Best Thriller Movies of 1956

A couple vacationing in Morocco with their young son accidentally stumble upon an assassination plot. When the child is kidnapped to ensure their silence, they have to take matters into their own hands to save him.

Air Force Colonel Kenneth Penmark and his wife, Christine, dote on their daughter, Rhoda -- as does their lonely landlady, Monica Breedlove. But self-centered Rhoda has a secret tendency for selfishness and loves to accumulate gifts, whether given or stolen, in her room. Christine keeps her knowledge of her daughter's darker side to herself, but when a schoolmate of Rhoda's dies mysteriously, her self-deception unravels.

Newspaper men compete against each other to find a serial killer dubbed "The Lipstick Killer".

The true story of a British effort to trick the Germans into weakening Sicily's defenses before the 1943 attack. A dead soldier is dressed as a British officer and outfitted with faked papers showing that the Allies were intending to invade occupied Greece. His body is put into the sea where it will ultimately drift ashore and the papers be passed along to German Intelligence.

A rich man (Glenn Ford) stuns his wife (Donna Reed) and town with a televised threat to his son's kidnapper.

An innocent man turns fugitive as he reconstructs events that implicate him for a murder and robbery he did not commit.

Philip Hannon, a blind playwright living in London, overhears part of a conversation , that leads him into a desperate race, to find a kidnapped child. When he gets no help from the police, he along with his butler, and his ex fiancée, attempt to track down the crooks.

A savings-and-loan bank is robbed; later, a police wiretap identifies teller Leon Poole as inside man. In capturing him, detective Sam Wagner accidentally kills Poole's young wife, and at his trial Poole swears vengeance against Wagner. Poole begins his plans to get revenge when he escapes his captors.

A college student tries to get rich quick by wooing two wealthy sisters.

Kleptomaniac Dorothy Lyons is paroled from prison into the custody of her sister June, secretary to "reform" politician Frank Jansen. Ben Grace, associate of crime boss Sol "Solly" Caspar, sees this as a way to smear Jansen's campaign. Seductive Dorothy will do anything to get what she wants, which includes having a good time with Ben-- whom June is now in love with.

Kathy leaves the newspaper business to marry homicide detective Bill, but is frustrated by his lack of ambition and the banality of life in the suburbs. Her drive to advance Bill's career soon takes her down a dangerous path.

Can a couple keep important secrets from Communist spies?

A social worker tries to end juvenile crime by getting involved with a street gang.

Mike, a Hemingway-esque adventure novelist, is spending his days in a self-imposed exile somewhere in Central America. A reporter for Sight Magazine, Katie, has tracked him down in the hope of getting the biggest scoop of her career. Mike falls for Katie. On a flight to Mexico City, their plane crashes near a remote hideaway of Nazi war criminals in hiding. The Nazis want to stay hidden and plan to dispose of their new guests

A terrified stewardess is stalked by her psychotic estranged husband.

Millionaire Victor Danemore, living on the French Riviera, dies suddenly of a heart attack. His secretary, Dave Bishop, wants to know more about his employer's life. Surprisingly, not even his young wife knows anything about her husband's background or how he earned his fortune. Clues lead Bishop to Vienna and Stockholm, where he learns that Danemore was blackmailing people who cooperated with the Nazis during World War II.

U.S. Embassy employee Lee Cochrane and his wife, Sue, receive a shock when they discover that their 18-month-old son, Simon, has disappeared in London. He was last seen with their nanny, and the couple seemingly have no leads that might help police Detective Craig in his investigation. The media sensationalizes the incident, causing an unnecessary distraction as the couple prepares to confront the culprit face-to-face.

Having been sent a picture of her husband, a war hero killed in France, Meg Elgin is led to believe he is still alive and arranges a meeting at a London railway station. When she arrives there with the police accompanying her, she catches sight of a man in the distance wearing an old coat of her husband's. When he is pursued and captured, he turns out to be Duds Morrison a former soldier and out-of-work actor recently let out of prison. He refuses to tell them anything, and having nothing they can charge him with, the police release him. His interest aroused by the pictures sent to Meg, her new fiancé Geoffrey Leavitt follows Morrison and tries to demand an answer from him about his sudden appearance masquerading as Meg’s dead husband.

A rich young society girl falls in love with a car mechanic. Her family is appalled and stops her seeing him. The girl attempts to commit suicide and then decides to elope.

A high-school music teacher is the victim of a student who writes indecent notes and assaults women.

