Thriller Films

Originally aired as an ABC Movie of the Week on November 12, 1974, this thriller directed by Burt Kennedy follows a man traveling through a remote backwoods area who is taken captive by a group of orphaned children. The children want him to become their father, and adults who refuse that particular honor have a way of disappearing. Stacy Keach leads the cast alongside Samantha Eggar, John Savage, and Robby Benson. The film, also known as *Evil in the Swamp*, was produced by Cinemation Industries and filmed in Lebanon, Tennessee. Because it was published in the United States between 1929 and 1977 without a copyright notice, it is in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller

The earliest surviving film to feature the character Charlie Chan, directed by Irving Cummings and produced by Fox Film Corporation. Warner Baxter stars as Col. John Beetham, a man under suspicion in a complex murder mystery. Lois Moran plays Eve Mannering Durand, whose husband's death sets the investigation in motion. Boris Karloff appears as Beetham's sinister manservant in an early role before his horror fame. Charlie Chan, played by the Chinese American actor E. L. Park, gets one mention early in the film and then makes only a few momentary appearances after 75 minutes. Park was the first Chinese American to play Charlie Chan on screen. Producer William Fox chose this film to open the palatial Fox Theatre in San Francisco on June 28, 1929. The film is in the public domain.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

A wartime espionage quickie from Monogram, rushed into theaters three months after Pearl Harbor. Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Melcher, a plastic surgeon who has spent years transforming six agents of Japan's Black Dragon Society into doubles of prominent American industrialists — a fifth column planted to sabotage the US war effort. When the infiltrators start turning up dead with ceremonial daggers in their chests, a doctor and a detective try to untangle the conspiracy. Clayton Moore, a few years away from the Lone Ranger, plays a young FBI man. Cheap even by poverty-row standards, but a vivid snapshot of wartime paranoia. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Thriller · Mystery · War

A young woman stabs a man in self-defense when he tries to assault her, and a blackmailer who saw her flees the scene begins to prey on her and her detective boyfriend. Alfred Hitchcock began shooting Blackmail as a silent and then, partway through production, was asked to make it Britain's first talkie. The result is a film that straddles both eras, with famous set pieces built around sound: a breakfast table conversation dominated by the word "knife," a chase through the British Museum, and location shooting on the London streets that gives the thriller a documentary texture. Anny Ondra, a Polish actress whose accent was dubbed by Joan Barry, plays the heroine. The film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.

Thriller · Crime · Drama

An American newspaper editor in 1920s Tokyo uncovers a secret Japanese military plan for expansion across the Pacific, and becomes a target of both the army and a double agent. James Cagney stars in this wartime thriller, which won an Academy Award for art direction. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Thriller · War · Drama

A low-budget horror thriller written and directed by Ralph Brooke, based without attribution on Richard Connell's 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game." Four young adults boat to a remote tropical island, where they discover the estate of Dr. Albert Balleau (Wilton Graff), a sadistic hunter who has grown bored with stalking animals and now collects human trophies. Balleau gives his captives a head start before hunting them with bow and arrow through the jungle. Filmed in 1959 at Screencraft Studios but not released until 1961 on a double bill with The Devil's Hand, the film is a threadbare but atmospheric retelling of the oft-adapted story. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller

The Los Angeles police know that Pete Ritchie is smuggling narcotics across the Mexican border, but they cannot make a single charge stick. They send an undercover officer, Madeleine Haley, to get close to his operation. Before she can get anywhere, she is grabbed by Johnny McEvoy, a government agent posing as a hoodlum who is also after Ritchie. Neither knows the other is on the same side of the law, and the two of them end up running the border together while Ritchie closes in. Fred MacMurray and Claire Trevor play the two agents who keep each other in the dark, and Raymond Burr is the heavy. The film was the first production of Borderline Pictures, formed by MacMurray, director William Seiter, and producer Milton Bren, who deferred their own salaries to make it. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

The second East Side Kids film and the first to star Bobby Jordan, Leo Gorcey, and Ernest Morrison. Directed by Joseph H. Lewis and produced by Sam Katzman for Monogram Pictures, the film follows a group of street kids who escape the city heat for a summer camp in the Adirondacks. When their car breaks down, they take shelter in the home of Judge Malcolm Parker, who is under indictment for bribery and has been threatened by racketeers. After the Judge is found strangled and his niece kidnapped, the boys must solve the murder themselves, navigating secret passages and unmasking the real killer. The film is also known by the alternative title The Ghost Creeps. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Mystery · Thriller

A 1929 American pre-Code crime film in which Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond helps a young woman in distress. Ronald Colman stars as the title character in his first talking picture, a role that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Claud Allister plays his loyal friend Algy Longworth, while Montagu Love plays the villain Carl Peterson and Lawrence Grant plays his accomplice Dr. Lakington. Joan Bennett appears as Phyllis Benton, the young woman whose plea for help sets the plot in motion. Produced by Samuel Goldwyn and directed by F. Richard Jones, the film was adapted by Sidney Howard from the 1921 play by H. C. McNeile. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Mystery · Thriller

Bedridden and convinced he's dying, George Jones (Barry Sullivan) becomes certain his wife Ellen (Loretta Young) and his doctor are planning to murder him — so he writes the district attorney a letter accusing them. Then he drops dead, and the letter is already in the mail. Ellen's desperate afternoon chasing a single envelope through a sunlit suburb makes for one of the tightest domestic noirs of the early 50s. Tay Garnett directed for MGM. The film is in the public domain.

