Best movies like Day of Reckoning

A blackmailer tries to stop a woman from revealing evidence that could save a condemned man.

The editor of a sleazy tabloid newspaper has been borrowing money from his lover, the wife of a rich theatrical producer, and promises to marry her when she gets a divorce. However, the husband refuses to grant her a divorce, and takes back all the money and jewelry he has given her. The editor sees her husband leaving her apartment and, seeing his opportunity, kills her, takes all his IOUs (and the jewelry) and frames the husband for the murder.

Young reporter accidentially kills his newspaper's editor in a fight over the publisher's mistress, who is also the paper's society editor.

A millionaire past his prime and his young wife arrive in Kenya circa 1940 to find that the other affluent British expatriates are living large as the homefront gears up for war. They are busy swapping partners, doing drugs, and attending lavish parties and horse races. She begins a torrid affair with one of the bon vivants, and her husband finds out and confronts them. The husband and wife decide to break up peacefully, but the bon vivant is murdered and all the evidence points to the husband.

A merciless district attorney prosecutes a case that mirrors his own life.

A lawyer tries to clear his wife's lover of murder charges.

Early British thriller about a master criminal named 'Flash Jack', who heads a gang of top-hatted thieves that rob the wealthy. A detective tracks the crimes to a posh night club.

An unhappily married woman is caught up in scandal and murder when her affection toward a young man is misinterpreted.

Stephen Rojack is a decorated war vet who has now found success as an outspoken television personality. During a vicious argument with his wife, Deborah, Stephen snaps and pushes her from his high-rise apartment to her death. He manages to convince the authorities that she killed herself, then reignites an old affair with singer Cherry McMahon -- which doesn't sit well with her jealous mobster boyfriend, Nicky.

Sophie Anderson is the lead attorney on an intellectual property case against a corrupt pharmaceutical company. When her mentor and boss is kidnapped, she becomes a pawn in an elaborate scheme that jeopardizes her case and more.

A woman claims she had an affair with a married neurosurgeon and stands trial for allegedly harassing him.

After he calls 911 to report his wife's accident, successful novelist and aspiring politician Michael Peterson (Williams) becomes the prime suspect in her alleged murder.

Marc Hill is the attorney for Emmet Devrey, a real estate developer with a past, who is being blackmailed by his former partner Sam Baggett. When Sam's unfaithful wife Marge cooks up a scheme with her used car salesman lover Jeff Calder to bilk both Devrey and her alcoholic husband, Sam is killed and Devrey is accused of the crime. Mark is called to prove his employers innocence.

Steve Grey, reporter for the Daily Star, has a habit of scooping all the other papers in town. When Henry Mander is investigated for the murder of his shady business partner, Grey is one step ahead of the police to the extent that he often dictates his story in advance of its actual occurrence. He leads the police through an 'open and shut' case resulting in Mander being tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Columnist Mary Shannon is in love with Steve but she sees him struggle greatly with his last story before Mander's execution. When she starts typing out the story from his recorded dictation, she realizes why.

Tom Masterick, a dock worker, is wrongfully convicted of a murder charge. His death sentence is commuted to a long prison term. When released as an old man, he vows to find the real killer.

Wealthy Mr. Kennedy shoots his secretary, Channing, during a parlor game, but it turns out the gun was loaded with real bullets. Luckily, criminologist Phillip Montrose is on hand to help the police. When Kennedy quickly ends up dead as well, the police think it's a tidy murder-suicide, but the family lawyer knows of a letter that voiced Kennedy's suspicions about someone who was out to get him. Soon, the cops are on the trail of a ruthless and clever killer who is one step ahead of even Montrose.

Ellen Neal, a young and inexperienced maid, becomes romantically involved with her employers son which causes various complications. The head butler also has an infatuation for the young girl but his intentions are not that good.

Ned Ravine is a police officer and lawyer who occasionally defends the delinquents he arrests. He crosses paths with seductive Lola Cain during an assignment and promptly begins an affair with her. Meanwhile, Ned's wife, Lana, is deep in an affair of her own. Lana and her lover are planning to murder Ned in an elaborate fashion so they can collect on his triple indemnity life insurance policy.

