Best Thriller Movies of 1954

An ex-tennis pro carries out a plot to have his wife murdered after discovering she is having an affair, and assumes she will soon leave him for the other man anyway. When things go wrong, he improvises a new plan—to frame her for murder instead.

A police detective falls for the bank robber's girlfriend he is supposed to be tailing.

Don Gallico is an inventor of stage magic effects who aspires to become a star in his own right. Just before his first performance his act is shut down by capricious manager Ross Ormond who wants Gallico's brilliant buzz saw effect for the act of The Great Rinaldi, an established star. With this defeat, and the humiliation of having already lost his wife Claire to Ormond, Gallico decides it is time to take matters into his own hands.

A mechanic gets caught up with the mob when he falls for a gangster's girlfriend.

A young stage hopeful is murdered and suspicion falls on her mentor, a Broadway producer.

A woman fights to convince the police that she witnessed a murder while looking out her bedroom window.

Two homicide detectives try to find just the facts behind a mobster's brutal murder.

In New York, a bank robbery of $300,000 goes unsolved for a year, until some of the marked bills are found in a Los Angeles drugstore theft. Police detectives Cal Bruner and Jack Farnham investigate and are led from the drugstore to a nightclub, where singer Lili is another recipient of a stolen bill. With Lili's help, the partners track down the remaining money, but both Lili and Frank are dismayed when Cal decides he wants to keep part of it.

Dan Roman is a veteran pilot haunted by a tragic past. Now relegated to second-in-command cockpit assignments he finds himself on a routine Honolulu-to-San Francisco flight - one that takes a terrifying suspense-building turn when disaster strikes high above the Pacific Ocean at the point of no return.

An FBI Agent takes on the three unrelated cases of a dead agent to track down his killer.

Questioned as a murder suspect, solid (but drunk) citizen Al Willis attacks his police questioners, is beaten, and swears vengeance against them. Next night, Lieut. Parks is murdered; Willis is the only suspect in the eyes of tough Chief Conroy, who pursues him doggedly despite lack of evidence. The obsessed Conroy is dismissed from the force, but continues to harass Willis, who flees to a sleazy town on the Mexican border. Of course, Conroy follows. But which is crazy, Conroy or Willis?

A petty thief breaks into the home of a psychiatrist and gets caught in a web of a doctor who wishes to experiment on him and a doctor's wife who wishes to seduce him.

A privately-financed scientist and his colleagues hire an ex-Navy officer to conduct an Alaskan submarine expedition in order to prevent a Red Chinese anti-American plot that may lead to World War III. Mixes deviously plotted schoolboy fiction with submarine spectacle and cold war heroics.

Screen superstars Clark Gable ("Gone With The Wind," "It Happened One Night") and sultry bombshell Lana Turner ("Peyton Place," "The Postman Always Rings Twice") team-up in this intriguing WWII drama. Suspected of being a Nazi spy, Dutch-resistance member Turner is given a last chance mission to redeem herself. Gable is an American colonel who falls in love with her. Co-starring Victor Mature ("My Darling Clementine") and Oscar-nominee Louis Calhern ("The Asphalt Jungle").

Harry Steele (Charlton Heston) is a tourist guide determined to make his fortune by finding the Sunburst, an Inca treasure.

A mechanical brain is programmed to sabotage the government's secret lab while working on the first space station.

Kenyon is a narcotics agent who, with the aid of a titled bird-watcher attempts to trap a brother and sister drug smuggling team.

A crooked salmon fishermantries to steal his best friend's fiancée and put him out of business.

Eight-year-old Roger Court is in Venice expecting to reunite with his father, British diplomat Major Court (Trevor Howard), whom he hasn't seen in three years. Roger lives with his Aunt Rose since his mother abandoned him.

When young reporter and amateur biker Jerry Marsh investigates a mysterious hooded figure on a motorbike, he discovers crooks hiding out in a ruined castle with atomic sabotage on their minds...

When a beautiful girl offers Casey Morrow a lot of money for a mystery job, Morrow doesn't ask too many questions. But when the girl's father is found murdered the following day and Morrow's coat is soaked with blood perhaps a little more caution should have been exercised. An intriguing story of deception, greed and immorality.

An ex-Marine on the lam from a murder charge. He hitches a ride from glamor-magazine photographer, who is travelling cross-country with her principal model. Tensions rise when the woman realize the man with them may be a killer.

Ex-cop Vic Barron crossed the wrong mobsters; his wife and child were killed and he himself scarred, framed and imprisoned. On release, Vic has but one desire, revenge on still-hiding Tino Morelli.

A woman travels to Hawaii to find out if a man in prison there is actually her missing husband.

A man pays a hitman to kill him. Circumstances change and he tries to call off the hit but he has trouble getting the deal killed.

A single mother in New Mexico senses her own death in the hands of a mysterious stalker.

A man hypnotizes a young woman into being an opera singer.

