Best Mystery Movies of 1991

New York gangster Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel takes a brief business trip to Los Angeles. A sharp-dressing womanizer with a foul temper, Siegel doesn't hesitate to kill or maim anyone crossing him. In L.A. the life, the movies, and most of all strong-willed Virginia Hill detain him while his family wait back home. Then a trip to a run-down gambling joint at a spot in the desert known as Las Vegas gives him his big idea.

In 1949 composer Roman Strauss is executed for the vicious murder of his wife Margaret with a pair of scissors. In 1990s Los Angeles a mute amnesiac woman shows up at an orphanage and private eye Mike Church is called in to investigate. Under hypnosis both the woman and Church seem to have a strange link back to the Strauss murder.

Poindexter "Fool" Williams, his brother Leroy, and their family face eviction from their rented home in South Central Los Angeles. Their landlords are a greedy, uncaring couple who live in a mansion that's as huge as it is eerie. Leroy has a plan to burglarize the mansion, but what the boys find inside is not what they expected.

Dan Merrick comes out from a shattering car accident with amnesia. He finds that he is married to Judith who is trying to help him start his life again. He keeps getting flashbacks about events and places that he can't remember. He meets pet shop owner and part time private detective Gus Klein who has supposedly done some work for him prior to the accident. Klein helps Merrick to find out more...

At the insistence of Ruth Van Rydock, an old schoolfriend who is convinced that there is something wrong, Miss Marple agrees to visit 'Stonygates', the country house of Ruth's sister.

A loathsome man ends up dead, but it's not clear who's to blame. If ever a person got what he deserved, it's James Urbanksi, an abusive drunk who steals from his wife, Joyce, and promises her close friend Cynthia Kellogg that she'll be the next target of his rage. At a group outing, James bleeds to death after someone cuts his throat. But because he's such a terrible human being, police aren't sure which of his acquaintances decided to kill him.

Kafka, an insurance worker gets embroiled in an underground group after a co-worker is murdered. The underground group is responsible for bombings all over town, attempting to thwart a secret organization that controls the major events in society. He eventually penetrates the secret organization and must confront them.

A lonely telephone operator leading an empty, amoral life finds God — only to have her faith continually tested in ways beyond what she could have imagined.

In a fantastical 1940s where magic is used by everyone, a hard-boiled detective investigates the theft of a mystical tome.

Charles Dexter Ward's wife enlists the help of a private detective to find out what her husband is up to in a remote cabin owned by his family for centuries. The husband is a chemical engineer, and the smells from his experiments (and the delivery of what appear to be human remains at all hours) are beginning to arouse the attention of neighbors and local law enforcement officials.

When the Smurl family moves into a duplex, they find out it's haunted.

Charles Lattimore, an author of a book about a famous murder trial, arranges to meet with one of his students one night. When the student is found murdered and Lattimore has no alibi, he suspects he is being framed by the subject of his book.

Infatuated with the idea of becoming rich, college student Jonathan Corliss secretly dates Dorothy Carlsson to gain the approval of her wealthy father. When Dorothy tells Jonathan that she is pregnant and that her father will deny her inheritance if he finds out, Jonathan murders her, but he stages her death as a suicide. As Jonathan works his way onto Mr. Carlsson's payroll, Dorothy's twin sister, Ellen, investigates the apparent suicide.

The daughter of a wealthy businessman has disappeared in Mexico, and all the efforts to find her have been unsuccessful. A psychologist, knowing that the girl has an ultra bad luck, persuades her father to send to Mexico one of his employees, an accountant with super bad luck, to find her. Perhaps he will be lucky, and his bad luck could help to find the unlucky girl.

Perry is at TV station "KGGY" to be interviewed but thanks to the interference of main anchor-person Brett Huston the interview is pulled. Mostly everybody hates Brett as Brett knows all the station workers secrets. He has also written a memo insulting all of the main station players - Vic St. John - the station manager, Twyla Cooper - the producer, Chuck Gilmore - the sports reporter, Gary Slate - the weatherman, Cassie Woodfield - the reporter and Gillian Pope. Brett is shot dead with Gillian's gun and therefore is arrested for the crime. Gillian calls in Perry, Della and Ken to investigate. As Della and Perry set out to solve the mystery, Ken gets close to Cassie but she is a suspect and when it appears that somebody is trying to kill her, the mystery deepens..

Della's friend is accused of murdering a rival fashion magazine editor.

David Katz is a world famous magician and he comes to Denver with his group to perform for a charity gala for disabled children. Also there is Perry and Della as all three are supporters of the charity. Kate Ford, an assistant with an arrogant attitude, tells David that she is, from now on, going to do an illusion in which an assistant is raised in a glass coffin only to disappear when the coffin is opened up in the air (while the assistant climbs out before the coffin is raised.) After a one night stand with David, Kate is pregnant and she blackmails David with this. David and his wife Judy can't have children so that comes as a double blow to them. However Kate, with her attitude, creates much hatred at her from the rest of the group. At the gala, the glass coffin is raised but when it opens Kate's dead body falls to the ground - strangled.

A man returns to his hometown and a series of dark secrets are revealed.

A man gets out of prison after 15 years for stabbing his wife to death, and his social worker becomes convinced he was innocent. As she researches his case, and interviews other people who were involved, she begins to fall in love with him, as her friends warn her that he's dangerous.

