Best Thriller Movies of 1959

Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Two Scotland Yard detectives (Nigel Patrick and Michael Craig) 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. Director Basil Dearden won a British Academy Award for his deft, sensitive hand at the helm.