On a cruise to Cuba, Lulu Smith falls in love with Bob Grover. Back home, she breaks off the romance when he tells her he is married. Lulu has a baby, but doesn't tell Bob, who turns out to be a rising politician. She passes herself off as the baby's nanny. When Bob learns what is going on, he adopts the little girl, not telling his wife or anyone else where she came from. Lulu gets a job at a newspaper. Things get complicated when the editor gets the dirt on Grover, but also wants to marry Lulu

A secretary (Gloria Stuart) solves a murder for her boyfriend (Michael Whalen) in the district attorney's office.

A lovely dame with dangerous lies employs the services of a private detective, who is quickly caught up in the mystery and intrigue of a statuette known as the Maltese Falcon.

A silent romantic love triangle crime melodrama about a man who gets out of prison after ten years and discovers that his wife has divorced him and married the man who sent him to prison. Worse yet, she fears he will want to exact revenge, so she sets up her new husband to frame her first husband, so he will be sent back to prison!

This Universal programmer was based on a Collier's Magazine story by journalist Quentin Reynolds. This story in turn was ostensibly based on a true incident, in which a gangster "returned from the dead" to save an innocent young man from the electric chair. The nurse of the film's title is Katharine McDonald, who falls in love with her prizefighter-patient Lee Burke as he recovers from a beating received in a fixed prizefight. Katharine must fend off the advances of criminal attorney John Dodge, another patient who also loves her and becomes jealous of Lee. But when Lee is framed for the murder of his disgruntled manager, Slice, by a henchman of the fight-fix leader, Joe Largo, Dodge takes on his defense and works with Katherine to discover the real killer. Convicted and sentenced to death, Burke is about to walk the "last mile", as Katharine encourages mortally wounded Largo to a deathbed confession.

An elderly woman provides an alibi to a man she scarcely knows who is on trial for murder of his girlfriend's racketeer father.

A man is blamed for a murder that was actually committed by his wife.

An immensely successful criminal lawyer is blindsided when he learns that his new case involves his ex-wife, who left him.

Grace Leonard, a typical woman of the New York stage, beautiful but old in sin, seduces William Craig, who becomes a thief in order to shower luxuries upon her. He is sentenced to prison and emerges five years later as a sad-faced, gray-haired man, entirely cured of his mad passion for La Valencia. But she sees him and her old passion is stirred, meaning nothing to her that since his release from prison, he has fallen in love and married a good woman who knows nothing of his past. When William is not swayed by her fascinations, Grace threatens to expose his past life.

Gunner and Bucker are friends who work as riveters. Whenever Bucker gets the urge to marry, which is often, Gunner will hit on his girl to see if she is true or not. So far, Gunner hasn't failed. But one night, while Gunner is in jail, Bucker meets Mary, a tough dame with a line. He falls for her, and she falls for his money. But Mary is already a gal pal of Gunner, and no two know about the third one. The trouble starts when the triangle is revealed too late.

A poisoned aspirin creates headaches for a woman who received the deadly pill from a stranger, then passed it on to her uncle.

Escaped serial killer James Becket, who killed his own father whose expectations he never fulfilled, but now especially targets his wife Theresa 'Tess' and her family, is too good at disguising himself and other deceit for detective Diffs task force. Only one man proves able to fight back in his league: former cop J.T. Dillon, who was already training Tess in self-defense and becomes her lover. Becket decides to find hiding place by kidnapping Diffs wife, and thus enforce a final show-down.

An investigator for the District Attorney's office quits to open his own detective agency. However, business is so bad that he finally decides to give it up and go back to his old job. As his wife is at his office closing up, a wealthy society matron walks in with a case: she wants to know if her husband is having an affair with his ex-girlfriend, who is now married. The wife accepts what looks to be an easy case, figuring than she can then persuade her husband to re-start the agency. However, when the client's husband is found murdered, she decides to investigate the murder herself. Her husband has also been assigned by the D.A. to investigate the murder, and he doesn't know that his wife is also on the case. Complications ensue.

John Nelson, a well-to-do businessman, is escorting a woman he knows as Ethel Barry to the door of her apartment suite when a man steps out of the shadows and angrily demands to know where she has been. The embarrassed Nelson excuses himself and goes to his rooms in the same hotel. The woman rushes into his apartment followed by the man who met her in the hall. The man threatens her with violence and Nelson comes to her defense. In the ensuing fight, the man is knocked out of the window and falls to his death to the pavement many stories down. He is charged with the killing and his only witness that can prove self-defense for him has disappeared, and can not be found.

