Best Thriller Movies of 1942

Aircraft factory worker Barry Kane flees across the United States after he is wrongly accused of starting the fire that killed his best friend.

Sadistic killer-for-hire Philip Raven becomes enraged when his latest job is paid off in marked bills. Vowing to track down his double-crossing boss, nightclub executive Gates, Raven sits beside Gates' lovely new employee, Ellen, on a train out of town. Although Ellen is engaged to marry the police lieutenant who's hunting down Raven, she decides to try and set the misguided hit man straight as he hides from the cops and plots his revenge.

The quiet village of Bramley End is taken over by German troops posing as Royal Engineers. Their task is to disrupt England's radar network in preparation for a full scale German invasion. Once the villagers discover the true identity of the troops, they do whatever they can to thwart the Nazis plans.

When the Holmes Woolen Mill burns down, political activist Leopold Dilg is jailed for arson and accidental murder. Escaping, Leopold hides out in the home of his childhood sweetheart Nora Shelley... which she has just rented to unsuspecting law professor Michael Lightcap.

Broadway gamblers stumble across a plan by Nazi saboteurs to blow up an American battleship.

Charlie Chan, with son Jimmy on a week's pass from the Army, takes up a request for help at a castle-home, miles from anywhere in the American desert south-west and inhabited by an eccentric, reclusive historian and his wife, a descendant of Lucrezia Borgia. Once there, he finds the request's legitimacy denied by all who are present, but still necessary as one houseguest has already been murdered, the other guests are at each other's throat, and the Borgia-related chatelain is suspected...

A crooked politician finds himself being accused of murder by a gangster from whom he refused help during a re-election campaign.

After a drunken night out, a longshoreman thinks he may have killed a man.

England, at the start of World War Two. Mysterious wireless broadcasts, apparently from Nazi Germany are heard over the BBC. They warn of acts of terror in England, just before they take place. Baffled, the Defence Committee call in Holmes ...

In the midst of World War II, Sherlock Holmes rescues the Swiss inventor of a new bomb-sight from the Gestapo and brings him to England, where he shortly falls into the clutches of Professor Moriarty.

Kurt Ingston, a rich recluse, invites the doctors who left him a hopeless cripple to his desolate mansion in the swamps as one by one they meet horrible deaths.

In Chicago, an unemployed actor aims to solve the mystery concerning a string of ax murders, apparently committed by a lunatic.

A high priest of Karnak travels to America with the living mummy Kharis (Lon Chaney Jr.) to kill all those who had desecrated the tomb of the Egyptian princess Ananka thirty years earlier.

Humble stamp dealer Otto Becker has little to do with international politics, so when he receives a surprise visit from his estranged twin brother and Nazi spy, Baron Hugo von Detner, his world is thrown into turmoil. Threatening Becker with deportation, Hugo forces him to use his shop as a front for espionage.

Young intern Jeff Burton, impulsively offers a lift to an odd-looking gentlemen. It soon turns out that Jeff's passenger is an inventor has just escaped from a shady sanitarium, where he has been held prisoner by Nazi spies.

Dr. Kildare's friend Dr. Gillespie is called in to investigate when a young man suffering from mental problems disappears on a killing spree.

Wartime propaganda piece giving the warning "Be like Dad, Keep Mum". A gossipy housewife is overheard talking about what her son is doing by a Nazi spy.

Two teachers, man-hungry Doris and restrained Marian, visit the Yorkshire moors a year after friend Evelyn disappeared there. On a stormy night, they take refuge in the isolated cottage of Stephen, one-time pianist shell-shocked in the Spanish Civil War. Doris flees as soon as the flood subsides; but Marian's suspicions about Evelyn's fate, in conflict with her growing love for Stephen, prompt her to stay on among the misty bogs.