Thriller · Drama · Crime

Audrey Hepburn's husband is murdered and she discovers he was involved in a wartime gold theft. Several men who were his accomplices are after the gold, and they think she knows where it is. Cary Grant keeps turning up and helping her, but his identity keeps shifting. The film is often called the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made. The screenplay by Peter Stone has a good ear for banter. Henry Mancini wrote the score. The film failed to include a copyright notice on its prints, which put it in the public domain immediately upon release.

Thriller · Romance · Comedy

Warner Oland's tenth outing as Charlie Chan sends the detective to a San Francisco mansion where Allen Colby, the heir to the Lowell fortune, has returned after being presumed drowned for seven years — and is murdered at a séance before he can reclaim a cent. Chan sifts through a household of psychics, suspicious relatives, and a butler who knows more than he says, while the killer keeps striking. Henrietta Crosman and Rosina Lawrence co-star, with Jonathan Hale as the police chief. Directed by Gordon Wiles, it is one of the more atmospheric of the Fox Chan pictures, leaning hard into spiritualism and old-dark-house menace. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

Stockholm, 1918: a French spy running a high-fashion dress shop, played by Vivien Leigh, falls for the German counterintelligence chief assigned to catch her, played by Conrad Veidt. Both know what the other is; neither can quite stop. Victor Saville directs the London Films production as an elegant cat-and-mouse romance where every ballroom scene doubles as tradecraft. Leigh, on the verge of Gone with the Wind, and Veidt, the great German exile who had played Cesare in Caligari, make an improbably magnetic pair, and the neutral Swedish setting lets the film keep its sympathies ambiguous. It is in the public domain in the United States.

War · Romance · Thriller

Ralph Byrd, then riding high as the screen's Dick Tracy, stars as Tony Bronson, a pilot whose plane is hijacked mid-flight over the Caribbean by a gang after the payroll he's carrying. When the plane goes down on a remote island, Bronson has to outwit the hijackers with help from a stranded showgirl troupe. Directed by William Beaudine — the famously tireless "One Shot" of Poverty Row — Desperate Cargo is a brisk PRC programmer that packs a hijacking, a crash, and a jungle standoff into barely an hour. The film's copyright was never renewed, placing it in the public domain.

Adventure · Crime · Thriller

The fourth and final RKO Dick Tracy feature, and the only one to star Boris Karloff. A convicted killer called Gruesome gets his hands on a canister of experimental nerve gas that freezes anyone who breathes it mid-action, and uses it to stage a bank robbery in which the customers and staff stand paralyzed while the vault is cleaned out. Tess Trueheart witnesses the robbery and barely escapes, bringing Dick Tracy onto the case. Ralph Byrd, who had played Tracy in the Republic serials, returns to the role here. Karloff's presence gives the picture a jolt of real menace that the series had lacked, and the gas gimmick is a neat piece of B-noir plotting. Released in 1947, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Crime · Mystery · Thriller

Frank Bigelow walks into a police station and says he wants to report a murder: his own. The film then rewinds to show how he got there. Frank, a small-town accountant, is in San Francisco for a few days and is slipped a luminous poison in a drink at a bar. A doctor tells him he has only days to live and no cure exists, and Frank spends his remaining hours trying to find out who killed him and why. The premise, a man investigating his own murder, is one of the tightest hooks in film noir. Rudolph Maté had been a cinematographer before he directed, and the film has a clean, hard look. The story ties Frank's death to a routine bill of sale he notarized, a small thing with large consequences. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Noir · Thriller

Fritz Lang's two-part criminal epic introduced cinema's first great supervillain. Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) is a hypnotist, master of disguise, and criminal psychologist who manipulates Berlin's decadent gambling clubs, ruins the industrialist Hull, and destroys the young Count Told — all while state prosecutor von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke) doggedly hunts the phantom pulling the strings. Adapted from Norbert Jacques's novel and subtitled *A Picture of the Time*, the film is both a cracking crime saga and a portrait of Weimar Germany's postwar instability. Mabuse's chilling final descent into madness made him an archetype Lang would revisit twice more. Published in 1922, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Crime · Thriller · Silent

A 1985 Canadian horror film directed by George Mihalka, also known as The Blue Man. Paul Sharpe (Winston Rekert), a dissatisfied Montreal TV commercial director, is taught to astrally project himself by a mysterious woman named Janus (Karen Black). But soon he finds he does it against his will while he sleeps, and during these out-of-body episodes he commits savage acts against those in his life. A detective (John Novak) ties a series of murders to Janus and Paul's experiments with astral travel. The film is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Horror · Thriller

Country music legend Johnny Cash made his theatrical film debut in this low- budget neo-noir crime thriller directed by Bill Karn. Cash plays Johnny Cabot, a deranged bank robber who holds a housewife (Cay Forrester) hostage while his accomplice attempts to extort her bank manager husband (Donald Woods). Cash performs the title song, with a guitar solo by Merle Travis, who also appears in the film. A young Ron Howard co-stars as the couple's son. The film was rereleased in 1966 by American International Pictures as Door-to-Door Maniac. It is in the public domain.

Crime · Thriller

A 1963 American exploitation drama directed by John Hayes, starring Rue McClanahan (later of The Golden Girls) as Poochie, a woman living in a junkyard. A young couple, Ben and Edna, are traveling to California with their baby when their car breaks down. Ben walks to a nearby junkyard for a spare part, where the seedy owner Harry frames him for selling stolen auto parts. When Ben fails to return, Edna goes looking for him and is chased around the junkyard by Harry's strange, dim-witted friend Blowhard. The film was critically lambasted and later picked up by exploitation filmmaker Kroger Babb. Also known as The Rotten Apple, Junk Yard Love, and It Only Takes Five Minutes.

