Best movies like Praying Mantis

FBI agent Joel Campbell, burnt-out and shell-shocked after years spent chasing serial killers, flees L.A. to begin a new life for himself in Chicago. But five months later, Joel's best laid plans are abruptly cut short when his new hometown becomes the setting for some particularly gruesome murders--murders that could only have been committed by one man: David Allen Griffin. One of Joel's most elusive and cunning nemeses, Griffin has followed his former pursuer to Chicago in order to play a sadistic game of cat and mouse. Taunting Joel with photographs of his intended victims and leaving his crime scenes meticulously free of clues in order to keep the police at bay, Griffin derives as much pleasure out of watching Joel react to every movement as watching his victims die. But when Griffin moves into Joel's inner circle, Joel must quickly find some way to stop him before someone close to him becomes the next one to die.

Career-slipping movie star Carole Raymond buys in as a real estate partner of Jeff Caldwell. Actually, through his secretary, Nola Reed, Caldwell runs a matrimonial bureau and, with the aid of his associate, Lee Kirby, they defraud and blackmail a large group of lonely people. Carole, unknowingly, is used as bait for one of their victims, Walter Desmond, who "commits suicide." Reporter William Tyler thinks otherwise.

A convict marries the warder's daughter after his escape and she eventually persuades him to finish his sentence.

When a secret marriage is planned between Othello, a Moorish general, and Desdemona, the daughter of Senator Brabantio, her old suitor Roderigo takes it hard. He allies himself with Iago, who has his own grudge against Othello, and the two conspire to bring Othello down. When their first plan, to have him accused of witchcraft, fails, they plant evidence intended to make him believe Desdemona is unfaithful.

An English professor decides that there are too many useless people in the world and invents a gas that will kill them off. But first they'll at least have a good laugh.

A man takes over the identity of a dead man while on the lam from a crime he didn't commit.

Rick Leland makes no secret of the fact he has no loyalty to his home country after he is court-marshaled out of the army and boards a Japanese ship for the Orient in late 1941. But has Leland really been booted out, or is there some other motive for his getting close to fellow passenger Doctor Lorenz? Any motive for getting close to attractive traveller Alberta Marlow would however seem pretty obvious.

Wealthy widow Helen Mercer hires a young woman, Gretchen Addison, to act as her personal assistant and companion. Unfortunately, Helen is a poor judge of character, as Gretchen is part of a murderous extortionist duo with her boyfriend, Jay. However, Gretchen has second thoughts when she develops genuine affection for Helen. When Gretchen informs Jay that she wants to call off their plot, he refuses and carries on with the plan. Now both Helen and Gretchen may be in grave danger.

Nancy Grace's THE ELEVENTH VICTIM is a taut suspense-thriller that follows Atlanta Assistant District Attorney Hailey Dean (Jennie Garth) as she tirelessly pursues the conviction of a serial killer. Just when her courtroom prosecution of the murderer begins, Haileys fiancée is killed in a seemingly unrelated crime. Shattered by her personal loss, she moves to New York City and begins a new career as a therapist. When her clients start to turn up dead, one by one with the murderer using the same M.O. as the Atlanta serial killer she put behind bars she is forced back into the dark world she left behind to help catch a cold-blooded killer who could very well make her his next target.

Jenn Corbin seems to have it all; the perfect husband, children and life. But when this suburban wife and mother in an upscale Atlanta suburb, commits suicide, authorities discover a marriage of secrets and betrayal. While the investigation seems to be leading to the final conclusion that her death was a suicide, bits and pieces of the couple’s lives come to the surface. These discoveries soon convey that looks can be deceiving and people are not necessarily what they appear to be!

A guerilla leader falls in love with a mysterious woman in World War II Lisbon.

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.

An assistant district attorney gets mixed-up with a woman who is working for the group that he is investigating.

A rich woman and a calculating insurance agent plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy. Against a backdrop of distinctly Californian settings, the partners in crime plan the perfect murder to collect the insurance, which pays double if the death is accidental.

A scheming wife lures an insurance investigator into helping murder her husband and then declare it an accident. The investigator's boss, not knowing his man is involved in it, suspects murder and sets out to prove it.

