Best Mystery Movies of 1982

Based on the real-life experiences of Ed Horman. A conservative American businessman travels to a South American country to investigate the sudden disappearance of his son after a right-wing military takeover. Accompanied by his son's wife he uncovers a trail of cover-ups that implicate the US State department which supports the right-wing dictatorship.

Trying to find how a millionaire wound up with a phony diamond brings Hercule Poirot to an exclusive island resort frequented by the rich and famous. When a murder is committed, everyone has an alibi.

Juliet Forrest is convinced that the reported death of her father in a mountain car crash was no accident. Her father was a prominent cheese scientist working on a secret recipe. To prove it was murder, she enlists the services of private eye, Rigby Reardon. He finds a slip of paper containing a list of people who are 'The Friends and Enemies of Carlotta'.

Barbara Hershey stars as Carla Moran, a hard-working single mother until the night she is raped in her bedroom by someone - or something - that she cannot see. Despite skeptical psychiatrists, she is repeatedly attacked in her car, in the bath, and in front of her children. Could this be a case of hysteria, a manifestation of childhood sexual trauma, or something even more horrific?

A Broadway playwright puts murder in his plan to take credit for a student's script.

Dr. Daniel Challis and Ellie Grimbridge stumble onto a gruesome murder scheme when Ellie's novelty-salesman father, Harry, is killed while in possession of a halloween mask made by the Silver Shamrock mask company. The company's owner, Conal Cochran, wants to return Halloween to its darker roots using his masks -- and his unspeakable scheme would unleash death and destruction across the country.

A crisis helpline assistant attracts the attention of a serial killer who delights in feeding her cryptic, nursery-rhyme style riddles when planning his next murder!

"This is an entirely imaginary story about the writer Dashiell Hammett, who... in the words of one of his most gifted contemporaries... helped get murder out of the vicar's rose garden and back to the people who are really good at it. The detective story has not been the same since." So begins Hammett, the atmospheric and exciting tale of a young mystery writer who really lives the hard-boiled life he writes about -- and learns to dig beneath the surface of his characters to reveal their deeper, darker motivations.

The restless spirit of a young girl possesses her sister and takes vengeance on her family one-by-one for allowing her to die in a car accident.