Jeff Bailey seems to be a mundane gas station owner in remote Bridgeport, California. He is dating local girl Ann Miller and lives a quiet life. But Jeff has a secret past, and when a mysterious stranger arrives in town, Jeff is forced to return to the dark world he had tried to escape.
In 1920s Chicago, Italian immigrant and notorious thug, Antonio 'Tony' Camonte, aka Scarface, shoots his way to the top of the mobs while trying to protect his sister from the criminal life.
Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wealthy General Sternwood regarding a matter involving his youngest daughter Carmen. Before the complex case is over, Marlowe sees murder, blackmail, deception, and what might be love.
A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a beautiful liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette.
A rich woman and a calculating insurance agent plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy.
A self-assured businessman murders his employer, the husband of his mistress, which unintentionally provokes an ill-fated chain of events.
By a daring ruse and inside help, Pete Rennick, a noted criminal behind bars on federal charges, escapes from the prison, and all of the law-agencies and local police are out to catch him with roadblocks and every car searched, but the escapee gets away. Bill Hasford, a private detective, investigating a racket finds it leads to the wanted man, and has the biggest adventure of his career.
A hurricane swells outside, but it's nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There, sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco holes up - and holds at gunpoint hotel owner James Temple, his widowed daughter-in-law Nora, and ex-GI Frank McCloud.
In the remote Bhutan, an undercover detective investigates the case of a missing Buddhist nun and falls into a risky alliance with his only suspect, an alluring young woman known as the village "demoness".
An upper-crust family dinner is interrupted by a police inspector who brings news that a girl known to everyone present has died in suspicious circumstances. It seems that any or all of them could have had a hand in her death. But who is the mysterious Inspector and what can he want of them?
A crooked politician finds himself being accused of murder by a gangster from whom he refused help during a re-election campaign.
A seductive woman gets an innocent professor mixed up in murder.
Expecting the usual loss, a boxing manager takes bribes from a betting gangster without telling his fighter.
A police detective's violent nature keeps him from being a good cop.
Londoner Harry Fabian is a second-rate con man looking for an angle. After years of putting up with Harry's schemes, his girlfriend, Mary, becomes fed up when he taps her for yet another loan.
Roustabout Stanton Carlisle joins a traveling carny and unsuccessfully schemes to figure out the mind-reading act of Mademoiselle Zeena and her alcoholic husband, Pete.
When a young woman's skeletal remains turn up on a Massachusetts beach, Barnstable cop Peter Moralas teams with Boston police and uses forensics, with the help of a Harvard professor, to determine the woman's identity, how she died, and who killed her.
Claude is a ruthless and efficient contract killer. His next target, a woman, is the most difficult.
Frank Bigelow is about to die, and he knows it. The accountant has been poisoned and has only 24 hours before the lethal concoction kills him. Determined to find out who his murderer is, Frank, with the help of his assistant and girlfriend, Paula, begins to trace back over his last steps. As he frantically tries to unravel the mystery behind his own impending demise, his sleuthing leads him to a group of crooked businessmen and another murder.
After the suspicious suicide of a fellow cop, tough homicide detective Dave Bannion takes the law into his own hands when he sets out to smash a vicious crime syndicate.