Set just after the American civil war, businessman and inventor Victor Barbicane invents a new source of power called Power X. He plans to use it to power rockets, and to show its potential he plans to send a projectile to the moon. Joining him for the trip are his assistant Ben Sharpe, Barbicane's arch-rival Stuyvesant Nicholl, and Nicholl's daughter Virginia. Nicholl believes that Power X goes against the will of God and sabotages the projectile so that they cannot return to earth, setting up a suspenseful finale as they battle to repair the projectile.

Arthur Simon Simpson is a small-time crook biding his time in Greece. One of his potential victims turns out to be a gentleman thief planning to steal the emerald-encrusted dagger of the Mehmed II from Istanbul's Topkapi Museum.

Bobby Bishop is a special assistant to the President of the United States. Accidentally, he meets his friend professor Pochenko on the street. Pochenko has time to tell Bishop about some conspiracy in the White House but then immediately gets killed by an assassin. Now bad guys are after Bobby as the only man who knows about a plot. Bishop must now not only survive, but to stop the conspirators from achieving their goal. And he doesn't know whom to trust.

During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda, a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny and his daughter Mascha.

A Jewish pawnbroker, a victim of Nazi persecution, loses all faith in his fellow man until he realizes too late the tragedy of his actions.

In this classic Edgar Allan Poe story, a man commits a murder, but afterward the victim's beating heart torments the murderer's mind.

A seemingly charitable soup kitchen operator (who moonlights as a criminology professor) uses his Bowery mission as a front for his criminal gang. Police attempt to close in on the gang as they commit a series of robberies, murders and bizarre experiments on corpses.

A playboy takes a job as an assistant district attorney, finds himself up against a tough crime boss and his gang.

A San Francisco man is paid to bid on a saxophone and escort a woman to a yacht party.

A young writer saves a desperate young woman from committing suicide. They eventually fall in love and marry, but their marriage faces some serious roadblocks.

After 6 years of brutal murders, the West Yorkshire Police fear that they may have already interviewed The Ripper and let him back into the world to continue his reign of terror upon the citizens of Yorkshire. Assistant Chief Constable of the Manchester Police, Peter Hunter, is called in to oversee the West Yorkshire Police's Ripper investigation and see what they could have missed.

Heist thriller and adaptation of Ian Rankin's book, which sees a bored millionaire plan to swap the contents of a gallery's warehouse with near-perfect forgeries.

After being consulted by a friend concerning a murder case, a private eye learns the friend has become the next victim. Passport to Treason was put together by Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman, the same team who’d later collaborate on the UK TV series The Saint. Rod Cameron stars as an American private eye, stationed in London. For the sake of a murdered friend, the detective takes over the dead man’s case, which turns out to have international ramifications. The villains are members of a phony pacifistic society, all of whom harbor plans for taking over the world.

A businessman loses his sight in an explosion on the day his wife planned to leave him for another man.

A young woman dreamed of a military career. In 2020, however, after telling her mother she was being sexually harassed on the Fort Hood army base, Guillen was murdered by a fellow soldier. Her story sparked an international movement of assault victims demanding action. The project follows her family’s fight for historic reform, a journey that takes them to the Oval Office.

Daniel Grudge, a wealthy industrialist and fierce isolationist long embittered by the loss of his son in World War II, is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve who lead him to reconsider his attitude toward his fellow man.

A gunman whose best friend has been murdered enacts a plan to blackmail the corrupt labor union leader responsible but finds he isn't the only one after his money.

The Budapest Opera House's diva commits suicide after the owner ruins her career for having rejected his advances but her conductor-husband, believed killed in a fire, plans his revenge on all those he deems responsible for her suicide.

A mysterious criminal known as The Whispering Shadow commits crimes by means of a gang he controls by television and radio rays. Jack Norton, whose brother was murdered by The Whispering Shadow, suspects that the eerie Professor Strang - whose ghostly wax museum contains figures far too lifelike - may be involved in the crimes.

The members of the Fallen Angels Murder Club must have two things in common — a love for books and have a criminal record. Hollis Morgan meets both requirements. When a member of her book club is murdered in a scene straight out of the previous night’s novel, Hollis becomes the subject of police scrutiny. Refusing to get stuck with another bad rap, Hollis sets out to investigate her fellow club members and after a second book-inspired murder, she races to identify the killer before she becomes the next victim.

