Whistle Down the Wind (1962), Eyes Without a Face - Les yeux sans visage (1959), Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), A New Leaf (1971), Mirage (1965), It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), The Thief of Paris (1967), The Scapegoat (1959) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Crime Literature On Screen movies.
Storyline: Little Kathy (Hayley Mills) discovers a man wanted for murder hiding in her family's barn. When she asks him who he is, he says Jesus Christ just before he goes unconscious. Kathy and her siblings are convinced that he is Jesus, and try to hide him from grown-ups.—Nasser <NasKU@aol.com>
Plot Keywords: farm, directorial debut, fugitive, coming of age, based on novel, manipulative man, pretending to be someone else ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A Paris surgeon (Pierre Brasseur) tries to fix his daughter's (Édith Scob) face with skin from kidnapped women.
Plot Keywords: captive woman, disfigured face, father daughter relationship, face mask, graveyard, surgeon, professor ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Celestine, the chambermaid, has new job on the country. The Monteils, who she works for are a group of strange people. The wife is frigid, her husband is always hunting (both animals and women) and her father is a shoe-fetishist. Joseph, the farm-labourer is a fascist and sexually attracted to Celestine. Celestine settles herself and talks to the neighbour, an ex-officer, who likes damaging his neighbour's things. After the death of the old man, she quits her job, but because of the rape and murder of a child 'Little Claire' she decides to stay, believing that Joseph is the murderer. To get his confession she sleeps with him and promises to marry him. In spite of her engagement she fakes evidence to implicate him in the murder. He is arrested, but is released because the evidence is inconclusive. She marries the ex-officer and takes on a housewife role similar to that of Madame Monteil.—Stephan Eichenberg <eichenbe@fak-cbg.tu-muenchen.de>
Plot Keywords: murder, rape, pedophilia, child rape, class differences, infidelity, sexual harassment ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Henry Graham has a problem: he's spent his entire inheritance, and is completely broke. With no skills, the only option is to make money the old-fashioned way; marry. With a temporary loan to tide him over, Henry's only 6 weeks to find a bride, marry her, and repay the money, or else he must forfeit all his passions—Drew from Baltimore
Plot Keywords: murder, marriage for money, camping, water skiing, tow truck, crooked lawyer, tea ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Walking down twenty-seven flights of stairs after the power goes out in the New York City office building he is in, David Stillwell emerges outside on the ground level to find that a man he didn't know either jumped or was pushed out a window to his death. That man was Charles Calvin, the head of Unidyne, a humanitarian organization that works toward world peace. David notices other unusual goings-on. What he considers his normal routine that others he knows should recognize, don't. People that he doesn't know seem to know him, such as the beautiful young woman with who he walked down the stairs but who ran off when they got to the bottom. And things that he thought he saw or thought he knew end up not being the case, such as the multiple sub-basement levels he thought were in that office building which don't seem to exist in the clear light of day. When he finally thinks about it, he believes he has some form of amnesia. As an example, he knows that he works as a cost accountant, but he has no idea what a cost accountant is or does. He soon learns that some people are following him and are after something that he has, he not knowing what it is, and that they will shoot to kill if they don't get it. Conversely, the young woman, who he learns is named Shela and was once a love of his, is trying to convince him to cooperate with the people after him if only to save his life. Every direction David turns for official assistance, he comes up not trusting anyone, with the exception of a novice private detective he hires named Ted Caselle. Shela and the people after David all refer to "the major" as the person at the top who wants what David has. David may have to look deep into his troubled psyche to come out of his amnesia to learn who the major is, what he wants, whether David is willing to give it up if he indeed does have it, and that the death of Charles Calvin had some part to play. But David may be dead before he can even make an informed decision to cooperate or not.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: amnesia, key, punched in the face, violence, hit on the head, fight, punched in the stomach ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Slice of life drama following the lives of various people in London's East End on a wet Sunday. (Is this film why people think it always rains in England ?) Rose was engaged to local wild boy Tommy Swann but he got imprisoned on Dartmoor. After he was locked up she got married to sedate but dull George. Tommy's now broken out of jail and comes to see Rose to get help to flee the country.—Steve Crook <steve@brainstorm.co.uk>
Plot Keywords: london england, train, train station, suicide attempt, jewish family, working class, stepmother ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In Paris around 1900, Georges Randal is brought up by his wealthy uncle, who steals his inheritance. Georges hopes to marry his cousin Charlotte, but his uncle arranges for her to marry a rich neighbour. As an act of revenge, Georges steals the fiance's family jewels, and enjoys the experience so much that he embarks upon a life-time of burglary.—Will Gilbert