Sensuous and desirable, Carol Forrest has always attracted the attention of men. Expert in the art of manipulation and control she married an older man, loving only his vast wealth and continued to amuse herself with indiscreet affairs. But when neighbour Mark Kendrick lets slip that her husband intends cutting her out of his will Carol concentrates all her attentions on the unsuspecting Kendrick, obtaining his help to dispose of this irritating obstacle.

While in London trying to nab several fugitives who stole a million dollars from a U.S. Treasury vault, American federal agent Dennison (Dennis O'Keefe) assists Scotland Yard Insp. McClaren (Philip Friend) in his search for a missing atomic scientist (Paul Hardtmuth). The detective duo discovers that the key to solving both cases may rest with the scientist's daughter (Margaret Sheridan) and her fascinating diamond.

At a carnival called the Garden of Evil, a man is murdered, apparently by a gorilla...or someone in a gorilla suit.

A policeman tries to protect a young woman against a hit man, when she flees New York after witnessing a mob killing.

An American movie company wants to shoot a science-fiction film using a British army barracks as a location, and its soldiers as actors.

A man looking for his fortune in a mine decides to tempt his partner with his much younger wife. The goal? To catch them "in the act" and kill him without consequence.

A stranger turns up at an English country pub and asks to stay, although reveals that he has no money. He even claims to have no name. The police become suspicious when he reveals details about Susan North, a local girl who has gone missing. However, when the police try to take the stranger in for questioning, they find that they are unable to lay their hands on him. Susan then turns up, revealing that she has been in a car crash and how the stranger saved and miraculously healed her. The stranger tells them that he is a visitor from the planet Venus. The authorities block off all exits in and out of the town. The stranger tells government representatives that he wants a meeting with heads of world governments for when his people arrive in their ship in four days time. As they set this up, the stranger discovers that the authorities instead plan to lay a trap to capture his people’s ship – something they do not realise could have disastrous consequences for Earth.

An ex-chorus girl lives on the Riviera, supported by a married man she doesn't know is a crook.

Dennis O'Keefe plays a GI who falls in love with Mara Lane in postwar Rome. Lane kills her boss, forcing her to flee the law. O'Keefe goes along for the ride so that he won't be knocked off by Lane's husband. Just when it looks as though O'Keefe is willing to go to any lengths to protect the woman he loves, he discovers that she frankly isn't worth it.

In Singapore, a private detective and the British authorities are on the trail of a crime syndicate that kidnaps a nuclear physicist with the aim of selling him to the highest bidder.

If you remember Shelley Winters from "The Poseidon Adventure" or "Bloody Mama," you might tend to forget what a knockout she was early in her career. This film will give you the chance to see her as a sexy nightclub singer teaching her just-in-from-the-sticks friend Colleen Miller the ropes in New York City. When Winters finds out that her married boyfriend Barry Sullivan has fallen for Miller, the recriminations...and bullets...start to fly!

Shanghai, China. The last expatriate Westerners still living in the city are imprisoned in a hotel by the communist authorities in order to find the spy hiding among them.

Don Gregor, the son of famous plastic surgeon Dr. Boris Gregor, begins to hang around with young criminal Vic Brady and carry a gun. The pair attempt an armed holdup, and when things start to go wrong Gregor accidentally kills a night watchman. Fearing that Gregor plans to turn himself in, Brady kills him and blackmails Dr. Gregor into giving him a new face.

A policeman (Glenn Langan) with a pregnant wife (Adele Jergens) winds up chasing a payroll thief (Lon Chaney Jr.) into Mexico by helicopter.

A gangster hooks gangs of young women on drugs and has them commit robberies and prostitution.

A group of nuclear scientists try to make sure top secret information about atomic weapons does not fall into the wrong hands.

A distinguished judge who feels that no leniency is deserved in crimes of passion finds himself involved in a crime of passion.

A hearse driver is drawn into a plot by a beautiful blonde to haul away a man she's murdered and take the body to a cemetery.

A chance photograph may reveal a murderer's identity - and someone's after the photographer!

Poor Mr. Murray Selwyn (Guy Middleton)! He's suffering from 'Acute Apprehension Complex' and his doctors have strongly recommended that he avoid any stress or excitement in his life. Unfortunately -- thanks to a chance encounter in a London taxi cab -- he now finds himself at the very centre of an explosive international criminal caper and his life is filled with suitcases full of hot money, desperate gunmen and vanishing bodies! More dangerous still, he's been cared for by the rather ravishing Nurse Brook (Joan Winmill Brown) -- a girl guaranteed to stimulate any red-blooded English gentleman! How much excitement can one man take?

An American diplomat and his wife arrive in London, and are soon involved in a series of confusing and sometimes frightening events

The tranquility of a small town is marred only by sheriff Tod Shaw's unsuccessful courtship of widow Ellen Benson, a pacifist who can't abide guns and those who use them. But violence descends on Ellen's household willy-nilly when the U.S. President passes through town... and slightly psycho hired assassin John Baron finds the Benson home ideal for an ambush.