Best movies like Ellery Queen, Master Detective

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A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Ellery Queen, Master Detective Starring Ralph Bellamy, Margaret Lindsay, Charley Grapewin, James Burke, and more. If you liked Ellery Queen, Master Detective then you may also like: V.I. Warshawski, The Vicious Years, The Jackpot, Juno and the Paycock, Kaleidoscope 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.

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.

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V.I. Warshawski

Victoria "V.I" Warshawski is a Chicago based private detective who agrees to babysit for her new boyfriend; then he is murdered. Being the detective type, she makes the murder her next case. In doing so she befriends the victim's daughter, Kat, and together they set out to crack the case.

The Vicious Years

Mario, an Italian war orphan, sees Luca Rossi commit a murder. Eager for a home and family life, Mario promises not to tell the police if Luca takes him into his household and family. Luca fears and hates Mario, but his father, mother and sister all come to love him.

The Jackpot

Bill Lawrence wins a bevy or prizes from a radio program, but ends up having to sell them all in order to pay the taxes he's incurred.

Juno and the Paycock

During the Irish revolution, a family earns a big inheritance. They start leading a rich life, forgetting what the most important values of life really are. At the end, they discover they will not receive that inheritance; the family is destroyed and penniless. They must sell their home and start living like vagabonds.

Kaleidoscope

A psychological thriller about the destructive relationship between a middle-aged man and his mother.

The Kennel Murder Case

Philo Vance, accompanied by his prize-losing Scottish terrier, investigates the locked-room murder of a prominent and much-hated collector whose broken Chinese vase provides an important clue.

The Blackout

It's Christmas Eve, the city goes dark, and the few remaining tenants of The Ravenwood find themselves trapped in their building. And they are not alone.

Charley and the Angel

Charley is a workaholic family man that finds out from an angel that his "number's up" and he will be dying soon so he tries to change his ways and be a better husband and father with the time he has left.

Slumber

A sleep doctor tries to protect a family from a demon that feeds on people in their nightmares.

Desperate Hours

An escaped con, on the run from the law, moves into a married couple's house and takes over their lives.

Fifteen Wives

Shortly after his arrival from South America to New York, Steven Humbolt is found dead in his apartment at the Savoia Hotel. Inspector Decker Dawes investigates the case and although the cause of death is described as apoplexy, Dawes is convinced it as murder, especially after he learns that Humbolt had been married fifteen times.

Side Street

A struggling young father-to-be gives in to temptation and impulsively steals an envelope of money from the office of a corrupt attorney. Instead of a few hundred dollars, it contains $30,000, and when he decides to return the money things go wrong and that is only the beginning of his troubles.

Happiness C.O.D.

A young man, hard-pressed to pay off his mortgage and support his family, decides that he'll get money any way he can--honestly or otherwise.

I Love You to Death

Joey Boca is the owner of a pizza parlour, and has been married to Rosalie for years. When Rosalie discovers that Joey is a womanizer and has been cheating on her for a long time, she goes to extreme lengths to punish him.

The Sublet

The Sublet is a suspense driven psychological thriller about Joanna, a new mom coping with her baby alone in an odd sublet apartment. As her husband neglects her to focus on his career, Joanna questions her sanity as she discovers a violent past to the apartment and suspects that the building may be haunted.

A Night at the Ritz

A PR man talks a swanky hotel into hiring his girlfriend's brother as chef.

The Unsaid

A doctor dealing with the aftermath of his son's death tries to help a troubled young man.

Ma and Pa Kettle

The Kettles and their fifteen children are about to be evicted from their rundown rustic home when Pa wins the grand prize by coming up with a new tobacco slogan. Birdie Hicks is jealous of the family's new wealth, which includes a completely automated modern home, and accuses Pa of stealing the slogan. Reporter Kim Parker proves Birdie wrong and marries Tom Kettle.

Hook, Line and Sinker

Told he is terminally ill, an insurance executive goes on a credit-card spending spree--and then learns his medical diagnosis was a mistake.

Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm

The Kettles leave their ultra-modern home and return to the country looking for uranium. Ma and Tom's mother-in-law, Mrs. Parker, fight over whether their grandchild will be raised "hygiencially."