Dana Andrews plays Bill Roberts, an American radio commentator station in Berlin in the months before Pearl Harbor. Having witnessed Nazi brutalities first hand, Roberts hopes to alert his listeners of impending dangers, and does so by sending out coded messages during his broadcasts. The Gestapo begins to suspect something and assigns glamorous secret agent Karen Hauen (Virginia Gilmore) to spy on Roberts. When she discovers that her own father (Erwin Kaiser) is supplying Roberts with vital secrets, she turns her back on the Nazis and joins our hero in his efforts.

When she learns that the Nazis have confiscated Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece Mona Lisa, art-loving South American wanna-be spy Tamara (Jane Carr) journeys to Lisbon to snoop for the Germans in return for the iconic painting. But bumbling Nazi agents, Allied counterspies and multiple copies of the artwork soon confound her attempts at espionage.

An Englishman kills a German look-alike and poses as a Nazi spy in London.

In this Cornell Woolrich thriller, a man's memory is recovered after being injured by falling construction material. Discovering a year-long lapse, he returns to his old life and discovers a lot of mysterious happenings.

A demoted reporter (George Brent) and his girlfriend (Brenda Marshall) seek to expose a crime kingpin.

The city's District Attorney is murdered, and a newspaper reporter investigates. He starts finding out that everything wasn't quite as cut and dried as it appeared to be.

World War II espionage drama, starring Preston Foster and Lynn Bari.

The police arrest a man climbing over the wall of a cemetery after midnight. He claims that he is being blackmailed and is following instructions he received by mail to leave $1000 on a certain grave. It turns out that he's not the only one who got a blackmail letter from the same person--calling himself "The Black Panther"--and it also turns out that all the recipients are connected to an opera company.

Joe Smith is an ordinary American family man who works in an aircraft factory. Shortly after being a promoted to a much higher position, Joe is kidnapped by enemy agents who are determined to get military secrets out of him by any means possible. Will Joe keep quiet or betray his country...

After Pearl Harbor, convicts at Alcatraz prison live in fear of bomb attacks, driving Champ Larkin and his pal Jimbo to a desperate escape attempt which lands them on a tiny lighthouse island, where they take over. The five inhabitants are stymied in their efforts to summon aid. But the island also figures in the schemes of a big Nazi spy ring; which will win out, the gangsters' greed or their patriotism?

A cocky radio reporter sets out to prove an ex-convict is innocent in the murder of a mob boss.

A remake of the 1927 horror film "The Wizard". Dr. Larry Forbes arrives in a remote French village to visit his fiancée who lives with her scientist father Dr. Renault and his Ape-like manservant Noel. Several Murders coincide with Dr. Forbes arrival, with clues pointing in multiple directions.

An intrepid radio reporter sets out to track down and expose Nazi agents.

A man is brought back from death at the same time a vicious criminal dies in the electric chair. However, the man's soul is now taken over by the electrocuted gangster, who embarks on a vengeful crime wave.

A fugitive doctor (Lionel Atwill) tries to raise the dead for South Sea Islanders.

Quality was seldom a consideration in the low-budget films of PRC Studios; still, the company was a welcome harbor for character actors who aspired to occasional leading roles. In Boss of Big Town, veteran supporting player John Litel is top-billed as crusading city market official Michael Lynn. When a criminal gang muscles in on the local food distribution markets, Lynn vows to throw the rascals out. First, however, he pretends to join the villains as a paid government stooge, the better to find out the identity of the "Mister Big" behind the distribution racket. The exposure of the "mystery villain" will come as a shock to fans of the 1927 Cecil B. DeMille epic The King of Kings--but not to dyed-in-the-wool movie buffs.

The host of a whodunit radio show finds himself involved in his own mystery when he awakens to find a woman with a knife in her back in his bedroom.

A detective investigating kidnapping case discovers the victim, who may be a zombie.

A team of ex-con bounty hunters go to Germany in search of Hitler. If they can find him, a million dollar reward is to be paid to them.

Hollywood starlet foils an Axis plot to sabotage the L.A. infrastructure.

A corrupt official at San Quentin tries to frame an innocent guard for several murders within the prison.