Drama · Crime · Thriller

Alan Curtis plays a former FBI agent flying passengers to Honolulu who gets pulled into a hunt for a stolen map of uranium deposits in Death Valley — a map that agents of a foreign power will kill for. Evelyn Ankers co-stars as a fellow passenger with her own reasons for the trip. A Screen Guild B-thriller trading on post-war atomic anxiety, with most of the action confined to the hotel and the doomed flight. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Mystery · Thriller

Fresh out of prison, con man John Muller botches a casino heist and needs to disappear — until he meets Dr. Bartok, a psychiatrist who is his near-exact double, save for a scar on the opposite cheek. Muller kills Bartok, scars himself, and steps into the dead man's life, only to learn the doctor had dangerous secrets of his own. Paul Henreid plays both roles opposite Joan Bennett in this fatalistic Eagle-Lion noir from director Steve Sekely, reissued as The Scar. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

Vincent Price plays an eccentric millionaire who offers five people ten thousand dollars each to spend the night in a haunted house. He locks them in and the scares begin. William Castle was famous for his gimmicks; for this film he arranged for a plastic skeleton to fly over the audience at a key moment. The film is a tight, atmospheric haunted house picture that works on its own without the gimmick. Price is in top form, clearly enjoying himself. The film has a twist ending that holds up. It was remade in 1999, but the original is better.

Horror · Thriller

A 1973 American science fiction thriller directed by Denis Sanders from a screenplay by Nicholas Meyer (later director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan). In a small California town, male scientists at a top-secret research facility begin dying after extreme sexual exertion. State Department agent Neil Agar (William Smith) investigates and uncovers a horrific plot: a mad scientist (Anitra Ford) is using radiation-mutated bee serum to transform women into queen bees who seduce men to death. Roger Ebert called it "the best schlock soft-core science fiction movie" of its era. The film is a cult favorite, praised as a stinging satire of 1970s sexual politics. It is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Sci-Fi · Horror · Thriller

Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Charles Kessler, a grief-stricken widower whose wife is believed dead — but is actually alive, hidden away in the cellar by the gardener, driven mad by a car accident. When she wanders the grounds at night, the sight of her through the window sends Kessler into a trance that turns him into an unwitting killer, and his daughter Virginia's fiance takes the fall for the murders. The first of Lugosi's nine Monogram pictures, directed with unusual atmosphere by Joseph H. Lewis, who stages the trances with slow, eerie poise. Clarence Muse gives a dignified turn as the Kesslers' butler Evans. The film entered the public domain because its copyright was not renewed.

Horror · Crime · Thriller

A 1953 Jack the Ripper mystery directed by Hugo Fregonese, the third adaptation of Marie Belloc Lowndes' novel The Lodger. In gaslit 1880s London, a series of brutal murders terrorizes the city just as the brooding, enigmatic Slade (Jack Palance) takes a room in the Harley family's attic. When the Harleys' niece Lily (Constance Smith), a music-hall performer, takes an interest in their mysterious lodger, her family — and Scotland Yard — begin to suspect he may be the Ripper himself. Frances Bavier, later Aunt Bee on The Andy Griffith Show, plays the suspicious landlady. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller

Stockbroker Nicholas Lawrence embezzles a million dollars from his firm and boards a plane bound for Shanghai, figuring he has one free weekend before the theft is discovered. On the flight he meets Cynthia Strong, a socialite fleeing a blackmailer, and when the plane goes down their problems — and the money — get a lot more complicated. Star Gene Raymond also directs, with Osa Massen and Francis Lederer in support. A compact late-40s crime picture with a lighter touch than most noir of the era, it is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Noir · Thriller

Bank robber Steve Clark stashes nearly $200,000 in a safety deposit box and lays low in a small town driving a cab, where he woos and marries Julie Saunders — niece of a wealthy invalid — to give himself the perfect cover. When Julie discovers who her husband really is, she is pulled into a tightening web of greed, blackmail, and murder as the law closes in. Hugh Beaumont, later famous as Ward Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver, plays against type as the cold-blooded killer, with Frances Rafferty as Julie. Directed by B-movie workhorse Sam Newfield. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

A 1972 American made-for-television horror film directed by Daniel Petrie, broadcast on ABC Movie of the Week. After several locals are viciously murdered in a Louisiana bayou town, Sheriff Aaron Whitaker (David Janssen) begins to suspect he may be dealing with a werewolf. As the investigation deepens, the suspects include the town doctor, a swamp dweller, and the local aristocrat Andrew Rodanthe (Bradford Dillman), whose sister Louise (Barbara Rush) becomes the sheriff's romantic interest. Based on the novel by Leslie H. Whitten, the film is a Southern Gothic murder mystery with a lycanthropic twist, filmed on location in Burnside and Clinton, Louisiana. The film is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Horror · Mystery · Thriller

An early Alfred Hitchcock thriller from his British period. An actress is found standing over the body of a murdered colleague with the weapon in her hand, and a jury convicts her. One juror, the distinguished actor Sir John Menier, is troubled by the verdict and sets out to investigate on his own, uncovering the real killer. The film, based on the novel Enter Sir John, shows Hitchcock working out ideas he would refine for decades: the wrongfully accused, the audience's complicity, and suspense generated by the gap between what the viewer and the characters know. Hitchcock makes his customary cameo, walking past the murder victim's house. Published in 1930, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Mystery · Thriller · Crime

A professor perfects a working television system and invites investors to a demonstration, only to die on camera when a mysterious ray intercuts the broadcast. Bela Lugosi plays a dual role — the professor's loyal assistant and a sinister European interloper — in a whodunit where the murder weapon is the new technology itself. Shot in 1935, when television was still laboratory speculation, the film treats live broadcast as exotic enough to carry a thriller. June Collyer plays the professor's daughter caught between suspects. Made by poverty-row outfit Cameo Pictures, it entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Mystery · Thriller · Sci-Fi

