Best Thriller Movies of 1972

A mystery novelist devises an insurance scam with his wife’s lover – but things aren’t exactly as they seem.

A recently released ex-convict and his loyal wife go on the run after a heist goes wrong.

After a serial killer strangles several women with a necktie, London police identify a suspect—but he claims vehemently to be the wrong man.

When their ocean liner capsizes, a group of passengers struggle to survive and escape.

Arthur Bishop is a veteran hit man who, owing to his penchant for making his targets' deaths seem like accidents, thinks himself an artist. It's made him very rich, but as he hits middle age, he's so depressed and lonely that he takes on one of his victim's sons, Steve McKenna, as his apprentice. Arthur puts him through a rigorous training period and brings him on several hits. As Steven improves, Arthur worries that he'll discover who killed his father.

Two teenage girls try to buy marijuana in the city - where they get kidnapped and brutalized by a gang of psychotic convicts.

A young psychiatrist applies for a job at a mental asylum, and must pass a test by interviewing four patients. He must figure out which of the patients, is in fact, the doctor that he would be replacing if hired.

Wisecracking reporter Carl Kolchak investigates a string of gruesome murders in Las Vegas. It seems that each victim has been bitten in the neck and drained of all their blood. Kolchak is sure that it is a vampire. He's hot on the trail, but nobody believes him. His editor thinks he's nuts and the police think he's a hindrance in the investigation, so Kolchak takes matters into his own hand.

"Boxcar" Bertha Thompson, a transient woman in Arkansas during the violence-filled Depression of the early '30s, meets up with rabble-rousing union man "Big" Bill Shelly and the two team up to fight the corrupt railroad establishment.

In a daring robbery, some $300,000 is taken from the Italian mob. Several mafiosi are killed, as are two policemen. Lt. Pope and Capt. Mattelli are two New York City cops trying to break the case. Three small-time criminals are on the run with the money. Will the mafia catch them first, or will the police?

It seems that masked men are knocking over the floating crap games of Chalky and Pete. Chalky and Pete hire the cool, loose, elegant Mr. T to fix things. Then, the masked manipulators set up the death of a collector for a rival gang lord. It looks like it's up to T to hold a gang war from breaking out, keep the police off his back, and earn his fee from Chalky and Pete.

A thief breaks into the home of a wealthy, happily married Beverly Hills couple. He soon finds out, though, that the couple is neither as wealthy as he thought they were and are not as happily married as they appeared.

Priest (Ron O'Neal), a suave top-rung New York City drug dealer, decides that he wants to get out of his dangerous trade. Working with his reluctant friend, Eddie (Carl Lee), Priest devises a scheme that will allow him to make a big deal and then retire. When a desperate street dealer informs the police of Priest's activities, Priest is forced into an uncomfortable arrangement with corrupt narcotics officers. Setting his plan in motion, he aims to both leave the business and stick it to the man.

A demented widow lures unsuspecting children into her mansion in a bizarre "Hansel and Gretel" twist.

Adaptation of the classic novel. A priceless jewel, originally plundered from a Hindu shrine, is presented to Rachel Verinder on her 18th birthday. The jewel goes missing and suspicion falls over the household, threatening to destroy someone close to Rachel's heart.

Bill, Martha and their little child Hal are spending a quiet winter Sunday in their cosy house when they get an unexpected visit from Mike Nickerson and Tony Rodriguez. Mike and Tony are old acquaintances of Bill; a few years back, in Vietnam, they were in the same platoon. They also became opposed parties in a court martial - for a reason that Bill never explained to Martha. What happened in Vietnam, and what is the reason for the presence of Mike and Tony ?

Teenage runaway Cheryl splits from Ohio and ends up in Los Angeles staying at an old rundown hotel full of weirdos. The weirdest of all is George and he has a crush on Cheryl.

Dr. Peter Carey is a pathologist at a Boston hospital. The daughter of the hospital's Chief of Staff dies after an illegal abortion goes wrong, and Carey's friend and colleague Dr. David Tao is accused of performing the abortion. Carey doesn't buy it, and so he digs deeper, angering the girl's father in the process. Questions abound: Who performed the abortion? Was the girl really pregnant? And what does it have to do with stolen morphine, blackmail attempts, and a mysterious and dangerous masseur?

A man becomes a criminal in Louisiana after a plane crash. During a fight with local police, he escapes custody and kidnaps the daughter of a local millionaire.

At an exclusive boys' school, a new gym teacher is drawn into a feud between two older instructors, and he discovers that everything at the school is not quite as staid, tranquil and harmless as it seems.

Shiftless dreamer Michael Rogers fantasizes about a lifestyle above his means and marries a wealthy, young girl who just came of age. They hire a famous architect to build their dream home amidst a series of suspicious incidents. The spouse has dark intentions toward his naive, inexperienced bride. Secrets from his past and sinister ties to their house guest Greta lead to a terrible turn of unexpected events.

Prequel to the Henry James classic "Turn of the Screw" about the events leading up to the deaths of Peter Quint and Ms. Jessel, and the slow corruption of the children in their care.

A strait-laced British banker hires an eccentric private detective to follow his free-spirited American wife, whom he suspects is cheating on him.

