Best Thriller Movies of 1952

A tough cop meets his match when he has to guard a gangster's widow on a tense train ride.

Actor Lester Blaine has all but landed the lead in Myra Hudson's new play when Myra vetoes him because, to her, he doesn't look like a romantic leading man. On a train from New York to San Francisco, Blaine sets out to prove Myra wrong...by romancing her. Is he sincere, or does he have a dark ulterior motive?

Jed, an airline pilot, is resting in a hotel when he notices Nell, a young woman babysitting for a wealthy couple. As Jed gets to know Nell better he realises that the woman is not as stable as perhaps she should be.

During WWII, the valet to the British Ambassador to Ankara sells British secrets to the Germans while trying to romance a refugee Polish countess.

A tabloid editor assigns a young reporter to solve a murder the editor committed himself.

A down-on-his-luck ex-GI finds himself framed for an armored car robbery. When he's finally released for lack of evidence--after having been beaten up and tortured by the police--he sets out to discover who set him up, and why. The trail leads him into Mexico and a web of hired killers and corrupt cops.

An unexpected bond develops between a fugitive killer and a runaway orphan on an odyssey across England.

Eddie Miller struggles with his hatred of women, he's especially bothered by seeing women with their lovers. He starts a killing spree as a sniper by shooting women from far distances. In an attempt to get caught, he writes an anonymous letter to the police begging them to stop him.

In New York's 1880's newspaper district a dedicated journalist manages to set up his own paper. It is an immediate success but attracts increasing opposition from one of the bigger papers and its newspaper heiress owner.

Joseph Cotten plays an assistant bank manager who steals $1,000,000 from the safe late on a Friday and then plans to flee to Brazil over the weekend.

Special prosecutor John Conroy hopes to combat organized crime in his city and appoints his cop father Matt as chief investigator. John doesn't understand why Matt is reluctant, but cynical reporter Jerry McKibbon thinks he knows: he's seen Matt with mob lieutenant Harrigan. Jerry's friendship with John is tested by the question of what to do about Matt, and by his attraction to John's girl Amanda. Meanwhile, the threatened racketeers adopt increasingly violent means of defense.

Jeff and his family just moved into a small, rural community. When two sinister locals tamper with Jeff's water pump, a fight breaks out among the three. Jeff is seen as a fugitive in the eyes of this bloodthirsty community...and there seems to be no way to stop them.

A nightclub singer enlists her brother-in-law to track down her husband's killer.

A Man investigates the disappearance of two of his friends who were the guests of a sinister Austrian count.

A chance accident causes a nuclear physicist, who's selling top secret material to the Russians, to fall under FBI scrutiny and go on the run.

House Un-American Activities Committee investigators Jim McLain and Mal Baxter come to post war Hawaii to track Communist Party activities even though belonging to the party was legal at the time. They are interested in everything from insurance fraud to the sabotage of a U.S. naval vessel.

A 5-year-old child is diagnosed with leukaemia and has only days to live. Her only hope is a blood transfusion, but her blood type is extremely rare, so the race is on to find the donors.

Private eye Edward Mercer travels to Venice to locate a man due a reward for his aid in the war. Shortly after arriving, he becomes the prime suspect in the murder of his local contact. In his quest to clear his name, Mercer uncovers a conspiracy. Even the local magistrate seems to be working against him, and Mercer begins to suspect the man he came to find is behind it all.

Jeff Elliot is an American GI investigating a black market gang in Munich.

Police track a serial killer.

A greedy woman tries to poison her nephew's bride in a dark mansion.

Upon awaking in the morning, a man finds his thoughts clouded by the possibility that he committed a murder.

A former police detective turned private investigator is approached by two elderly sisters, who say that someone is terrorising them, but it turns out that the man they believe is responsible is long since dead.

After successfully swindling thousands of dollars from hapless victims, conflicted con artist Mary (Hillary Brooke) decides to go straight, but her greedy boyfriend and partner, Roger (Tom Conway), convinces her to pull off one final scam before they get married. Written and directed by Andrew L. Stone, this classic crime film finds the police struggling to keep up with the deceptive duo's exceedingly complicated schemes.

A doctor changes a woman's face to match the one that broke his heart. Trouble starts when his love returns.

Paris-based New York Herald Tribune reporter Jimmy Race (Andrews) is sent by his boss (Sanders) behind the Iron Curtain in Budapest to investigate a meeting involving the Hungarian ambassador.

Bomba decides to find out who his parents were. He starts with Cody Casson's diary and follows the trail to a native village. An ancient blind woman tells him his parents and the village's true ruler were murdered by the current chieftain and his daughter.

A pianist takes his ailing wife out of a London hospital at the same time that another female patient there has suffered a miscarriage. Afterwards, the second woman feels empty and withdrawn, and, thinking that getting her away from London will help, her husband takes her to live at a country estate, which turns out to be the former residence of the pianist who left after his wife died. The woman begins to get visions of the wife and her final days; is she becoming possessed by the dead wife of the pianist?

Spies hold the son of a nuclear physicist (Gene Barry) hostage in exchange for the Los Alamos bomb formula.

A greedy but successful professional gambler wants to join the British Establishment when he falls in love with a blue-blooded lady. But first he must mend his ways and then dump his nightclub singer girl friend. She's not so easy to get rid of, neither is his past.

When police inspector Gerald Blake wants to infiltrate a London stolen-goods gang, he does a thorough job of it. First, he robs a jewelry store, gets caught and is sentenced to prison. Then he teams up with gang-member Joey to make their escape. Once in the gang, Blake identifies the boss, Larry, and most of the other thieves, but not the "inside man." As a big fur job looms closer, the detective's task is complicated by the playful but seductive advances of Judy, a dazzling blonde who happens also to be the jealous Larry's girl friend.

Plot here has Confederate veteran Jeff Waring arriving in Independence, Missouri shortly after the Civil War, and intending never again to use a gun. He finds that rancher Artemus Taylor, an arthritic despot, and his henchies, Sam Tobin and Cree, are forcing out the settlers in order to claim their land for the incoming railroad. The plot nearly predates "The Great Train Robbery" in age but the gritty execution and well-acted performances take it out of the norm... way out, in a couple of instances. Brassy Myrna Dell is on hand as Taylor's independent daughter, only slightly less meaner than her father, and the always welcome Dorothy Malone is the pretty school marm on the side of good. Needless to say, Ireland's passive outlook on life changes before the end.

A former pilot suffering from blackouts discovers that a fellow flyer is suspected of being mixed up with a web of smugglers. While searching for his missing buddy, he unwittingly becomes entangled in a morass of suspicion.

Warned that it is haunted, a skeptical young couple buy a rundown yacht and fix it up to be their home-on-the-sea, only to slowly realize that it really is haunted.

When nuclear scientists are kidnapped and smuggled behind the Iron Curtain, an FBI man and a British agent are assigned to catch the kidnappers.

Lieutenant Johnson, a U. S. Air Force pilot, on the tip of Alaska, a few miles from the Bering Straits from Siberia, helps foil a Soviet plot to test a new secret weapon by loyal Alaskan Eskimos. He is aided by Sergeant Koovuk, an Alsaka native Eskimo also in the U.S. military service. Along the way there is an ice-floe evacuation, an air-ice rescue and a fight with a polar bear.

Returning veteran with PTSD/amnesia returns home and gets tangled up in a criminal investigation.