A 1934 American Pre-Code mystery film directed by William Nigh and based on an Edgar Wallace story. Captain Holling (Noah Beery) is relieved of command of his ship after suffering a nervous breakdown. His replacement takes over the liner just as it is about to be used for an experiment in remote control. Professor Grimson has devised a system for controlling the ship from a land-based laboratory, but as Grimson demonstrates the system, a rival group is listening in, hoping to use the device for its own purposes. The film was entered as a feature attraction at the 1934 International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art in Venice, the forerunner of the Venice Film Festival. The film is in the public domain.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

The film that invented the modern zombie. Seven people barricade themselves in a farmhouse while reanimated corpses surround them. The radiation from a space probe is blamed for the dead returning to life. Romero's film is a low-budget black and white production that accidentally entered the public domain because the distributor changed the title from "Night of the Flesh Eaters" and forgot to include a copyright notice on the new prints. Duane Jones plays the lead, a Black man trying to survive both the zombies and the group's internal conflicts. The ending is still shocking. The film spawned a genre and five sequels from Romero alone.

Horror · Thriller

When a string of notorious criminals walks free on suspiciously easy parole, the federal government sends undercover agent Richard Hendricks to find out who is selling the state's leniency. Posing as wanted convict Rick Carson, Hendricks works his way into the gang run by the cunning Barney Rodescu — until his cover is blown and the racket turns on him. Directed by Alfred Zeisler and starring Michael O'Shea, Turhan Bey, and Evelyn Ankers, this lean Eagle-Lion release is a brisk Poverty Row noir built on an early version of the undercover-cop story. The film is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

A 1956 film noir directed by Peter Godfrey, starring Raymond Burr and Angela Lansbury. Attorney Craig Carlson (Burr) falls in love with Myra Leeds (Lansbury), the wife of his best friend Joe (Dick Foran). When Myra asks Craig to defend her after she shoots Joe dead, claiming self-defense, he wins her acquittal — only to learn she manipulated him and planned the murder all along. Trapped by attorney-client privilege and his own guilt, Carlson devises a desperate plan to force Myra to murder again: him. Told largely in flashback with Burr's characteristic gravitas and a memorably cold Lansbury performance, it is a compact, twisty courtroom noir. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Thriller

During the bloodiest days of the French Revolution, a mysterious operative known as Charles D'Aubigny infiltrates Paris to recover Robespierre's "black book" — a list of intended victims whose executions would cement his dictatorship — before it can be used. Robert Cummings plays the double agent, with Richard Basehart a chilling Robespierre and Arlene Dahl as the woman caught between them. Anthony Mann shot it like a noir despite the period setting, all shadows and paranoia, on a shoestring budget for Walter Wanger. Reissued as The Black Book. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

History · Thriller · Noir

Alfred Hitchcock's loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent. Sylvia Sidney plays Winnie Verloc, wife of a London cinema owner (Oskar Homolka) who is secretly part of a gang of saboteurs, while Scotland Yard detective Ted Spencer (John Loder) watches the family from the shop next door. The film is infamous for its bus sequence, in which a bomb is carried through London by someone who doesn't know what they're carrying — a set piece Hitchcock later said he regretted for violating his own rule of suspense over shock. Released in the US in 1937 as The Woman Alone. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Thriller · Drama

The fourth of Universal's Sherlock Holmes films updates Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" to wartime. Holmes smuggles a Swiss scientist out of Zurich ahead of the Gestapo and brings him to London, where the man has developed a revolutionary bombsight he intends to give the Allies. When the scientist is kidnapped, Holmes and Watson discover that Professor Moriarty is behind it, working to deliver the weapon to Nazi Germany. Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are in their familiar roles, with Lionel Atwill as a silkily malevolent Moriarty. The film grafts a spy thriller onto a Conan Doyle puzzle and was made on a small budget at a moment when the series leaned hard into the war effort. It was released in 1943 and is in the public domain in the United States.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

From her hotel window, Janet Stewart witnesses Dr. Richard Cross (Vincent Price) murder his wife — and the sight leaves her in a catatonic state. Worse, she's committed to Cross's own sanitarium, where the doctor must decide whether to cure her or make sure she never recovers. Shock was Vincent Price's first real stab at a psychological thriller, and he plays the charming, increasingly desperate psychiatrist with silky menace. Made at 20th Century Fox on a B-picture budget, it's in the public domain.

Noir · Thriller · Drama

A 1972 American slasher film directed by Theodore Gershuny, starring Patrick O'Neal, Mary Woronov, and John Carradine. The plot follows a series of murders that occur in a small New England town on Christmas Eve after a man inherits a family estate which was once an insane asylum. As the body count rises, the town's dark secrets are revealed through a series of eerie phone calls and flashbacks. The film was produced by Lloyd Kaufman (later of Troma Entertainment) and is considered a precursor to the slasher genre that would explode later in the decade. Although a copyright statement appears in the credits, the film was never registered for copyright, placing it in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller · Mystery

A 1977 American made-for-television horror film directed by Herb Wallerstein from a teleplay by Joseph Stefano (co-creator of The Outer Limits and writer of Psycho). A bloodthirsty Bigfoot-like creature terrorizes a ski resort in the Colorado Rockies during the town's annual Snow Carnival. Former Olympic skiing champion Gar Seberg (Bo Svenson) and his wife Ellen (Yvette Mimieux) arrive seeking work, only to find vacationers disappearing. The resort owner (Sylvia Sidney) tries to keep the killings secret to protect her business, while the sheriff (Clint Walker) blames a rogue bear. One of the many Jaws-inspired creature features of the late 1970s, the film is notable for its POV monster shots and location filming in Crested Butte, Colorado.

