Best Mystery Movies of 1978

As Hercule Poirot enjoys a luxurious cruise down the Nile, a newlywed heiress is found murdered on board. Can Poirot identify the killer before the ship reaches the end of its journey?

Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman discovers a sinister and bizarre plot to rekindle the Third Reich.

A young female doctor discovers something sinister going on in her hospital. Relatively healthy patients are having 'complications' during simple operations and ending up in comas. The patients are then shipped off to an institute that looks after them. The young doctor suspects there is more to this than meets the eye.

Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau is dead. At least that is what the world—and Charles Dreyfus—believe when a dead body is discovered in Clouseau's car after being shot off the road. Naturally, Clouseau knows differently and, taking advantage of not being alive, sets out to discover why an attempt was made on his life.

A shy San Francisco librarian and a bumbling cop fall in love as they solve a crime involving albinos, dwarves, and the Catholic Church.

Since the sudden and highly suspicious death of his parents, 12-year-old Damien has been in the charge of his wealthy aunt and uncle. Widely feared to be the Antichrist, Damien relentlessly plots to seize control of his uncle's business empire—and the world. Anyone attempting to unravel the secrets of Damien's sinister past or fiendish future meets with a swift and cruel demise.

A famous fashion photographer develops a disturbing ability to see through the eyes of a serial killer.

A French detective in London reconstructs the life of a man lying in hospital with severe injuries with the help of journals and a psychiatrist. He realises that the man had powerful telekinetic abilities.

A young woman moves to a high-rise apartment building and soon begins to be tormented by an unknown stalker who seems to know her every move.

Columbo (Peter Falk) investigates a famous restaurant critic for murder.

An ambitious Hollywood hustler becomes involved with a reclusive female star whom he tries to lure out of retirement.

The year is 1914 and Richard Hannay, Mining Engineer who is visiting Britain for a short time before returning to South Africa, is shocked when one of his neighbours, Colonel Scudder, bursts into his rooms one night and tells him a story that Prussian 'sleeper' agents are planning to pre-start World War I by murdering a visiting foreign minister. However, Scudder is murdered and Hannay is framed for the death by the 'sleepers'. Fleeing to Scotland Hannay attempts to clear his name and to stop the agents with the aid of Alex Mackenzie but not only is he is chased by Chief Supt Lomas for Scudder's death but by the agents who are headed by Appleton who has managed to hide himself in a high-placed position in the British Government...

At a Catholic boys' school, domineering disciplinarian Father Goddard rules over his pupils with an iron hand. When one of his teenage charges confesses to murder, the dogmatic but deeply repressed Goddard finds his faith challenged and his life spiralling dangerously out of control.

A spoof of the entire 1940s detective genre. San Francisco private detective, Lou Pekinpaugh is accused of murdering his partner at the instigation of his mistress—his partner's wife.

Mystery abounds when it is discovered that, one by one, the greatest Chefs in Europe are being killed. The intriguing part of the murders is that each chef is killed in the same manner that their own special dish is prepared in. Food critics and the (many) self-proclaimed greatest Chefs in Europe demand the mystery be solved.

After the death of her daughter, wealthy housewife Julia Lofting abruptly leaves her husband and moves into an old Victorian home in London to re-start her life. All seems well until she is haunted by the sadness of losing her own child and the ghosts of other children.

Private detective Moses Wine is hired by his former college girlfriend to investigate a political smear campaign and he sets out to find out who is responsible, with deadly results.

A beautiful high school student becomes the target of a terror campaign that eventually leads to devastating consequences.

Private eye Philip Marlowe investigates a case of blackmail involving the two wild daughters of a rich general, a pornographer and a gangster.

A singer holes up at a sinister estate to write new songs for his act. The ghost of his murdered wife begins to haunt him, then the person who actually killed her shows up at the mansion.

During a spaghetti western screening a man is shot dead, the doors are locked and the police is called in to investigate.

Fiona, a rich, beautiful and successful model in New York City, is found shot to death, and her boyfriend becomes the prime suspect. The tough detective assigned to the case discovers that Fiona has kept a small book with information about all her friends and lovers.

Three men at three different times in history come to Mow Top hill in search of sanctuary from their troubles. A Roman soldier, a medieval rebel and a 1970s young man. Somehow they seem linked through an energy within the hill and an axe. Is history doomed to repeat itself or can loving another person free them?

A group of potential heirs gather in a forbidding old house to learn which of them will inherit a fortune. Later, they learn that a flesh-rending maniac is loose.

A private nurse uncovers strange goings-on in the home where she is working.

Part documentary/part dramatization, this film details several of the highest-profile unsolved cases of disappearances, mysterious changes in personality and other strange occurrences related to the Bermuda Triangle.

A woman's husband is murdered and she and her lover must find the killer or stand accused of doing it themselves.

An aircraft crashes in the Florida Everglades, killing 103 passengers. After the wreckage is removed, salvageable parts from the plane are used to repair other aircraft. Soon passengers and crew on those aircraft report seeing what they believe to be the ghost of the wrecked airplane's flight engineer.

A government courier is caught in a deadly cover-up after discovering that his murdered sister was not only the mistress of a U.S. president, but also a Soviet spy.

Director Paul Morrissey applies a hefty dose of humor to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic detective story in this interpretation of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Comedian Peter Cook takes on the role of brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes, who's not so gifted here as he relegates much of the investigation of demonic dogs to his bumbling sidekick, Watson (Dudley Moore), while he spends time with his mother and searches for an assistant.

An overworked executive vacationing in Hawaii finds that his romance with an attractive businesswoman he meets there is threatened by the supernatural powers of a strange native curse on his bloodline.

In the winter of 1891 a stranger arrives in a small coastal town on the Isle of Man. His presence soon disturbs the lives of the local inhabitants, especially the beautiful daughter of the parson.

Successful businessman Charles Kruschen (Donald Pilon) is accused of bludgeoning to death his beautiful but manipulative model wife Magdalene (Elke Sommer). As the trial draws to a close, Charles reflects on the events leading up to the terrible incident...

A popular radio personality writes and broadcasts ghost stories over the air. He receives a strange call warning him not to finish his latest story, which is about a child who dies assisting in a magician's show.

Las Vegas private eye Dan Tanna probes the murder of Marilyn Ochs, a teenage prostitute who ran away from home because she didn't get along well with her mother Loretta's new husband Merle.

A woman communicates with a houseplant that was the only witness to a recent murder.

Do ghosts come from outer space? Are they amongst us? The Amazing World of Ghosts seeks to unveil the mysteries that defy mankind's understanding and define the modern age… and then runs out of stock footage before getting anywhere.

Why is everyone out to sabotage him? Cliff Rowan has been hired to recover a stolen payroll hidden in the rugged Australian hills and mountains near his boyhood town. But instead of a warm welcome and helping hand, his former sweatheart, his old school friends, and in fact, practically the whole town...want him out! When his friend, Riley, is needlessly killed, Cliff realizes the buried strongbox holds more than cold cash. The mystery unfolds.

A woman uses voodoo to exact vengeance on the man she loved.

Much of the action is on a large yacht, where skullduggery is afoot, presumably some sort of drug smuggling involving the overworked porn star Ric Lutze and a mysterious boss/gangster character. On dry land there's plenty of humping (including the inevitable orgy) and searching for information, but no imparting of the latter to the audience.

When a millionaire playboy is murdered, suspicion falls on three married women, best friends, whom he had tried to play against each other in a game of divide and conquer.

Based on the story of the same title by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat, about Nate the Great, a 10-year-old, who tries to solve the mystery of the garbage snatcher

Two unusual people make contact in German at a London coffee house.