Best movies like Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime
ELLERY QUEEN SOLVES THE PERFECT CRIME...TO BRING YOU PERFECT ENTERTAINMENT!
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime Starring Ralph Bellamy, Margaret Lindsay, Charley Grapewin, Spring Byington, and more. If you liked Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime then you may also like: X Marks the Spot, Whispering Smith Vs. Scotland Yard, Nobody's Fool, Am I Guilty?, Undercover Girl and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Ralph Bellamy makes the third of four appearances as "master detective" Ellery Queen in Columbia's Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime. The principal villain is crooked stockbroker John Mathews, whose Wall Street manipulations render Ray Jarden penniless. Mathews' chicanery seems particularly coldblooded, inasmuch as his daughter Marian is engaged to Jarden's son Walter. When the latter disappears, Mathews asks Ellery Queen to locate the young man.
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Nobody's Fool
A naive country boy goes to New York City, where he gets mixed up with real estate swindlers.
Undercover Girl
After her father is murdered, a girl joins the police force in an effort to track down the killers.
The Gay Falcon
Having forsaken the detective business for the safer confines of personal insurance, Gay Laurence is compelled to return to his sleuthing ways. Along with sidekick Jonathan "Goldie" Locke, he agrees to look into a series of home party robberies that have victimized socialite Maxine Wood. The duo gets more than they bargained for when a murder is committed at Wood's home, but Lawrence still finds time to romance the damsel.
The Fat Man
A innocent dentist is murdered and the only apparent motive seems to be to steal a set of dental x-rays. To the police it looks like an accident, but private eye Brad Runyan thinks there's more to it.
The Lone Wolf Strikes
Delia Jordan's father is murdered and some very valuable jewelry stolen. She hires The Lone Wolf.
Secrets of the Lone Wolf
Michael Lanyard's faithful butler Jamison is mistaken for his boss by a gang of jewel robbers.
Mysterious Intruder
A private detective is hired to find a young heiress but finds himself accused of murder.
Strange Affair
Eminent psychiatrist Dr. Brenner invites cartoonist Bill Harrison and his wife, Jack, to a banquet honoring war refugees. Bill volunteers to pick up fellow psychiatrist Dr. Baumler at the train station, but the man vanishes when he has Bill stop so he can use a pay phone. At the dinner, Bill and Jack are seated with Brenner's daughter, Freda, and, to Bill's surprise, another man is introduced as Baumler -- who dies moments later.
The Pay-Off
A thug robs a young engaged couple of their last few dollars. When the thug's gang boss hears of the robbery, he gives them back their money and takes them under his wing. The thug, resentful of the couple, plans to organize a mutiny against the gang's boss, but when he is killed in a botched robbery, the police focus their attention on the young couple.
Secrets of a Nurse
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.
Meet Boston Blackie
When a murder occurs on an ocean liner docked in New York, the trail leads to Coney Island and a spy ring.
Ellery Queen, Master Detective
The mysteriously ill John Braun makes a new will, leaving out his daughter Barbara, over the protests of his wife. The trouble began when the daughter wanted to marry Mr. Braun's doctor, James Rogers. Mrs. Braun asks Inspector Queen to help find the long-missing Barbara. The inspector's son, Ellery, works on the case. He goes to a home frequently visited by Dr. Rogers where the bell is answered by Nikki Porter who Ellery mistakes for Barbara and insists she return to the Braun home. Nikki does, to protect Barbara, and a short time later finds herself alone in a room outside Braun's bedroom. She finds him dead - his throat cut. No weapons are found and the door to the room where Nikki had been is locked, and she is suspected. Ellery hides Nikki in his apartment. Braun's body, sent for an autopsy, disappears and in its place is a life-sized statue of the dead man.
Dangerous Blondes
Mystery writer Barry Craig (Allyn Joslyn) and his wife Jane (Evelyn Keyes), prefer solving crimes rather than writing about them. They get a chance when killings plague the fashion photography studio of Ralph McCormick (Edmund Lowe). After his secretary, Julie Taylor(Anita Louise) reports an attempt to murder her there, Erika McCormick's (Ann Savage) Aunt Isabel Fleming (Mary Forbes) is stabbed and the evidence points to Madge Lawrence (Bess Flowers) an older model and an apparent suicide. Police Inspector Joseph Clinton (Frank Craven) declares the case closed...but then Erika is murdered.
The Spanish Cape Mystery
Ellery Queen's vacation is interrupted when murder strikes next door to his oceanside cabin.