Horror · Thriller

Sparrows stars Mary Pickford as Molly, the oldest orphan on a Louisiana bayou "baby farm" run by the cruel Mr. Grimes (Gustav von Seyffertitz). When a kidnapped baby is brought to the farm, Molly resolves to lead the children to safety across the treacherous swamplands. Directed by William Beaudine and produced by Pickford through her own company, the film is a Gothic melodrama featuring atmospheric photography by Charles Rosher, Karl Struss, and Hal Mohr, including a celebrated night sequence in the alligator-infested swamp. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent · Thriller

Haunted by a recurring dream in which a suave stranger seduces his widowed mother, teenager Paul Cartwright (Jimmy Lydon) becomes convinced that the man — Brett Curtis (Warren William) — murdered his father. Edgar G. Ulmer's poverty-row Hamlet, made on PRC's tiny budgets with his signature hallucinatory style, proves atmosphere doesn't require money. Curtis's oily charm does the rest. One of the most admired of Ulmer's "stylish cheapies," the film is in the public domain.

Noir · Mystery · Thriller

A professional assassin and his men take over a quiet house in the small town of Suddenly, California, planning to shoot the President of the United States when his train stops there. The family living in the house becomes hostages, and the town sheriff, who is sweet on the daughter, stumbles into the trap and has to find a way to stop it. Frank Sinatra plays the killer as a jittery, sneering psychopath who genuinely enjoys the prospect of murder, a long way from his usual smooth persona. Sterling Hayden is the upright sheriff who matches wits with him. The whole film plays out almost entirely inside one house, which keeps the tension coiled. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright. It is one of the more tense and compact crime thrillers of the 1950s, and Sinatra's performance is the reason it is still watched.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

The first feature directed by Roger Corman. Undercover police officer Lee Hampton (Carole Mathews) infiltrates a women's prison, befriends a trio of convicts led by the hard-boiled Josie Nardo (Marie Windsor), and engineers their escape — all part of a plan to recover a cache of stolen diamonds hidden deep in the Louisiana swamps. Beverly Garland, Mike "Touch" Connors, and Corman regulars Jonathan Haze and Ed Nelson round out the cast of this swampy girls-behind-bars crime picture, shot on location in Louisiana. Also released as "Swamp Diamonds" and "Cruel Swamp," it is in the public domain.

Crime · Thriller

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson board the London-to-Edinburgh express to guard the Star of Rhodesia, a priceless diamond with a bloody history. When the jewel's owner is murdered and the stone vanishes, Holmes must unmask the killer among a carriage full of suspects — including the eminent Colonel Sebastian Moran — before the train reaches its destination. Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce's thirteenth outing as Holmes and Watson, directed and produced by Roy William Neill for Universal, compresses the series' formula into a brisk, atmospheric hour. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

A wealthy widow is convinced she hears her late husband's voice on the beach, and a suave spiritualist seems to confirm it, while her skeptical sister and a psychiatrist try to expose him as a fraud. Turhan Bey stars in this atmospheric noir, also released as The Spiritualist. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Mystery · Thriller

A 1960 American science fiction thriller directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, starring Marguerite Chapman in her final feature film. Ex-Army major Paul Krenner forces scientist Dr. Peter Ulof to develop a radiation-based invisibility machine, planning to create an invisible army to sell to the highest bidder. He busts safecracker Joey Faust (Douglas Kennedy) out of prison and forces him to undergo the invisibility treatment to steal more radium. But Faust discovers an unexpected side effect of the treatment and begins to pursue his own agenda. Shot back-to-back with Beyond the Time Barrier in Dallas, Texas on a combined two-week schedule with a budget of approximately $100,000.

Sci-Fi · Crime · Thriller

A 1959 American crime-mystery thriller directed by Crane Wilbur, starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. Mystery novelist Cornelia van Gorder (Moorehead) rents a country mansion for the summer, only to find herself in the middle of a killing spree by a mysterious murderer known as "The Bat," who wears all black and slashes his victims' throats. Meanwhile, a million dollars has gone missing from the local bank, and the bank president has disappeared. As the bodies pile up in the mansion's secret passages, Dr. Malcolm Wells (Price) may hold the key to the mystery. Based on the 1908 novel The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart and the 1920 play The Bat, this is the fourth film adaptation of the story. Written and directed by Crane Wilbur, who also wrote House of Wax (1953).

Mystery · Thriller · Horror

A 1930 pre-Code mystery film directed by Roland West and produced by Joseph M. Schenck for United Artists. Based on the 1920 play The Bat by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, the film follows the mysterious criminal known as "The Bat" who terrorizes the occupants of a lonely country mansion. Notable as one of the first widescreen films, West shot the picture in both standard 35mm and an experimental 65mm format requiring two cameramen. The film stars Chester Morris, Una Merkel, and Grayce Hampton, and is widely cited as an inspiration for Bob Kane's Batman. Long thought lost, a nitrate print was discovered at the Mary Pickford Estate in 1987 and restored by UCLA. The film is in the public domain.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

A 1930 pre-Code crime film directed by Frank Tuttle and based on the 1926 novel by S. S. Van Dine. William Powell stars as the aristocratic detective Philo Vance, investigating the murder of a wealthy broker at his Long Island estate. The film co-stars William "Stage" Boyd, Eugene Pallette, Paul Lukas, and Natalie Moorhead. The screenplay was adapted by Bartlett Cormack. The film entered the public domain on January 1, 2026.

