy number, and have to deal with a gang of kidnappers who will stop at nothing to get their hands on the scientist

Colonel Pete Moore (Glenn Ford) is commander of the Whitney Radar Test Group, which has been experiencing electrical difficulties aboard its aircraft. To ferret out the problem, he sends a four-man crew on Flight 412. Shortly into the test, the jet picks up three blips on radar, and subsequently, two fighters scramble and mysteriously disappear. At this point, Flight 412 is monitored and forced to land by Digger Control, a top-level, military intelligence group that debunks UFO information. The intrepid colonel, kept in the dark about his crew, decides to investigate the matter himself.

A young girl goes with her father and stepmother, with whom she has a lesbian affair, for vacation on a small island and a local fisherman gets between the two lovers.

A pair of detectives are faced with murder at a plush health spa for women.

A paranoid, leisure-suit-wearing conman/gigolo named Matt Stone seduces lonely women, bilks them of their savings via an investment scam, then kills them. When he begins seeing an attractive widow, her daughter Tina becomes suspicious of his motives.

China, 7th century. On their way to a provincial center Judge Dee and his three wives spend the night at a Taoist monastery. Soon the judge discovers that the secluded place holds a secret - the former abbot died of unnatural causes. After a number of mysterious events and more cases of murder Dee tracks down the true villain.

Married college professor Michael Lane falls in love with one of his students and hatches an elaborate scheme to dispose of his wife, Elizabeth. His murder plot goes as planned. However, he soon receives an anonymous note: "I know what you did, murderer!" Prof. Lane frantically tries to discover who knows his secret...

A private detective goes after the kidnappers of his ex-girlfriend's son and becomes involved in a series of murders.

A popular member of the Oxford community is killed and nobody figure out why. A police inspector is called in from Scotland Yard and discovers there may be more to the victim than anyone knows.

Police looking for drug dealers mistakenly raid the house of a typical suburban family. However, rather than admit their mistake and jeopardize their careers, several of the police officers decide to plant heroin in the family's house, and change the records of the raid to make it look like the family was the target of their investigation all along. Based on a true story.

Rose Winters, a private detective out of Los Angeles, teams with Ed Mills, a somewhat inexperienced young detective, to find out who is blackmailing a wealthy contractor.

The commander of a spaceship orbiting 250 miles above Earth disappears through the airlock and is ejected into space. Although at first it appears to have been an accident, some of the crew come to suspect that it may have actually been a murder.

A gospel singer kills his evangelist wife when she denies him more money and threatens blackmail.

A classical Syrian/Lebanese movies featuring 70s famous actors: Ighraa, Liz Serkisian and Mahmoud Jabr

Backwoods officers try to uncover clues about the mysterious death of a young woman at a dude ranch.

A troubled young woman agrees to spend two weeks at a friend's Manhattan penthouse while the friend is away on a modeling assignment, but a series of mysterious disturbances begin occurring during the night.

Two strangers break into a man's house and subject him to a series of terrifying - and humiliating - mind games.

A mousy heiress murders her brother, pretending she thought he was a burglar. Lt. Columbo unravels her alibi.

Young Gilbert lives in an urban apartment building. One day he discovers a duck in the building's elevator. Gilbert decides to keep the duck, but to keep his new friend secret from his mother. But his mother suspects something is up. In the meantime, Gilbert uses his detective skills to find the owner of the duck in his no-pets-allowed apartment building.

Someone is shooting the residents of a mountain resort town. Sheriff McNeill (Andy Griffith) must figure out the connection that links the victims and find the sniper before he (or she) kills again, and before the town council relieves him of duty.

An advertising artist with a large amount of cash finds herself the latest target of a vicious killer.

Pressured to give up his birthright, a chemical company heir enacts a clever plan to get rid of his blackmailing uncle and take over the family business. But Lt. Columbo suspects the man's death was not just a tragic accident.

A planned explosion at a bookstore sets off a chain of daring escapes.

An insurance man is heavily in debt to a money lender and must pay or die.

The president of an electronic's corporation dies and a mysterious caller tells officials at his company that they will be dead soon too.

A scientist is murdered and his new invention is stolen and held for ransom.