After being hired to find an ex-con's former girlfriend, Philip Marlowe is drawn into a deeply complex web of mystery and deceit.
Mrs. Elizabeth Bright Murdock hires Marlowe to find an old rare coin, the Brasher Doubloon, that belonged in her deceased husband's collection. Marlowe begins investigating, but quickly finds himself entangled in a series of unexplained murders.
A mad bomber holds an innocent family hostage.
Locked in her cell, a murderer reflects on the events that have led her to death row.
Tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. An embittered cop, Det. Jim McLeod, leads a precinct of characters in their grim daily battle with the city's lowlife. The characters who pass through the precinct over the course of the day include a young petty embezzler, a pair of burglars, and a naive shoplifter.
In a moment of madness a middle-aged, married and respectable pharmacist kills a young woman who is sun-bathing by a lake. Unable to take in what he has done, he flees from the scene of the crime and behaves as if nothing has happened. Eventually her boyfriend is charged with the crime and, in a strange twist of fate, the killer finds himself serving on the jury.
War heroes Rip Murdock and Johnny Drake are sent to Washington, D.C, to receive top honors for their service. Johnny, seemingly terrified by the publicity that awaits him, jumps off the train and later turns up dead. Suspecting foul play, Rip begins digging into his pal's past. He encounters cover-ups, threats to his own life and deadly femme fatale Coral Chandler.
After a former model is drowned in her bathtub, Detective James Halloran and Lieutenant Dan Muldoon attempt to piece together her murder.
A falsely convicted man's wife, Catherine, and an alcoholic composer and pianist, Martin, team up in an attempt to clear her husband of the murder of a blonde singer, who is Martin's wife.
A newspaper publisher, wanting to prove a point about the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence, talks his possible son-in-law Tom into a hoax in an attempt to expose ineptitude of the city's hard-line district attorney. The plan is to have Tom plant clues leading to his arrest for killing a female nightclub dancer. Once Tom is found guilty, he is to reveal the setup and humiliate the DA.
Petty crook and cop-killer Martin Rome, in bad shape from wounds in the hospital prison ward, still refuses to help slimy lawyer Niles clear his client by confessing to another crime. Police Lt. Candella must check Niles' allegation; a friend of the Rome family, he walks a tightrope between sentiment and cynicism. When Martin fears Candella will implicate his girlfriend Teena, he'll do anything to protect her. How many others will he drag down to disaster with him?
This titillating bit of pulp sensationalism was the last in a string of "B" films that Cleo Moore starred in at Columbia. Moore plays Lila Crane, an ambitious clip-joint floozie turned photographer with flexible morals and a penchant for fast money.
A Brooklyn pier racketeer bullies boat-owners into paying protection money but two fed-up fishermen decide to eliminate the gangster themselves rather than complain to the police.
A security leak is found at a Southern California atomic plant. The authorities stand in fear that the information leaked would go to a hostile nation. To investigate the case more efficiently, Dan O'Hara, an FBI agent, and Philip Grayson, a Scotland Yard sleuth, join forces. Will they manage to stop the spy ring from achieving their aim?
Agnes "Astra" Huston, a fortune teller at a run-down fair, is found strangled in her bedroom. As the police question five suspects, their interactions with her are shown in flashbacks from their point of view.
A family man – desperate for a job – latches onto a friend who encourages him into being a criminal.
A prison convict escapes through the Louisiana swamps.
An old-time crook plans a heist. When one of his two partners is found out to be a black man tensions flare.
The daughter of a Nevada casino owner gets involved with a racketeer, despite everyone's efforts to separate them.
Bootleggers on the lam Frankie and Noll split up to evade capture by the police. Frankie is caught and jailed, but Noll manages to escape and open a posh New York City nightclub. 14 years later, Frankie is released from the clink and visits Noll with the intention of collecting his half of the nightclub's profits. But Noll, who has no intention of being so equitable, uses his ex-girlfriend Kay to divert Frankie from his intended goal.