Crime · Mystery · Thriller

A celebrated film noir directed by Joseph H. Lewis and photographed by the legendary cinematographer John Alton. Cornel Wilde plays Police Lieutenant Leonard Diamond, who obsessively pursues the sadistic gang boss Mr. Brown (Richard Conte) while harboring an infatuation with Brown's girlfriend Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace). The supporting cast includes Brian Donlevy, Lee Van Cleef, and Earl Holliman as Brown's enforcers. Alton's high-contrast chiaroscuro lighting has made the film a touchstone of noir visual style. The U.S. Copyright Office rejected the film's copyright notice in 2007, leaving it in the public domain.

Crime · Thriller

An out-of-work veteran takes a job as a chauffeur to a mobster and falls for the gangster's girlfriend, getting swept into a nightmare of murder, mistaken identity, and a dreamlike escape across Cuba. Robert Cummings and Peter Lorre star in this offbeat Cornell Woolrich adaptation. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Thriller · Crime

Abel Ferrara's feature debut, a grimy, hallucinatory descent into urban madness shot on 16mm in New York's Union Square. Ferrara himself stars (credited as Jimmy Laine) as Reno Miller, a struggling artist driven to madness by poverty, noise, and the pressures of city life. He vents his rage by stalking derelicts at night with a power drill. The film blends punk rock energy with Catholic guilt and Expressionist horror, anticipating the themes of sin and redemption that would define Ferrara's later work in Bad Lieutenant and King of New York. The Driller Killer was one of the notorious "video nasties" prosecuted in the UK under the Obscene Publications Act, giving it a notoriety that overshadowed its art-house ambitions. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller

Robert Wiene, the director of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, turned Maurice Renard's novel into a late Expressionist horror about a concert pianist whose hands are crushed in a train wreck and replaced with those of an executed murderer. Conrad Veidt plays Orlac as a man slowly convinced that the graft has passed the killer's violence into his own body, his long fingers curling and twitching as if with a will of their own. The film trades Caligari's painted sets for shadowed, realistic spaces, but keeps the same dread of identity dissolving from within. The premise has been remade twice, most notably as Mad Love (1935) with Peter Lorre, but Wiene's original remains the purest version of the body-horror idea. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Horror · Thriller · Silent

Two friends on a fishing trip in Mexico pick up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a wanted killer on the run. He forces them to drive him toward the border and lets them know that as soon as they stop being useful he will kill them. The hitchhiker has a paralyzed eye that never closes, even when he sleeps, so the two men can never tell when it is safe to try an escape. The film is based on the real-life case of Billy Cook, who killed several people on a similar spree. Ida Lupino directed, one of the few women directing Hollywood features at the time, and she keeps the film tight and tense, almost entirely inside the car. The film is a lean, real-time thriller about men trapped with someone who has nothing to lose. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Noir · Thriller

A 1951 film noir directed by Max Nosseck, starring Lawrence Tierney — later famous as Joe in Reservoir Dogs — in one of his signature roles. Tierney plays Vincent Lubeck, an incorrigible ex-con whose own mother begs the parole board to keep him locked up. Released anyway, Vincent works sullenly at his brother Johnny's gas station while casing the armored car that makes regular stops at the bank across the street, and seducing his brother's girl along the way. Tierney's real-life brother Edward plays Johnny. A lean, brutal heist noir, the film is in the public domain.

Crime · Thriller

A 1953 British film noir directed by Cy Endfield — one of several crime pictures he made in Britain before Zulu (1964). American veteran Frank Prior (Lloyd Bridges) returns to London to rekindle a wartime romance with actress Pauline French (Moira Lister), only to watch the man standing beside him get shot dead by a sniper on the airport tarmac. Drawn into the investigation, Frank discovers his old flame is entangled in blackmail and murder, and the killer — a marksman who walks with a limp — is still out there. The film ends with one of the most infamous rug-pull endings in B-movie history. It is in the public domain.

Crime · Mystery · Thriller

Alfred Hitchcock considered The Lodger his first true film, the moment he found the themes that would define his career. A mysterious young man takes a room at a London boardinghouse just as a killer called the Avenger begins murdering blonde women in the fog. The landlady grows suspicious, and her daughter falls for the stranger. Ivor Novello stars as the lodger. The film is drenched in the imagery Hitchcock would return to again and again: the wrong man, the blonde in peril, the guilt that cannot be escaped. The Lodger is the earliest Hitchcock film to survive intact. It entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2023.

Thriller · Crime · Drama · Silent

A 1978 American made-for-television science fiction film directed by David L. Hewitt and Kenneth Hartford. An intelligence agent (Robert Vaughn) discovers a Nazi plot to revive the Third Reich by replacing world leaders with obedient clones. The film follows his efforts to convince the authorities that surviving Nazis are using cloning technology to infiltrate global governments. The film features Keenan Wynn, Merrie Lynn Ross, and Aldo Ray in supporting roles. It is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Sci-Fi · Thriller

The original screen adaptation of Richard Connell's 1924 short story, directed by Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack for RKO. Famed big game hunter Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea) is shipwrecked on a remote island ruled by the urbane Russian Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks), who has grown bored with stalking animals and now hunts the shipwrecked sailors who wash ashore. Zaroff offers Rainsford a deal: survive three days as prey in the jungle, and he goes free. Fay Wray, fresh off King Kong (shot on the same RKO jungle sets), plays a fellow captive. The film's influence on the survival-horror genre is immeasurable, and its central premise has been remade and riffed on endlessly. The film is in the public domain.