Enemy Agents Meet Ellery Queen
Detective Ellery Queen aids Free Dutch agents battle Nazi spies over a prize of industrial diamonds.
The Benson Murder Case
A ruthless, crooked stockbroker is murdered at his luxurious country estate, and detective Philo Vance just happens to be there; he decides to find out who killed him.
The Lone Wolf in Mexico
In this entry in the enduring series, the suave jewel thief finds himself helping the police break up a ring of diamond smugglers. Along the way, he winds up accused of both robbery and murder.
The Phantom Thief
Boston Blackie, in the 11th film of the Columbia series, indulges in some wit-trading with a squirmy spiritualist who deals in blackmail, murder and the occult. "Blackie" out to help his pal, "Runt," recover some jewels, finds himself involved in the homicides, and also finds himself as the prime suspect, and now has to find the real culprit in order to clear himself. So "Blackie,", a man of many talents and already a proved magician from cases past, shows he knows a little bit about dancing skeletons, walking phantoms and spiritualism himself, and holds a séance to unmask the murderer.
Vanity Street
A New York policeman helps a hungry and penniless young woman start life anew by arranging to get her a job in "The Follies".
Ticket to a Crime
After a jeweler hires a private detective to help him find $50,000 missing from his company, he is murdered while attending a society party; and the private eye, aided by his comely secretary, vies with a bumbling police detective to find the murderer among several suspects, including the dead man's daughter, her current husband, her former husband, and an ex-convict.
The Crime Doctor's Gamble
While visiting France, a criminal psychologist tries to clear a disturbed young man of his father's murder.
Double Alibi
A man's ex-wife is found murdered, and he finds himself to be the prime suspect.
The Last of the Lone Wolf
In this entry in the Lone Wolf series, the first to have a soundtrack, the jealousies of the King and the coquettish Queen are chronicled. When His Majesty learns that his wife has given the ring he gave to her to her lover, the King plans a large ball and demands the she wear the token. As her lover is a military attache, he is not in the palace, and the queen must send her lady-in-waiting to bring it back. En route, the lady meets a thief and they team up. She does not know that he has been dispatched by the King to steal ring from the attache.
Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You
Detective Ellery Queen has to solve a series of murders where the victims were killed in numerically descending ages, the male victims were strangled with blue cords and the female victims with pink ones.
Before Midnight
A detective tries to figure out who killed a man who predicted his own death.
Shanghai Chest
Charlie attempts to solve a triple murder in which a dead man's finger prints show up at all three murder sites, and all three victims were connected with the conviction and execution of an evidently innocent man.
Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery
Like the first entry in Columbia's "Ellery Queen" series, Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery depicts its amateur-criminologist hero as an oafish ignoramus. This time around, Chinese ventriloquist Gordon Cobb (Noel Madison), is murdered by a gang of jewel thieves. Baffled by the contradictory clues, Inspector Queen (Charles Grapewin) asks his son Ellery (Ralph Bellamy) to help out.
A Close Call for Boston Blackie
Blackie runs into a woman he formally loved who now is married with a kid. When her husband gets out of prison he's killed in Blackie's apartment and of course the police thing Blackie pulled the trigger. Blackie must set out to prove his innocence as well as capture the real killers.
A Close Call for Ellery Queen
Two mysterious seamen come from Alan Rogers' past to blackmail him as he seeks to locate his missing daughters. Ellery Queen is called in by Stewart Cole, Rogers' secretary. Queen goes to the estate and finds one daughter already there and the second one expected. When she arrives, it is Ellery's secretary Nikki Porter posing as the daughter as Ellery had her intercept the real heiress after learning of a plot to swindle Rogers. The blackmailing seamen are killed at a waterfront café after getting the blackmail money, Rogers is suspected and Inspector Queen arrives to arrest him, but he is also found dead.
A Desperate Chance for Ellery Queen
A man is framed for embezzlement and runs off to San Francisco. His wife hires Queen to try and track him down before the police get to him.
Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring
Ralph Bellamy made his fourth and final appearance as literary sleuth Ellery Queen in Columbia's Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring. On this occasion, Ellery and his police-inspector father are summoned to a private hospital by its owner, philanthropist Mrs. Stack. There've been some very weird goings-on at the hospital as of late, and Mrs. Stack wants to get to the bottom of things.
X Marks the Spot
A private detective, soon to enlist in the army, is drawn into one final case when his police officer father is killed in the line of duty. Soon his prime suspect is murdered as well, and he finds himself framed for the crime. As more witnesses get murdered, he finds himself on the run from both the police and former Prohibition violators who seem to have found a new racket.