Best movies like Once a Thief
Portrait...of a heel!!!
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Once a Thief Starring Cesar Romero, June Havoc, Marie McDonald, Lon Chaney Jr., and more. If you liked Once a Thief then you may also like: Vertigo, Never Trust a Gambler, Night Waitress, The Raging Tide, Railroaded! 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.
A down-on-her-luck San Francisco woman, turning in desperation to jewel robbery, barely escapes getting nabbed in a heist and moves to Los Angeles where she gets an honest job as a waitress. Her troubles start again, however, when she falls madly in love, blind to the fact that her boyfriend is a four-flushing, small-time con man.
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Never Trust a Gambler
A small-time gambler on the run from the law hides in his ex-wife's house.
Night Waitress
Helen Roberts, who's on probation, goes back to work as a waitress at Torre's Fish Palace, a San Francisco waterfront dive. The customers are low characters trying to make time with Helen and ex-rum runners trying to make a dishonest dollar. Some of the latter, including Helen's unwelcome suitor Martin Rhodes, are after a mysterious, valuable hidden "cargo"; when violence erupts, Helen finds herself innocently involved, and is soon on the run from both cops and crooks.
The Raging Tide
A San Francisco hood is rubbed out by rival Bruno Felkin, who himself reports the crime to Homicide Lt. Kelsey in an alibi scheme which fails. To escape, he stows away on a fishing boat. At sea, skipper Hamil Linder receives Bruno kindly, teaching him fishing; Bruno enlists Hamil's wayward son Carl to tend his slot machines. Then Carl takes an interest in Bruno's girl Connie. Climax in a storm at sea.
Railroaded!
A beautician and her crooked boyfriend attempt to rob the bookie operation located in the back room, but when the plan goes wrong, they frame an innocent man.
Butterflies Are Free
Striving to be independent, the blind but determined Don Baker moves away from his overprotective mother. After settling into his new San Francisco digs, Don meets kooky neighbor Jill Tanner. Don's quick wit and good looks disarm the free-spirited Jill, and before long they're more than just friends. Will Mrs. Baker's incessant meddling destroy Don and Jill's budding relationship?
Escape in the Fog
A military nurse recovering at an inn from a nervous breakdown keeps having dreams where she sees two men trying to murder a third. When she meets a man who is a federal agent at the inn, she is astounded to discover that he is the man in her dream who is the intended murder victim.
13 Hours by Air
Womanizer and airline pilot Jack Gordon must fly the world's fastest airliner from New York to California while dealing with dangerous jewel thieves on the run from the law.
Dark Passage
A man convicted of murdering his wife escapes from prison and works with a woman to try and prove his innocence.
The Man Who Cheated Himself
A veteran homicide detective who has witnessed his socialite girlfriend kill her husband sees his inexperienced brother assigned to the case.
Port of Missing Girls
Nightclub singer Della Mason witnesses a murder and is forced by the killer to flee with him from the scene of the crime. Escaping from the gangster, she secretly boards the ship of Captain Josiah Storm, a woman-hater, and the ship sails from San Francisco headed for China. Della is discovered by Jim Benton, the ship's first mate and he pleads her case to the captain. He leaves her in under the protection of Minnie at "Minnie's Joint in Shanghai, until her innocence can be established.
Sudden Fear
Actor Lester Blaine has all but landed the lead in Myra Hudson's new play when Myra vetoes him because, to her, he doesn't look like a romantic leading man. On a train from New York to San Francisco, Blaine sets out to prove Myra wrong...by romancing her. Is he sincere, or does he have a dark ulterior motive?
Treasure of Monte Cristo
A San Francisco lawyer uses a woman to lure a merchant seaman worth a legendary fortune.
Frisco Jenny
Jenny is carrying the child of a young man who dies in the San Francisco earthquake (1906). After giving birth, she decides to place her child in the custody of a wealthy married couple. Years later, thanks to the protection of a corrupt politician, she becomes the main "madame" of San Francisco, in addition to participating in various illegal activities.