Adventure · Horror · Thriller

Bela Lugosi plays the title role in this Monogram poverty-row thriller, a Chinatown crime lord hunting down the twelve legendary coins of Confucius, which are said to grant their possessor control of a Chinese province. Bodies start turning up across the district as Wong's men retrieve the coins one by one, and wisecracking reporter Jason Barton, played by Wallace Ford, follows the trail into Wong's secret headquarters. Lugosi is clearly enjoying himself in a dual role that lets him be both the suave mastermind and his own humble shopkeeper cover. Directed by William Nigh, a Monogram regular who also helmed several of the studio's Mr. Wong detective films. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

A powerful psychological thriller crime film starring Lon Chaney and directed by Wallace Worsley. Chaney delivers one of his most memorable performances as Blizzard, the legless crime boss of the San Francisco Barbary Coast underworld. As a child, Blizzard's legs were unnecessarily amputated by Dr. Ferris (Charles Clary) during a botched operation. Now an adult, Blizzard is driven by two ambitions: revenge against Dr. Ferris and the looting of San Francisco. To get close to the doctor, Blizzard poses for a bust of Satan created by Ferris's daughter Barbara (Claire Adams). Chaney's remarkable performance includes wearing leather stumps and using crutches, demonstrating his legendary commitment to physical transformation. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama · Silent · Thriller

Pete Morgan is a farmer with a bad leg and a dark secret. He has raised his niece Meg as his own and forbids her from going near an abandoned house deep in the woods on his land, warning her that the woods are haunted. When a hired hand starts asking questions and Meg grows more curious, the family's buried past begins to surface. Edward G. Robinson plays against type as the gentle, haunted farmer, and the film leans on atmosphere and dread rather than violence. Miklos Rozsa's score and Bert Glennon's camerawork make the forest feel like a place that does not want its secrets found. The film was the first production of Thalia, the company Robinson formed with producer Sol Lesser. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Mystery · Thriller

The Sadist is a 1963 American thriller written and directed by James Landis, starring Arch Hall Jr. as a psychopathic spree killer patterned after Charles Starkweather. Three teachers driving into Los Angeles for a Dodgers game break down at a remote gas station and find themselves held hostage by Charlie Tibbs, a cheerful, remorseless killer, and his girlfriend Judy, who toys with the captives while Charlie torments them. Made for about sixty-nine thousand dollars and distributed by Fairway International Pictures, the film is a lean, genuinely unsettling piece of exploitation that benefits from the feature debut of the future Academy Award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, whose handheld 35mm work gives the picture a queasy you-are-there immediacy. The film is in the public domain.

Thriller · Horror · Crime

A 1959 American heist film directed by Charles Guggenheim and John Stix, starring Steve McQueen early in his career. Based on an actual 1953 bank robbery in St. Louis, the film follows aging criminal mastermind John Egan (Crahan Denton) as he plans to rob the Southwest Bank and retire to Mexico. His crew includes Gino (David Clarke), an ex-convict terrified of returning to prison, and Willie, a longtime minion. When the gang needs a getaway driver, Gino recruits his sister's old boyfriend George Fowler (McQueen), a former college football star with no criminal record. The film meticulously details the planning and rehearsal of the heist before the robbery goes violently wrong. Shot on location in East St. Louis with a gritty, documentary-like realism. Marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Crime · Thriller

One of the six Charlie Chan pictures Sidney Toler made for Monogram after the series left Fox. When murders pile up around a radio station that is secretly tied to a wartime espionage ring, Chan works the case while his son Tommy and chauffeur Birmingham Brown stumble through the clues beside him. The film is best remembered for the extended comedy routine between Mantan Moreland and Ben Carter, whose rhyming, never-finished conversations became a signature of the Monogram Chans. Directed by series veteran Phil Rosen, it is a brisk poverty-row mystery that keeps the plot moving and the banter constant. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

A string of murders has witnesses giving identical descriptions of a man seen leaving each scene — Jerome Breen, a wealthy philanthropist who has been deaf and mute since birth and could not possibly have been overheard. Lionel Atwill plays Breen in a Monogram old-dark-house mystery directed by Phil Rosen, with Sheila Terry as the reporter convinced there is more to the suspect than his affliction suggests, and Paul Hurst as the detective working the case. The solution, when it comes, is a genuinely nasty piece of pre-Code plotting. Made the same year Atwill headlined Mystery of the Wax Museum, it shows why he was the era's go-to man for quiet menace. The film is in the public domain.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

In 1820s Bangor, Maine, the beautiful and ruthless Jenny Hager schemes her way from poverty to power, marrying a rich lumber baron and seducing his son along the way. Hedy Lamarr gives one of her best performances opposite George Sanders in this adaptation of Ben Ames Williams' novel — a prestige production for B-movie master Edgar G. Ulmer, who brings his usual moody economy to a story of ambition and desire. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Drama · Thriller

Orson Welles directed and stars as a Nazi war criminal hiding in a small Connecticut town, posing as a prep school teacher. Edward G. Robinson is the investigator who tracks him down. The film is the only Welles-directed film to be a commercial success during his lifetime. It is more conventional than his other work, which is why the studio let him make it. The clock tower sequence near the end is a strong set piece. Loretta Young plays Welles's wife, who slowly realizes who her husband really is. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Drama · Thriller

A 1964 American psychological thriller directed by Burt Topper, starring Victor Buono as Leo Kroll, a disturbed hospital lab technician who embarks on a serial killing spree of young women, particularly nurses. Inspired by his dominant, possessive mother, Leo is an overweight loner with low self-esteem whose hatred of women drives him to murder. When he meets Tally, a young woman who works at an amusement park, she briefly curbs his homicidal impulses — but his dark nature ultimately resurfaces. The film was inspired by the real-life Boston Strangler case and went into production while police were still attempting to solve the crimes. Buono, fresh off his Oscar-nominated performance in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, delivers a chilling performance as the tormented killer.

