Best Thriller Movies of 1959

A virtuoso James Stewart plays a small-town Michigan lawyer who takes on a difficult case: the defense of a young army lieutenant (Ben Gazzara) accused of murdering a local tavern owner who he believes raped his wife (Lee Remick). This gripping envelope-pusher, the most popular film by Hollywood provocateur Otto Preminger, was groundbreaking for the frankness of its discussion of sex—but more than anything else, it is a striking depiction of the power of words. Featuring an outstanding supporting cast—with a young George C. Scott as a fiery prosecutor and the legendary attorney Joseph N. Welch as the judge—and an influential score by Duke Ellington, Anatomy of a Murder is an American movie landmark, nominated for seven Oscars, including best picture.

The only son of wealthy widow Violet Venable dies while on vacation with his cousin Catherine. What the girl saw was so horrible that she went insane; now Mrs. Venable wants Catherine lobotomized to cover up the truth.

When a nobleman is threatened by a family curse on his newly inherited estate, detective Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.

A marshal tries to bring the son of an old friend, an autocratic cattle baron, to justice for the rape and murder of his wife.

In Tiger Bay, the docklands of Cardiff, rough-and-tumble street urchin Gillie witnesses the brutal killing of a young woman at the hands of visiting Polish sailor Korchinsky. Instead of reporting the crime to the authorities, Gillie merely pockets a prize for herself — Korchinsky's shiny black revolver — and flees the scene. When Detective Graham discovers that Gillie has the murder weapon, the fiery young girl weaves a web of lies to throw him off course.

Blaise Starrett is a rancher at odds with homesteaders when outlaws hold up the small town. The outlaws are held in check only by their notorious leader, but he is diagnosed with a fatal wound and the town is a powder keg waiting to blow.

An old-time crook plans a heist. When one of his two partners is found out to be a black man tensions flare.

Two Scotland Yard detectives investigate the murder of a young woman of mixed race who had been passing for white. As they interview a spate of suspects -- including the girl's white boyfriend and his disapproving parents -- the investigators wade through a stubbornly entrenched sludge of racism and bigotry.

When hired killer John Gant rides into Lordsburg, the town's folk become paranoid as each leading citizen has enemies capable of using the services of a professional killer for personal revenge.

A Los Angeles detective and his Japanese partner woo an artist while solving a stripper's murder.

An Englishman in France unwittingly is placed into the identity, and steps into the vacated life, of a look-alike French nobleman.

A disgraced merchant marine officer elects to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and, as a result, vindicate his good name.

An escaped convict gets a hold of some radioactive material after his escape. Authorities desperately try to find the man that unknowingly is threating the lives of everyone in the city.

In London, a diplomat accidentally becomes involved in the death of a British agent who's after a spy ring that covets British military secrets.

Lieutenant Braden discovers that Sally, the woman he's been falling in love with, has actually been checking out his qualifications to be a U.S. Navy frogman. He must put his personal life behind him after being assigned to be smuggled into a Japanese-held island via submarine to photograph radio codes.

Mystery writer Cornelia Van Gorder has rented a country house called "The Oaks", which not long ago was the scene of some murders committed by a strange and violent criminal known as "The Bat". Meanwhile, the house's owner, bank president John Fleming, has recently embezzled one million dollars in securities and has hidden the proceeds in the house, but is killed before he can retrieve it.

Career criminals and a local youth carefully plan and rehearse the robbery of a Missouri bank.

Crisis in the air: A passenger aboard a commercial airplane flying from London to New York threatens to detonate a bomb over the Atlantic.

A mysterious epidemic has struck an Old West frontier town and young girls are falling deathly ill. Doc Carter, his lovely daughter Dolores, and preacher Dan Young have their hands full caring for the infirm. When one of the patients dies unexpectedly, Dan notices two puncture wounds on her neck. His investigation leads him to the strange gunslinger Drake Robey, who always seems to be slower on the draw than his opponents, but who—despite being outdrawn, and even shot—always manages to survive these deadly encounters. Dan soon discovers that Drake also has an aversion to crucifixes, sleeps in coffins, and cannot tolerate sunlight...

A killer breaks into an apartment to steal a valuable brooch. He kills an old woman, but in fleeing he encounters a young woman on the stairs who will become his target.

A young American serviceman stationed in Germany after the fall of the Third Reich, jeopardises his future after falling in love with a German woman.

A flying boat has to ditch off an island in the Pacific. Along with the injured owner-pilot the passengers include a policeman and his smuggler prisoner, a slimey limey witness against him, a physicist, and a globe-hopping good-time girl. On the island they find a fleet of derelict ships, farm animals tethered, and cameras in a lead-lined bunker and a stark realisation soon dawns.

Jail house tensions mount as a killer's execution approaches.

Ships disappear on route across the Arctic Sea, and a special submarine is sent to investigate.

A marshal nicknamed "The Hangman" because of his track record in hunting down and capturing wanted criminals traces a robbery suspect to a small town. However, the man is known and liked in the town, and the citizens band together to try to help him avoid capture.