Plot Keywords: thief, paris france, based on novel, french literature on screen, crime literature on screen, european literature on screen, literature on screen ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: On a vacation in France from his nondescript job and life, John Barratt encounters a titled but impoverished French nobleman who looks exactly like him. The nobleman gets John drunk, and switches places with him to take a breather from his failing business and too-complicated life. John tries to convince everyone he is not who they think he is, but he begins to get more and more involved with the count's family, including an unhappy wife, domineering mother, lonely but talented young daughter, bitter spinster sister and the expected mistress. As John gets to know them he feels he can help them with their problems, but is also becoming used to his borrowed life, which has given him a purpose for the first time.—Ron Kerrigan <mvg@whidbey.com>
Plot Keywords: man wears pajamas, restaurant, passport, title based on the bible, look alike, identity swap, impostor ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Oliver Bramwell, an insurance inspector, arrives at Lewis Manor where he is to investigate a fire that broke out there on Christmas Eve. He rings the bell and to his amazement he finds himself face to face with Sarah, the woman he once loved in Hong Kong and who, one day, disappeared from his life without apparent reason. Love resurfaces and when Tracey, the owner of the manor and Sarah's husband, dies in a second fire, the couple is reunited. Nevertheless, Oliver suspects Sarah of having tricked him and murdered Tracey with a view to attaining her ends. Fortunately his suspicions are allayed and he can marry Sarah. They are first very happy, until a blackmailer starts preying on them...—Guy Bellinger
Plot Keywords: british noir, based on novel, cousin, mother son relationship, christmas eve, secretary, literature on screen ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In London, American heiress Kit Preston (Doris Day) has been married for three months to a British executive, Anthony 'Tony' Preston (Sir Rex Harrison). During a foggy evening while walking across Hyde Park, Kit is threatened by a voice that tells she will be murdered soon. The next day, Kit receives a phone call from the stalker threatening to kill her in the next month. She and her husband go to Scotland Yard, but Inspector Byrnes (John Williams) believes that Kit may be making up the story to get more attention from her husband. Kit's Aunt Bea (Myrna Loy) arrives, but only Kit receives the phone call raising the question: is she losing her mind?—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Plot Keywords: telephone terror, london england, embezzlement, police detective, psychiatrist, psychological torment, scaffold ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Romance in the prime of life. When Lise's car bumps Antoine's bike, they recognize each other from a brief fling 20 years before while at the Sorbonne. He's now a professor of Greek; she's loathe to tell him she's a police inspector. A call interrupts their first dinner date: a Deputy of the National Assembly has been murdered. She has a suspect, another Deputy, and must track him while deflecting Antoine's eye from her vocation. All roads in the inquiry lead to Christine Vallier, the dead Deputy's mistress, a beguiling 22-year-old whose mother ran the Assembly's snack bar. When more deputies die and Antoine learns Lise's identity, she must act quickly solve the crime and save her future.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: based on novel, gay stereotype, congressman, murder investigation, stabbed in the back, serial killer, police ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Hard up and with a grudge against insurance companies, English pilot Rex Black fakes his death and meets up with his wife and the money in Malaga, Spain when things have quieted down. But when the insurance investigator turns up, Rex starts a game of cat-and-mouse.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}
Plot Keywords: post coital scene, adulterous wife, adultery, cheating wife, unfaithful wife, rivalry, rival ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: British archaeologist David Redfern comes to Tunisia to catalog a collection of art relics and stumbles into evidence of a gun-smuggling racket. Hesitant at first to get involved or even to report the information, he becomes convinced he must do the right thing after a young man is murdered. By then, though, the smugglers know Redfern knows too much and they target him for death.—Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
Plot Keywords: fictional town, expatriate, escape, hunting, corrupt cop, chase, weapon ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Four Newton brothers are a poor farmer family in the 1920s. The oldest of them, Willis, one day realizes that there's no future in the fields and offers his brothers to become a bank robbers. Soon the family agrees. They become very famous robbers, and five years later execute the greatest train robbery in American history.—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: bank robber, character name in title, based on true story, bank robbery, canada, outlaw, crime spree ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: On a train travelling through pre-World War II Germany, American heiress Amanda Metcalfe Madvani von Hoffstetter Kelly (Cybill Shepherd) befriends Miss Froy (Dame Angela Lansbury), an older nanny. But when Miss Froy disappears, everyone Amanda asks denies ever having seen her. Eventually, Amanda persuades American photographer Robert Condon (Elliott Gould) to help her search the train, during which they discover that Miss Froy wasn't quite what she seemed.—measham
Plot Keywords: false identity, aristocrat, servant, patient, nun, scheme, socialite ...
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