Thriller · Crime · Horror

A 1974 Japanese martial arts film directed by Shigehiro Ozawa and starring Sonny Chiba as Takuma Tsurugi, a mercenary karate master. When both the Yakuza and the Mafia plot to kidnap the daughter of a deceased oil magnate, Tsurugi is hired by each side — but when neither will meet his price, he switches sides to protect the heiress. The film was released in the United States by New Line Cinema and became one of the distributor's first commercial successes. It is notable as the first film to receive an X-rating in the US solely for violence, thanks to Chiba's brutally realistic karate techniques. The film spawned multiple sequels and cemented Chiba's status as an international martial arts icon.

Action · Crime · Thriller

Lon Chaney's only talkie and his final film. He plays Professor Echo, a ventriloquist who, with a dwarf named Tweedledee (Harry Earles) and a strongman, leaves the circus and opens a pet shop as a front for a crime spree, using Echo's talent for voices to impersonate wealthy clients' servants and case their homes. The plot turns on Echo's jealous love for his assistant Rosie (Lila Lee) and her affection for the innocent shop worker Hector (Elliott Nugent). Chaney, already ill with throat cancer during production, demonstrates the vocal range that made him famous, voicing Echo, the parrot, and the elderly Mrs. O'Grady. He died a month after the film's release. Published in 1930, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Crime · Drama · Thriller

A circus knife thrower known as "Alonzo the Armless" performs with his feet and falls for the carnival girl Nanon, who cannot bear to be touched by a man. What no one knows is that Alonzo's arms are strapped to his body to hide a double thumb that marks him as a criminal on the run. When Nanon finally overcomes her fear and turns to another man, Alonzo takes a terrible step to become what he has pretended to be. Lon Chaney gives one of his most disturbing performances, and a young Joan Crawford is the love interest in her first major role. Tod Browning, who would go on to make Freaks and Dracula, sets the whole story in a circus of grotesques. The film was considered lost until a print turned up in 1968. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2023.

Horror · Thriller · Silent

A string of murders of young women baffles Scotland Yard, but Sherlock Holmes spots the pattern: respectable gentlemen are being hypnotized into believing they are the killers, then blackmailed. The trail leads through a society of mesmerists to a glamorous woman in green — and behind her, Professor Moriarty, reported hanged in Montevideo but very much alive. Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce's eleventh Holmes film, with Hillary Brooke and Henry Daniell as a memorably icy Moriarty, directed by Roy William Neill for Universal. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

Tom Durling is framed for a bank robbery and a killing he didn't commit, then escapes custody to hunt down the real gang before the police close in. Robert Lowery and Barbara Britton star in this tight hour-long programmer from Pine-Thomas Productions — Paramount's "dollar bills," the B-unit famous for fast, cheap, profitable pictures — directed by William C. Thomas himself. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

A 1956 film noir directed by, produced by, and starring Mark Stevens. After $500,000 is stolen in a meticulously planned train robbery, insurance investigator Charlie Norman (Stevens) is forced to postpone a vacation with his wife to help railroad detective Joe Armstrong (King Calder) track the thieves. The trail leads through Mexico and into a web of compromised alibis — and gradually reveals that the man investigating the crime knows far more about it than he should. Shot in a lean, semi-documentary style with an early supporting turn by Jack Klugman, Time Table is one of the better-regarded B-noirs of the 1950s. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Thriller

A bag of stolen cash is thrown into the back seat of a couple's car by mistake, and the wife, hungry for a better life, decides to keep it, dragging her husband into a spiral of deceit and murder. Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea star in one of the bleakest noirs of the era. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Crime · Thriller

A ghostly horror film directed by B-movie maestro Bert I. Gordon. Jazz pianist Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson) is about to marry his sweetheart when his former lover Vi confronts him at a lighthouse. During an argument, Vi falls to her death—and Tom does nothing to save her. Soon, her disembodied hand and floating head begin to haunt him, whispering accusations and appearing at the most inopportune moments. As the wedding approaches, Tom's guilt drives him to madness. Gordon's daughter Susan plays the little girl who befriends Tom and witnesses some of the hauntings. Joe Turkel, later famous as the bartender in The Shining, appears as a gangster. The film was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller

A woman who has drifted apart from her husband must track him down through San Francisco after he witnesses a gangland murder and goes into hiding, with a reporter and a killer both following her. Ann Sheridan stars in this tight, location-shot noir. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Crime · Thriller

In the final days of the Second World War, six women — one from each of the Allied nations — are held captive in a Shanghai hotel by Axis officers developing a "cosmic ray" superweapon they claim could outmatch the atomic bomb. As the Allies close in, the prisoners plot to steal the weapon's plans and turn the tables on their captors. Tala Birell, William Henry, and Richard Loo star in this wartime thriller directed by William Rowland. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

War · Drama · Thriller

Alfred Hitchcock's wronged-man thriller about Robert Tisdall (Derrick De Marney), a young writer who finds a strangled body on the beach and is promptly accused of the murder. On the run, he picks up an unwilling — then increasingly willing — accomplice in Erica (Nova Pilbeam), the police chief's daughter, and the two hunt for the one man who can prove his innocence. Made at Gaumont-British between The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, it features one of Hitchcock's most celebrated shots: a slow crane across a hotel ballroom that ends on the twitching eyes of the real killer. Released in the US as The Girl Was Young. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Thriller · Mystery · Romance