Damien Thorn is dead, but his prophecy is reborn in a girl named Delia, who is adopted by two attorneys, Gene and Karen York. When Karen realizes her baby was born under suspicious circumstances, she hires a private investigator to find Delia's real parents. A series of bizarre accidents occur, and Karen begins to suspect everyone of conspiring against her as she unravels the truth about her baby.

Valerie's husband Darryl leaves for work as usual, but never returns. She hires private eye Shepard to find him. Soon he discovers that David had a second identity and obviously doesn't want to be found. But since Shepard is strongly attracted to the pretty Valerie, he investigates further and gets involved more than professionally.

A small-town eccentric opens a café in her decaying home.

A beautiful young woman asks Holmes to help her father, a former army captain and hopeless opium addict break free of the curse surrounding a stolen treasure.

Victoria "V.I" Warshawski is a Chicago based private detective who agrees to babysit for her new boyfriend; then he is murdered. Being the detective type, she makes the murder her next case. In doing so she befriends the victim's daughter, Kat, and together they set out to crack the case.

At the request of his old war time colleague Ailsa Brimley, George Smiley agrees to look into the murder of Stella Rode. Brimley had only just received a letter from her saying she feared for her life at her husband's hand. The husband, Stanley Rode teaches at Carne School, but Smiley is doubtful that he had anything to do with his wife's death. As Smiley investigates, he learns that Stella was a nosy busybody who loved to learn other's little secrets and then gossip about them - or possibly blackmail them. When a student is killed and Smiley unearths a secret, he has the evidence to name the killer.Based on John Le Carré's 1962 thriller (his first) in which George Smiley is brought out of spy retirement to solve a murder in a British public school. The setting is based on Le Carre"s own schooldays in Sherborne and his brief experience teaching at Eton.

When '30s film star Thelma Todd dies mysteriously, her relationship with New York mobster Lucky Luciano is investigated.

Artie Logan is the new guy on Campus. Suddenly, he meets Tally Fuller: the most popular and beautiful girl at Fairfield college and she finally agrees to go on a date with him. But that night she is brutally killed by a blowtorch-wielding maniac and Artie is wrongfully arrested. Despite protests from other Police officers, detective P.J. Decker believes Artie's story and gives him 24 hours to track down the real killer.

Despite her husband's doubts, a woman reaches out to her dead daughter with a psychiatrist's help.

Final Approach deals with the mental condition of Amnesia when a stealth test pilot, Col. Jason Halsey (James Sikking), is involved in an air disaster. A psychiatrist Dr. Dio Gottlieb (Hector Elizondo) attempts to help Halsey to recover his memory, but his motives seem strained. Is Gottlieb giving professional help or is he a counter-intelligence agent sent to debrief Halsey?

Two disc jockeys have a friend's murder to solve in the fringe-group melting pot of 1977 London.

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson get involved with Balkan terrorists to save Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria from an assassination at the opera house and prevent World War I.

A Los Angeles lawyer defends her former college roommate, whose husband — her lover — has been slain.

Right after Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California, in 1955, a toy salesman in town for a convention brings his wife with him so they can both go to Disneyland. They stay at a rundown place called the Sunset Motel nearby. Soon the wife is having an affair with a man staying at the motel. The husband hires a psychotic criminal to spy on them, the wife and her lover plan to murder the husband, and the voyeuristic motel manager is spying on everybody.

A young woman begins to suspect that her brother's young fiancée, an attractive Englishwoman, is actually a serial killer who kills men on the eve of their weddings.

In a slightly future America, a woman goes to the big city to visit with her sister, who is dead in her apartment. In order to find out what happened to her sister, she gets a job working at a dance club, a lower notch in the strip joint circuit. Some of her colleagues begin showing up dead as she uncovers a sinister hierarchy in the strip club management that is harnessing the sexual activity for their own twisted ends.

A murder mystery writer misreads the nervous man he bullies in a spooky Hollywood mansion.

"Swimwear Illustrated" is approaching its fifteenth anniversary issue. From a group of eager and beautiful young women, five are chosen for a photo shoot on an island off the California coast. One of the five will be the cover girl, and she'll get an extra $100,000. On the island, the group stays at an isolated inn, staffed by the odd Frab. There's him, the five models, and four magazine staff: photographer, make-up man, ambitious assistant Anesa, and Jack Denton, the playboy in charge of production. One by one, models and staff disappear.

A California forest ranger (Colin Firth) seeks his bride (Lisa Zane) and discovers, with his artist friend (Billy Zane), her dark sides.

Glamorous fashion photographer Rebecca is getting even. Angered by her husband's infidelity, she takes a lover - a mysterious hunk she fist met during a photo shoot. He's exciting. He's handsome. And, after a night of lovemaking, he confesses he's a hit man hired by her husband to kill her. The stranger also says he's had a change of heart and wants to be Rebecca's protector. But Rebecca's husband, a renowned psychologist, insists the man is a former patient with a hidden, twisted agenda. Both men can't be right. Both could be lying. As the circle of suspense closes in on her, one thing is clear to Rebecca. Any choice she makes could be more than wrong...it could be fatal.

A security guard is enticed to scam a businessman for his insurance money by the man's attractive wife. The trouble begins when he discovers that the husband has ties to the mob.

A girl returns from the dead as a penanggalan (a detached female head capable of flying about on its own) to gain her revenge on a gang of thugs that raped and murdered her.

A psychotherapist who specializes in treating people in abusive relationships inadvertently causes a patient to kill her abusive husband.

Three children investigate strange goings-on in their school and protect it from such threats as a computer scientist with dreams of world domination and a mysterious group of archaeologists hoping to bring about the end of the century.