It took Peggy Heller a long time to recover from the trauma of a brutal physical assault, suffered in her youth. When she married Robert, he provided her with the love and reassurance she craved for and the two settled down in a pretty house in the grounds of the public school where Robert was a master. But the headmaster of the school is not what he seems and Penny is convinced he means to harm her - is her fear a figment of her tortured imagination or are there forces at work that intend to manipulate her anxieties with fatal consequences?

Brenda moved to London to begin living those intoxicated fantasies that all young women imagine city life to offer. Soon after her arrival she begins a relationship with Peter with whom she is tremendously happy. When she becomes pregnant Peter's behaviour towards her alters as he reveals the most frightening and unpredictable side of his personality. He forces Brenda to listen to a series of recordings, exposing a past of shocking cruelty of sadistic murder.

Randy has PTSD from the Army. After extreme treatment he is released into the world to make it on his own. He goes to Winnipeg to race his snowmobile cross country to St. Paul.

A crazed Vietnam vet bomber hijacks a Boeing 707 in this disaster film filled with the usual early '70s stereotypes, and demands to be taken to Russia.

In the not too distant future, and overpopulated Earth government makes it illegal to have children for a generation. One couple, unsatisfied with their substitute robot baby, breaks the rules.

An enigmatic young woman has been murdered in a small California coast town. The investigation by the local sheriff uncovers a complex web of relationships centering on the victim; the scattered trail of evidence ranges from a mysterious photograph to the victim's own dog. During the investigation, the sheriff meets and becomes romantically involved with a woman whose connection to the murder is ambiguous.

A lonely boy becomes good friends with Ben, a rat. This rat is also the leader of a pack of vicious killer rats, killing lots of people.

A wealthy former mental patient goes home to her estate to rest and recuperate. While walking the grounds one day she hears the screams of a woman coming from underneath the ground. Her family, however, refuses to believe her story, and sees the incident as an opportunity to prove the woman's mind has snapped so they can take control of her money.

A young London City-worker inadvertently becomes involved in the world of crime.

A pregnant Los Angeles widow journeys to her late husband's Minnesota hometown to finally meet his mother and family, but she quickly discovers they're a very strange--and homicidal--lot. Director Lamont Johnson's 1972 thriller stars Patty Duke, Rosemary Murphy, Richard Thomas and Sian Barbara Allen.

Baron von Sepper is an Austrian aristocrat noted for his blue-toned beard, and his appetite for beautiful wives. His latest spouse, an American beauty named Anne, discovers a vault in his castle that's filled with the frozen bodies of several beautiful women.

A Stalinist assassin tracks exiled revolutionary Leon Trotsky to Mexico in 1940.

A physician discovers that two children are being kept virtually imprisoned in their house by their father. He investigates, and discovers a web of sex, incest and satanic possession.

Washed-up agent John Craig is given the task of proving his worth by tracking down a Russian scientist on the run. Cross and double-cross is the name of the game.

On Christmas Eve 1950, Wilfred Butler dies in a burning accident outside his mansion in East Willard, Massachusetts. The residence is bequeathed to his grandson, Jeffrey. Twenty years later, lawyer John Carter arrives in East Willard on Christmas Eve with his assistant and mistress Ingrid, having been charged by Jeffrey (now registered as a patient in a mental asylum) to sell the house. The house, the town, even Jeffrey himself — all hold dark secrets that will be brought to light.

Horror and suspense in the story of a psychotic maniac who literally "loves" women to death.

A French hit man is hired by a crime family to end the life of a rival mobster, but things fall apart when the boss who hired him is killed.

A childless middle-age couple adopt a troubled youth they find living in their crawlspace and attempt to get him to rejoin society with tragic results.

After several locals are viciously murdered, a Louisiana sheriff starts to suspect he may be dealing with a werewolf.

A woman is trapped during a storm in a house with no electricity or phone. A killer has murdered her sister, stuffed the body in the basement, and is now after her.

A hired killer hunts down a schoolteacher to get something she has. She doesn't know what it is, but he's already killed twice to get it.

A break-in and sabotage attempt occurs at a top secret research institute and the culprit is cornered and captured. The problem is that he's been badly injured and claims to have lost his memory entirely. A cat-and-mouse game ensues between investigator Tuxan, the mystery intruder Welles and the people who sent him on the mission.

An American lawyer on vacation in Europe is asked by a book publisher to stop by the Austrian town of Salzburg to see a photographer who's taking pictures for a book on picturesque Austrian lakes. Upon his arrival he senses that something is wrong when the photographer seems to have vanished, leaving a near panic-stricken wife and a sinister, secretive brother. Before he knows it, the lawyer finds himself mixed up with spies, assassins, and the hunt for a list made up by the Nazis during World War II of people who collaborated with them.

A building superintendent and his wife are held hostage in their apartment by a sadistic would-be bank robber and his spaced-out accomplices.

A young hippie couple rent a secluded cabin on the beach in an attempt to re-connect with each other and save their marriage. Unfortunately, the man they rented the cabin from is a military-brat sociopath with two dogs more vicious than his temper.

A woman begins to receive ominous phone calls from her nephew, who died 15 years earlier. With each phone call, a family member dies. Will she be the next in line?