Joanne Connors is a successful obstetrician whose life is turned upside down when her partner at their fertility clinic, Dr. Jake Hines, is brutally murdered. Trying to rebuild her life, Joanne attends a lavish charity function, where she meets Michael. But by the end of the evening, Michael is dead - murdered. It quickly becomes apparent that the assassin's intended victim was actually Joanne. She must now race to find out who wants her dead before the killer can strike at her again.

A killer called 'The Dark Man' commits double murder. This is witnessed by the young aspiring actress Molly Lester. The Dark Man tries everything to put Molly out of the way. Detective Inspector Viner of Scotland Yard investigates the murders.

Maggie, a runaway bride, does some soul-searching when she's trapped in a snowed-in cabin with her grandmother and an old flame at Christmas.

An assistant district attorney's (Phylicia Rashad) co-worker lover (Philip Michael Thomas) plans to prove her wrong about a case.

The head of Dartmouth Training College has been murdered, and his successor, Captain Hyde, suspects that he himself may have been the intended target. He enlists the help of his own son Philip, a reluctant cadet at the college, to help him confirm his suspicions about planned enemy action... but meanwhile, there is a Secret Service agent staying at the college observatory, the foreign-born professor of astronomy is behaving strangely, and Naval Intelligence disclaim any knowledge of what is going on...

A handsome radio singer has it all--fame, money, adoring fans--but what no one knows is that his accompanist, a hunchbacked piano player, is actually the voice behind the arrogant, abusive "singer"'s fame. The two men fall for the same girl, and when the singer turns up dead, suspicion falls upon his assistant and the girl.

Fellow convicts Cheyenne Harry and Buck Masters become even more bitter enemies when Buck agrees to tamper with the prison's books for the warden's greedy son. The latter secures Buck's release, but when Buck threatens to blackmail him, he decides that the best place for the outlaw is back in prison. Promising to deliver Buck to the warden's anxious son, Cheyenne Harry accepts a premature pardon and goes in search of the outlaw, hoping to catch him in the act of committing a crime. In a small Western town, Harry falls in love with a dance hall girl named Lola, not knowing that she is Buck's sister. Soon Harry learns that Buck is planning a robbery and informs the warden's son, whose deputies promptly arrest him. Lola's grief so moves Harry, however, that he and his two brothers decide to pursue the deputies and rescue Buck. Lola then promises to marry Harry, while her brother promises to reform.

After four years, Jake Cardigan is prematurely awoken from his fifteen year cryogenic punishment to a world very different than the one he knew. Much more than before 'Tek', the highly-addictive electronic designer narcotic of the 21st century, seems to be prevalent. His wife has divorced him and disappeared together with their son. He wants them back and he wants justice for those undercover policemen who were murdered by unknown conspirators which led to his imprisonment for a crime he did not commit.

Framed for murder by her cheating husband, a newlywed must find a way to absolve herself of a crime she didn't commit while exposing her spouse before it's too late.

A man and his sister-in-law plot to kill his wife, but things don't turn out quite the way they planned.

A dark and sensuous thriller positioned at the intersection of faith, greed and lust - when a corrupt clergyman is ambushed and nearly killed over the cash meant for a bribe, the money's intended recipient has no intention of letting the issue drop.

When a wealthy, lonely university music student is beaten and has his apartment trashed by a fellow dorm resident-bully and his gang, he goes mad, lures the bully into his room on pretense of forgiveness, slips him a paralyzing agent in a drink, throws him in a trunk and locks him in, and taunts the bully with the promise that he will be buried alive in the trunk. Only, once he gets his trunk and his prey to his country estate, the vengeful victim finds things keep going wrong...

In the late 1960s there were no CCTV or crime scene DNA testing, but disposing of a dead body was still bloody murder.

Sparks fly when a personal assistant plans her boss's wedding with the groom's handsome nephew.

After a stamp-collecting Navy chief petty officer is jailed following FBI and Naval Justice investigation, his fiancee meets one of his fellow officers, becomes romantically interested in him, and joins him in trying to get an envelope, believed to contain rare stamps, to its intended recipient, only to end up in a web of intrigue involving foreign-accented men who are unusually interested in that simple envelope.