Best Thriller Movies of 1944

A newlywed fears she's going mad when strange things start happening at the family mansion.

A seductive woman gets an innocent professor mixed up in murder.

During World War II, a small group of survivors is stranded in a lifeboat together after the ship they were traveling on is destroyed by a German U-boat.

Gumshoe Philip Marlowe is hired by the oafish Moose Malloy to track down his former girlfriend. He's also hired to accompany an effeminate playboy buy back some jewels. When the exchange results in the playboy's murder, Marlowe can't leave the case alone, and soon discovers it's related to Malloy's. As he gets drawn deeper into a complex web of intrigue by a mysterious blonde, the detective finds his own life in increasing jeopardy.

Stephen Neale is released into WWII England after two years in an asylum, but it doesn't seem so sane outside either. On his way back to London to rejoin civilization, he stumbles across a murderous spy ring and doesn't quite know to whom to turn.

On a trip to visit his parents, detective Nick Charles gets mixed up in a murder investigation.

A woman lies on the sand, left there by the tides and waves (and in a pose that would be copied in From Here to Eternity). She reaches up across tree roots and makes a difficult climb. Only to discover herself climbing horizontally along a long dinner table as bourgeoise black-tie guests chat and drink and smoke, oblivious to her. At the top of the table, a man is playing chess but abandons the game. Fascinated, she gazes at board, the pieces moving unaided. The woman chases a pawn as it falls to the floor. Falls down a waterfall. Is lost.

In Nazi Germany in 1936 seven men escape from a concentration camp. The camp commander puts up seven crosses and, as the Gestapo returns each escapee he is put to death on a cross. The seventh cross is still empty as George Heisler seeks freedom in Holland.

The famous Borgia Pearl, a valuable gem with a history of bringing murder and misfortune to its owner since the days of the Borgias, is brought to London, thanks in part to Sherlock Holmes. But before long the jewel is stolen, due to an error on Holmes' part, and shortly thereafter, a series of horrible murders begin, the murderer leaving his victims with their spines snapped and surrounded by a mass of smashed china.

When a woman is found dead with her throat torn out, the local villagers blame a supernatural monster. But Sherlock Holmes, who gets drawn into the case from nearby Quebec, suspects a human murderer.

Genial shopkeeper Philip has to endure the constant nagging of a shrewish wife while he secretly yearns for a pretty young stenographer. When the henpecking gets to be too much, Philip murders his wife and manages to make her death look like an accident. A ruthless blackmailer and a low-key detective both discover Philip's secret, and he has to decide which of them poses the more dangerous threat.

A mystery writer is intrigued by the tale of notorious criminal Dimitrios Makropolous, whose body was found washed up on the shore in Istanbul. He decides to follow the career of Dimitrios around Europe, in order to learn more about the man. Along the way he is joined by the mysterious Mr. Peters, who has his own motivation.

A French playboy gets serious when his country is threatened during World War II.

In Victorian era London, the inhabitants of a family home with rented rooms upstairs fear the new lodger is Jack the Ripper.

Chinese detective Charlie Chan solves a murder linked to the occult. This movie had an alternative title: Meeting at Midnight.

To solve the murder of a man shot in a locked room, Chan must wade through a Fun House, the writings of an unscrupulous author, and chess pieces.

A guerilla leader falls in love with a mysterious woman in World War II Lisbon.

In 1903, Doctor Huntington Bailey meets a friendly older lady during a train trip. She tells him that she is going to visit her brother Nick and his lovely young wife Allida. Once in New York, Bailey hears that his train companion suddenly died. Shortly afterward, he meets the strange couple and gets suspicious of Nick's treatment of his wife.

Young female models are being strangled. Will law enforcement be able to stop the crime wave before more women become victims?

After being buried in quicksand for the past 25 years, Kharis is set free to roam the rural bayous of Louisiana, as is the soul of his beloved Princess Ananka, still housed in the body of Amina Mansouri, who seeks help and protection at a swamp draining project.

An insurance salesman, Albert Tuttle, is hired as a body guard for a millionaire.

A drifter claims the money in an old bank account. Soon he finds himself the target of two men who turn out to be the sons of the man's old partner, who is now in prison because of a conflict with him over the money in that account.

After bringing his beautiful new wife Paula home to America from the remote island on which she was raised, Professor Norman Reed begins to feel the clash between his world of rational science and hers of bizarre dancing and freaky voodoo rituals. Norman's stuck-up friends also sense Paula's strangeness, and soon their meddling gossip and suspicious scheming push the poor woman to use her magic to defend herself and her husband – and maybe even to kill! Or is it just the power of suggestion...?

A hunt for a spy, in a hotel in the South of France just before World War Two.

A group of people are invited to a party at a creepy mansion where legend has it a ghost appears once a year.

Reporter Michael Gordon uncovers intrigue in Damascus, where the Allies and Nazis struggle for control of Arab sympathies.

Earl Conrad, an industrialist, blames himself for the death of his wife, as he failed to rescue her from drowning in the sea. He wants to end his life and hires a killer to kill him.

A nightclub star helps trap an enemy agent on the trail of an American newsman.

Dr. Hohner, theatre physician at the Vienna Royal Theatre, murders his mistress, the star soprano when his jealousy drives him to the point of mad obsession. Ten years later, another young singer reminds Hohner of the late diva and his old mania kicks in. Hohner wants to prevent her from singing for anyone but him, even if it means silencing her forever.

Evelyn, an emotionally vulnerable and unstable woman, stays at the home of her doctor Dan Proctor. There she meets and falls in love with his brother, Douglas, who is happily married to Ann. Evelyn then sets forth to break up the happy marriage and win the love of Douglas.

A Nazi spy passes himself off as an optometrist in San Francisco's waterfront district. Someone robs him of his code book, and he must get it back.

Reporter Patsy Reynolds and photographer Eddie Porter are assigned to interview John Foster, head of the Emmerson Foundation regarding a listening device the organization is working on. Foster evades them and they to the lab to see Professor Reynolds, the real inventor. Soon, they are involved in several shootings, blueprints that change hands several times, a corpse in their car that appears and disappears a few times, the loss of their jobs and several people who either think they are killers or candidates for being killed.

Greedy oil speculators, led by Morgan, are trying to force Tiger Woman and her band of warriors from their jungle home. Allen Saunders of Inter-Ocean Oil wants to develop the oil, too, but fights with Tiger Woman to stop the bad guys.

Live-action short directed by Irv Spence.

US Army Air Forces providing an overview of the Army Air Forces.

A newspaper reporter uncovers a killer when he makes contact with the names listed in a dead man's address book.