Dutch painter Jan-Van Rooyer hurries to keep a rendezvous with Jacqueline Cousteau, an elegant, sophisticated Frenchwoman, slightly his elder, whose relationship with him had turned from art student into one of love trysts. He arrives and is confronted by Detective Police Inspector Morgan who accuses him of having murdered Jacqueline. Morgan listens sceptically to the dazed denials of Van Rooyer as he tells the story of his relationship with the murdered woman. Morgan, after hearing the story, realizes that the mystery has deepened, and it becomes more complicated when the Assistant Commissioner, Sir Brian Lewis, explains that Jacqueline was not married but was being kept by Sir Howard Fenton, a high-ranking diplomat whose names must be kept out of the case.

A serial killer is murdering women in the Whitechapel district of London. An American policeman is brought in to help Scotland Yard solve the case.

Chuck Wheeler gets out of the Pen and sets up an elaborate heist of Vegas casino money travelling by armored truck. He enlists the help of shady club owner Joe Darren and his ex-cellmate's wife, Vi. Vi's husband Mike is a trigger happy and jealous hothead and will not grant her a divorce. Mike escapes from prison right before the armored truck job goes into motion and promises trouble as he tries to locate his associates and his wandering wife.

A prostitute sets out to frame a cop.

Wealthy landowner Dr. Earl Denton buys a premium development with the intention of leaving it to his daughter, Joan. When Joan gets impregnated by her mechanic boyfriend, she tries to convince her father to help her get an abortion, despite the protestations of her boyfriend.

In the first episode of The Twilight Zone, a man finds himself totally alone in a small town. His panic escalates into terror as he desperately looks for an explanation.

A ship's captain gets mixed up with murder during the hunt for lost Nazi treasure.

Berlin provides the backdrop for this crime drama that centers on a military doctor falsely accused of dealing illegal drugs. Determined to prove his innocence, he escapes from the MPs and ends up holing up in the apartment his wife rented. He doesn't know that she has sublet the flat to a nightclub singer. When he finds out, he begs the singer to assist him. She is attracted to him and agrees. The doctor believes that his wife is behind the black-market dealings, but in the end, they find the real culprit.

A artist living in a quiet Connecticut town is the main suspect in the disappearance of his shrew wife. Things turn ugly when the townsfolk attempt to take the law into their own hands.

A gold thief and his gang use a skier's lodge and meet a monster covered with cobwebs.

Director Byron Haskin's 1960 airplane-in jeopardy drama stars Guy Madison, Virginia Mayo, George Raft, Ilona Massey, Margaret Lindsay, George Macready, Brett Halsey, Anna Lee and Mary Anderson.

This low-budget Asian-set adventure concerns a reformed smuggler (Vince Edwards of TV's Ben Casey) who finds his missing wife (Carol Ohmart) in Hong Kong.

Nazis chase a U.S. newsman (Robert Mitchum) paid to smuggle names of Greek resistance leaders to London.

When the shootings of two juvenile inmates bring public protest, a psychologist is brought in to see if he can do anything to control the problems peacefully.

A strange sphere settles down in a California canyon, causing both the scientific and military communities to gather around to investigate.

A young alien falls for a pretty teenage Earth girl and they team up to try to stop the plans of his invading cohorts, who intend to use Earth as a food-breeding ground for giant lobsters from their planet.

After a herd of reindeer are mysteriously found dead following a meteor crash in a remote part of Lapland in northern Sweden, soldiers and a geologist are called out to investigate.

Two beatniks get their kicks by dealing drugs and violence.

A Yank comes to Havana in search of an old friend who disappeared during the Cuban Revolution, and discovers a group of Batista sympathizers plotting to overturn Castro.

Maniac kidnaps a young girl and holds her prisoner in a shack in the woods.

The Turn of the Screw was episode 3 of the television program Startime, which aired 33 episodes between October 6, 1959, and May 31, 1960. It was an anthology show of drama, comedy, and variety, and was one of the first American television shows broadcast in color. The program ran on Tuesday nights in the United States on the NBC television network. In The Turn of the Screw, based on the short story by Henry James, a governess (Ingrid Bergman) put in charge of two young children begins to see the ghost of her dead predecessor. The episode was directed by John Frankenheimer and first aired on October 20, 1959. Cast: Ingrid Bergman – Governess, Isobel Elsom – Mrs. Grose, Hayward Morse – Miles, Alexandra Wager – Flora, Paul Stevens – Peter Quint, Laurinda Barrett – Miss Jessel.

After he accidentally causes the death of his partner, trapeze artist Bill Ryan (Richard Wyler) leaves the circus and sinks into an alcoholic mire of self-pity. Things look up when elegant Jackie Field (Lisa Daniely) takes interest in Bill, but she hides a sinister motive. Ignoring Kitty (Leigh Madison), the shopgirl who adores him, Bill falls for Jackie and joins her gang of thieves, but the daring stunt she has him perform may lead to disaster.

A film crew doing a live broadcast from a haunted castle is convinced that a strangling was committed by a real ghost.

An antique mirror reflects the image of a long-ago murder committed before its gaze.