A detective courts a gangster's ex-wife to lure him into a trap.

Mark Schall kills his mother-in-law and wounds his father-in-law in the middle of the night, then turns himself in. He claims, however, that he cannot remember the crime itself. His defense team finds evidence that suggests the crimes were committed while Mark was sleep walking. They build their defense around this theory.

In this drama, a frustrated upper-class writer decides that he will find real inspiration by examining his subjects first-hand. This leads him to begin wandering about the seamiest side of town where he witnesses a murder. When an innocent man is arrested, the writer refuses to assist him as the knowledge that he has been "slumming" could destroy his career. The young man is sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Philandering actor Richard Hardell is murdered at a movie studio. His jealous wife Blanche, his director Rupert Borka, and a girl he mistreated, Helen MacDonald, all have substantial reasons for having wanted him dead.

Following a long investigation, Police Detective-Lieutenant Anthony "Tony" Roberts becomes convinced that there is some powerful unknown-master-mind leader behind the gangs of crooks who are terrorizing the city, and it has something to do with paroled convicts. He sets up a scheme with his supervisor to have himself shamed by being demoted to a patrolman and then caught in the act of receiving bribe-money from a racketeer. He is convicted and sent to prison, and the manner in which his parole is arranged leads him, dangerously, to the secret-head of the gang.

Psychiatrist Dr. Lila Colleti is divorcing her husband and is devastated when he wins custody of their two little girls, whom he gets largely because Lila's job, being a psychiatrist for the criminally insane at the local prison, is a potentially dangerous one that forces her to keep long, erratic hours. When one of Lila's patients, Ed Baikman, is released into a half-way house, he decides under the delusional influence of his psychosis to help her out by murdering her ex-husband and his girlfriend, and then threatening to tell the cops they'd planned it together when she refuses to become romantically involved with him. Though Lila's lover, police detective Macy Kobacek, stands by her loyally, Baikman does such an ingenious job of implicating Lila in the crime that even Macy begins to have his doubts about Lila's innocence

Nora Mason becomes entangled in a family mix-up of murder and scandal that threatens to ruin her career and entire future; Unless the mother she does not know can find a way to save her.

A lady con artist sets out to steal her parole officer's fiance.

A businesslike syndicate runs all the gambling joints in town; least profitable is honest Mike Lee's. Under pressure to allow cheating, Mike "walks out," leaving tough-minded daughter Lady Lee to earn a living the only way she knows. She soon becomes a success gambling among the rich, but, falling out with the syndicate, she considers the marriage proposal of blueblood Garry Madison. Can such a match work despite snobbery and old associations?

Romance at a murder trial with a pair of sequestered jurors who are the only ones who think that the woman in the dock is innocent. Separated from their normal lives, jurors Terry Scott and David Campbell start to fall in love.

A man escapes from jail in France to free his daughter from her mother's hold.

A bank teller's love life falls apart when he's accused of embezzling.

Suave, lip-reading DA Thatcher Colt plans to get away from the big city for a while. So he and his secretary, Miss Kelly hop on a train for an Upstate NY town called Gilead. They expect a calm oasis, but when a small time circus rolls into town they soon find themselves caught up in a sordid tale of marital infidelity, murder, cruelty to animals, and cannibalism.

A New York playboy, Wayne Carter, dates wild women until he falls for a hard-working stenographer, Helene Andrews.

When his former secretary is accused of a murder, Perry Mason gives up a judgeship to defend her.

A young man takes a succession of odd jobs in order to save enough money to buy himself and his mother a house. He lands a position in a newspaper office and falls in love with the beautiful society editor, who is secretly having an affair with the married managing editor. She returns the young man's affections in order to make her lover jealous, but finds herself falling for him.

A bitter woman who thinks she'll never love again marries, only to fall for a brash young man.

Socialite banker Henry Judson maintains his extravagant lifestyle by embezzling from his bank, but is caught by sleazy assistant manager Waters and is blackmailed by him into continuing. Close to being found out, the two devise a scheme which sends Wally, the ex-con boyfriend of pretty hat check girl Rose Abbott, to death row.