Thomas P. Manning, businessman and chess expert mysteriously shot in a locked room, dies clutching some chess pieces. Police are baffled, and finally abandon the case. Six months later, victim’s daughter Leah Manning, stung by a scurrilous book about the case, enlists the aid of Charlie Chan and Number 3 Son. Additional murders follow, leading to a climactic confrontation in a seemingly deserted “Fun House.”
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Crime
Dangerous Money (1946) Terry O. Morse, Sidney Toler, Gloria Warren, Victor Sen Yung, Comedy, Crime, Mystery
A treasury agent traveling aboard a ocean liner confides to fellow passenger Charlie Chan that he’s on the trail of a counterfeiting ring operating from the South Pacific and has survived two recent attempts on his life. Chan helps him avoid a third but is helpless to prevent a knife thrown in his back in the ship’s club room. Although the ship will be docking shortly in Samoa, Charlie is confident that he will unmask the killer before then. Among the suspects are an elitist reverend and his wife, a beautiful young woman traveling with forged papers, a shady loudmouth of a salesman, a larcenous ship’s steward, and a professional knife-thrower.
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The Scarlet Clue (1945) Phil Rosen, Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Ben Carter, Comedy, Crime, Mystery
Charlie Chan investigates the theft of government radar papers (the laboratory is located in the same building as a radio station!) with the help of Number Three Son Tommy and comic sidekick Birmingham Brown.
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Love Kills (1991) Brian Grant, Virginia Madsen, Lenny von Dohlen, Erich Anderson, Mystery, Action, Crime
Glamorous fashion photographer Rebecca is getting even. Angered by her husband’s infidelity, she takes a lover – a mysterious hunk she fist met during a photo shoot. He’s exciting. He’s handsome. And, after a night of lovemaking, he confesses he’s a hit man hired by her husband to kill her. The stranger also says he’s had a change of heart and wants to be Rebecca’s protector. But Rebecca’s husband, a renowned psychologist, insists the man is a former patient with a hidden, twisted agenda. Both men can’t be right. Both could be lying. As the circle of suspense closes in on her, one thing is clear to Rebecca. Any choice she makes could be more than wrong…it could be fatal.
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Choyonghan Kajok / The Quiet Family (1998) Jee-woon Kim, In-hwan Park, Mun-hee Na, Kang-ho Song, Comedy, Crime, Horror
A family decides to buy a lodge in a remote hiking area. Their first customer commits suicide and the distraught family buries his body to avoid the bad publicity. But their luck gets worse, the bodies start piling up, and the family becomes frantic to rectify the situation.
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Thunderbolt (1929) Josef von Sternberg, George Bancroft, Fay Wray, Richard Arlen, Crime, Drama
A criminal known as Thunderbolt is imprisoned and facing execution. Into the next cell is placed Bob Morgan, an innocent man who has been framed and who is in love with Thunderbolt’s girl, without knowing of their relationship. Thunderbolt hopes to stave off the execution long enough to kill young Morgan for romancing his girl.
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The Secret Partner (1961) Basil Dearden, Stewart Granger, Bernard Lee, Haya Harareet, Crime, Drama, Mystery
A wealthy London-based shipping magnate is blackmailed by an evil dentist which threatens to reveal an old case of fraud, while the dentist himself is threaten by a mysterious masked man.
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The Man Who Wouldn’t Die (1942) Herbert I. Leeds, Lloyd Nolan, Marjorie Weaver, Helene Reynolds, Crime, Mystery
In the shadows of the night Dudley Wolff (Paul Harvey), his secretary Alfred Dunning (Robert Emmett Keane), and his doctor, Haggard (Henry Wilcoxon), bury a body in the estate cemetery. At the house, Wolff’s daughter Catherine (Marjorie Weaver) arrives unexpectedly and tells her step-mother Anne Wolff (Helene Reynolds that she has just been married to Roger Blake (Richard Derr) who will be along in a few days. Cathy retires and is awakened by a mysterious assailant who fires a shot at her, but her parents tell her she was just dreaming. Wolff goes to the cemetery and finds the body missing. The scared Cathy calls in fast-talking private detective Mike Shayne (Lloyd Nolan) and, since her father doesn’t like detectives, she introduces him as her husband. That evening Shayne hears a shot and finds that Haggard has been killed. While the police are questioning the family, the lights go out and a shot is fired from outside.
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Monsieur Hire (1989) Patrice Leconte, Michel Blanc, Sandrine Bonnaire, Luc Thuillier, Crime, Drama, Thriller
A French man spies on a lovely younger woman across the way. When he’s spotted by the woman shortly after being questioned by the police about a local murder, the man simple life becomes more complicated.
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Bellamy / Inspector Bellamy (2009) Claude Chabrol, Gérard Depardieu, Clovis Cornillac, Jacques Gamblin, Crime, Drama, Thriller
As every year, chief inspector Paul Bellamy spends a few days with his wife Françoise in the family house in Nîmes. Jacques, Paul’s stepbrother, turns up unawares, which is bad news since the fellow is an alcoholic good for nothing. Also annoying is this stranger at bay who asks Bellamy for protection. Farewell peaceful holiday!
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Chase a Crooked Shadow (1958) Michael Anderson, Richard Todd, Anne Baxter, Herbert Lom, Crime, Mystery, Thriller
A man shows up at Kimberley Prescott’s villa claiming to be her brother. But Ward Prescott died in a car accident a year ago, so how can this man be him? Despite Kim’s protests that the stranger isn’t her brother, everyone else accepts him, including their uncle. Kim begins to fear for her sanity and her life.
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Mark of the Phoenix (1958) Maclean Rogers, Julia Arnall, Sheldon Lawrence, Anton Diffring, Crime, Drama, Thriller
A sample of an advanced new metal is stolen and made into a cigarette case in Brussels ready for smuggling to the East. An American jewel thief accidentally finds it in his possession and becomes the centre of much attention
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The Hot Rock (1972) Peter Yates, Robert Redford, George Segal, Ron Leibman, Action, Comedy, Crime
Dr. Amusa approaches Dortmunder about a valuable gem in a museum that is of great signifigance to his people in Africa, stolen during colonial times. Dortmunder assembles a crack team of cat burglars and hatches an elaborate plan for stealing the gem. Despite their care and experience, circumstances and plain bad luck keep the gem just out of their reach.
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The Long Night (1947) Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Anatole Litvak, Henry Fonda, Barbara Bel Geddes, Vincent Price
The credits fade onto a blind man tapping his way down the sidewalk,he enters a dingy boarding house and hears a shot fired in one of the upstairs bedrooms. A door opens from audience POV. A man tumbles out of the door and falls, slides and slithers down two flights of stairs and is dead when he hits the bottom. Then follows nearly 100 minutes of flashback and flashbacks-within-flashbacks about a veteran returing from the war, tired and disillusioned, only to find that he girl he loves has lied to him about her relationship with another man, and that man is sadistic, boastful and tauntful.
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Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) Sam Peckinpah, Warren Oates, Isela Vega, Robert Webber, Action, Crime, Drama
A family scandal causes a wealthy and powerful Mexican rancher to make the pronouncement–‘Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia!’ Two of the bounty-hunters thus dispatched encounter a local piano-player in their hunt for information. The piano-player does a little investigating on his own and finds out that his girlfriend knows of Garcia’s death and last resting place. Thinking that he can make some easy money and gain financial security for he and his (now) fiancée, they set off on this goal. Of course, this quest only brings him untold misery, in the form of trademark Peckinpah violence.
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