No Road Back
A blind and deaf woman dedicates her life and sacrifices all she has for her son, a good-for-nothing troublemaker who gets mixed up with a criminal gang that tries to frame him for a robbery.
Danger Zone
A San Francisco man is paid to bid on a saxophone and escort a woman to a yacht party.
Scarlet Angel
After robbing a sea captain in New Orleans, a beautiful saloon girl flees and assumes a dead woman's identity.
Seven Miles from Alcatraz
After Pearl Harbor, convicts at Alcatraz prison live in fear of bomb attacks, driving Champ Larkin and his pal Jimbo to a desperate escape attempt which lands them on a tiny lighthouse island, where they take over. The five inhabitants are stymied in their efforts to summon aid. But the island also figures in the schemes of a big Nazi spy ring; which will win out, the gangsters' greed or their patriotism?
The Dice Woman
Anita Gray is the spoiled daughter of a millionaire. Returning home from a party, her car breaks down and she is picked up by a stranger, who sells her his car for a diamond bracelet. The car has been stolen and the police arrest her, but she escapes and takes refuge on a freighter bound for China. She has no money and has to work her way there. Her father learns of her destination and hires Hamlin to bring her safely home.
The Scarlet Hour
An unhappy wife uses her powers of manipulation to draw an infatuated man into an ill-fated jewelry heist.
By Whose Hand?
A man tries to hide aboard a moving train after murdering a jewelry magnate.
Chinatown at Midnight
A young man who steals valuable Oriental objects for a lady friend who operates an antique shop gets mixed up in a twisted murder plot.
Meet the Girls
Entertainers lose their jobs and their fares from Honolulu back to San Francisco so they must become stowaways.
Frisco Sal
Sal comes to the Barbary Coast from New England to find out who murdered her brother. She gets a job signing in Dude's saloon, falls in love with Dude, then wonders if he might be involved in the murder.
The Story of Molly X
Molly's husband Rick was a gang leader somewhere in the middle west. When he's shot, the tough woman moves to S.F. with a couple of the gang to start anew. Disguised as a noble woman, she and her gang rob security transports. But when one day Rob confesses to her that he killed Rick out of jealousy, she shoots him down immediately. In lack of proof she can't be convicted for the murder, but she goes to jail for the robberies. It's a new and very open female prison, where she learns a profession for the first time in her life.
Hitler- Dead or Alive
A team of ex-con bounty hunters go to Germany in search of Hitler. If they can find him, a million dollar reward is to be paid to them.
Cage of Evil
While investigating a diamond heist, disgruntled cop Harper falls for Holly, the top suspect's main squeeze. When she convinces him to kill her boyfriend and make off with her and the loot, they start down a treacherous path full of dark surprises.
King of Alcatraz
A convict who has just escaped from Alcatraz Prison takes over a passenger ship. Two of the ship's crew hatch a plot to overpower him and rescue the ship's passengers.
Docks of San Francisco
Barbary Coast, San Francisco. The gangster moll Belle gets deeply entangled with gangsters led by her boyfriend Vance. The professional writer John Banning understands why Belle got involved with these criminals. Banning tries to help her get out of that seedy life. However, It is not easy. A lot of action and violence ensues before Belle eventually succeeds.
Drums of Tahiti
A smuggler (Dennis O'Keefe) buys a bride (Patricia Medina) in San Francisco to help him run guns in 1877 Tahiti.
Law of the Barbary Coast
Wayne Adams is murdered in a Barbary Coast saloon and gambling hall in San Francisco in 1880, and his sister, Julie, enlists the aid of the district attorney, Michael Lodge, in gathering evidence in which to convict the owner of the gambling house of the crime. In order to do so, Julie poses as a dance-hall-girl, and soon finds herself in a dangerous situation.
The Undercover Woman
Two women private detectives arrive at a dude ranch in time to investigate the murder of their client's philandering husband.
Vertigo
A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.