If I Die Before I Wake

A suburban family is held hostage and terrorized by three intruders while their sixteen year-old daughter first hides, then exacts her own brand of terror on the assailants.

Holiday Camp

The Huggett family go to a holiday camp, and get involved in crooked card players, a murderer on the run, and a pregnant young girl and her boyfriend missing from home.

Growing Up Coy

A Colorado family is thrust into the international media spotlight when they fight for the rights of their 6-year-old transgender daughter in a landmark civil rights case.

Teen-Age Crime Wave

A delinquent girl involves an innocent friend in an armed robbery followed by a jail-break and hostage-taking with her equally delinquent boyfriend.

The Way of All Flesh

Paul Kriza is a cashier of a bank in a small town, and the happy husband of Anna and the father of four children. He is sent to New York to deliver some securities for the bank. There, he is tagged as easy-pickings by a con-game gang and Mary Brown, gang accomplice, proves he is. Waking up in the morning he discovers he has been robbed of the securities and, when he confronts the gang, he is hit on the head and taken out to be left on a railroad track. He comes to, struggles with the henchman and the man is killed when a train comes roaring by. Paul escapes but his watch is found and he is reported as the dead man. But he can't go home again.

Murder on a Bridle Path

When the body of Violet Feverel is discovered on the Central Park bridle path, Inspector Oscar Piper is about to declare her death accidental from a thrown horse, until his friend and amateur detective Hildegarde Withers locates the horse and discovers blood on the horse.

Enlighten Thy Daughter

A remake of the 1917 picture of the same name. Ruth, the offspring of Stevens' hypocritical brother, is neglected by her parents in matters of sex education; as consequence, she trods the primrose path, ending up pregnant, then dead.

My Brother Jonathan

Jonathan Dakers' early ambition was to become a great surgeon and to marry Edie Martyn. But, on the death of his father, he is obliged to start work as a partner in a poor general practice in the Black Country. Edie falls in love with Jonathan's brother, Harold, who is killed in the Great War, and Jonathan marries her as planned. It is only afterwards that he realises he now loves another.

The Lady in Scarlet

When a wealthy art dealer is murdered, the private investigator hired for the case discovers a web of blackmail, corruption and stolen bonds.

Get That Man

Life gets complicated for a taxi driver when it's discovered that he's the spitting image of the murdered heir to a fortune.

Enlighten Thy Daughter

Lillian Stevens was raised without care, attention, or education on the ways of the world. When she becomes pregnant by the reckless Harold Winthrop, her mother takes her to an abortionist. Harold then falls for Ruth Stevens, raised by an attentive and loving mother, who is not so easily taken advantage of.

Calling Philo Vance

Philo is in Vienna working for the US Government to see if Archer Coe is selling aircraft designs to foreign powers. He grabs the plans with Archer's signature, but is captured by police before he can escape. Deported he comes back to America and plans to confront Archer, but Archer is found dead in his locked bedroom with a gun in his hand. While it looks like a suicide, Vance knows better and the coroner finds that Archer has been shot, hit with a blunt instrument and stabbed - making suicide unlikely. But Vance is on the case and is looking to see if government secrets have been sold and who has murdered Coe. This is a remake of "The Kennel Murder Case" using aircraft designs and espionage instead of Chinese porcelain and dog shows.

Grief Street

A reporter helps the police investigate the murder of a disagreeable and philandering actor who is found strangled to death in his theater dressing room with its door and window locked from the inside.

Lightning: Fire from the Sky

Overwhelmed by a disastrous lightning storm that his son predicted, a man must learn to trust his son in order to save his family and the whole community.

The Shadow Box

Over the course of a day in a California hospice, three terminally ill patients are observed with their families reflecting on life and death.

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.

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.

The Devil Plays

A mystery novelist's detective skills are put to the test when he attends a party where a murder is committed.

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.

The Ex-Mrs. Bradford

A doctor is driven into an investigation of sinister goings-on at a horse race track by his mystery writer ex-wife.

The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes

Holmes, retired to Sussex, is drawn into a last case when his arch enemy Moriarty arranges with an American gang to kill one John Douglas, a country gentleman with a mysterious past. Holmes' methods baffle Watson and Lestrade, but his results astonish them. In a long flashback, the victim's wife tells the story of the sinister Vermissa Valley.

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.

Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime

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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