A British Intelligence officer fails a mission during WW2. Years later whilst working in a hotel he bumps into an old flame who is desperate to discover what went wrong?

A government agent's son wins respect and love when he challenges counterfeiters.

A co-owner of a race track goes on the run after witnessing something he shouldn't have at the track.

A tense thriller that tears the lid off Soho's underworld and reveals the cunning organization behind a gang of safe-breakers who will stop at nothing, not even murder, to achieve their goals.

A boy accidentally shoots a friend with a gun he found in the rubble of a destroyed building. The gun turns out to be a clue in a ten-year-old murder case.

Story of a salesman lured into the "hot car" racket.

An alien from Venus tries to take over the world with the help of a disillusioned human scientist, as his wife, his best friend and the friend's wife try to intervene.

A locksmith is pressured into crime when the mob makes him perform an elaborate bank robbery.

Down-and-out artist Joe Manning (John Bromfield) wakes up from a night of drunken revelry in a jail cell, where he's being held on suspicion for the murder of a nightclub singer.

During a massive manhunt for escaped convict Sam Cobbett, Cobbett invades a house where young housewife Mary Schaffner is home alone.

A crusading politician falls prey to the temptations of power.

An unhappy wife uses her powers of manipulation to draw an infatuated man into an ill-fated jewelry heist.

Stanley Baker's O'Donovan is sent to steal the plans of a rival company's racing car designs, to ensure his employers win the competition. However, when opening a safe containing the plans, he triggers an alarm leading to a gun battle where he kills a number of people. James Robertson Justice, alarmed by the scandal surrounding the killings, orders his agent be killed surreptitiously to hide his involvement with the plot. The film uses original footage from the Mille Miglia , an Italian open-road endurance race, featuring classic period racing cars.

A journalist is framed for the murder of a rival and has to prove his innocence, whatever the cost.

A bomb dooms the first space satellite, manned by a selfless crew, a stowaway reporter (Lois Maxwell) and a mad scientist (Donald Wolfit).

A group prison breakout goes from bad to worse when the desperate warden tries to steal the gang's dough.

Congotanga, West Africa, has no extradition laws; the government is controlled by foreign gangsters, headed by Carl Rittner. The latest plane from Europe carries lovely Louise Whitman, fleeing a French murder charge, and Mannering, who pays resident hit man O'Connell to kill her. Through a chain of circumstances Louise, O'Connell, and heroic surveyor David Carr end up alone in the jungle on Carr's mission to determine the true border of Congotanga... in which Rittner is keenly interested.

A trio of thieves make their getaway by kidnapping a young hot-rodder, and take over a mountain cabin for a hideout after overpowering its occupants.

An artist suffering from mental problems from his experiences during the war goes to Acapulco on his honeymoon. Soon young women are turning up dead in the area, and the ex-GI comes to believe he might be responsible, as he has long stretches where he can't remember anything.

In this political thriller, set within an unnamed country, revolutionaries try to prevent their leader's execution by kidnapping the president's daughter. A brave hostage pilot, breaks out and heroically saves the girl as the revolutionary leader is killed.

A woman believes herself to be the reincarnated spirit of an ancient prince's lover. Meanwhile, a murderer turns out to be the reincarnated spirit of the prince himself.

A police detective finds himself entangled in the web of the underworld when he falls in love with a nightclub singer accused of murdering a crooked lawyer.

A newspaper publisher's daughter suffers from neglect by her parents. She and her friends turn to crime by dressing up like men, holding up gas stations, raping young men at gunpoint, and having makeout parties when her parents are away. Their "fence" gets them to trash the school on request of sinister un-American clients, and they run afoul of the law, apple pie, and God himself.

An insurance investigator in London attempts to thwart smugglers trafficking stolen lambskins infected with anthrax.

A serial killer known as "the strangler" terrorizes a New York neighborhood.

An undercover policewoman helps three female convicts escape from prison so that they can lead her to a stash of stolen diamonds hidden in a swamp.

Herbert Carpenter plans to murder his wife Hermione, bury her body in the basement, and then leave on a long business trip.

A university professor, confident that everything which occurs in life has a rational explanation, finds his beliefs severely challenged when he awakens horrors beyond human understanding. A decade before the BBC's version of MR James' supernatural classic came this chilling version from the North Downs Cinematograph Society.

A brilliant scientist who has lost his memory is hunted by Communist agents out to obtain a secret formula.