Best movies like Romance of the Underworld

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Romance of the Underworld Starring Mary Astor, Ben Bard, Robert Elliott, John Boles, and more. If you liked Romance of the Underworld then you may also like: Villain, Wild Horses, A Wise Fool, The Woman Racket, Nine Girls 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.

When a gangster's speakeasy is raided by the police, one of the people picked up is the gangster's pretty young girlfriend. A kind-hearted cop takes pity on her and helps her get out of that life. While waitressing to earn money for college, she meets a wealthy and handsome young man and they fall in love--but he doesn't know about her somewhat shady past and her relationship with the gangster.

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Villain

In 1970s London, Scotland Yard orchestrates the downfall of mob boss Vic Dakin after he crosses the line by blackmailing Members of Parliament.

Wild Horses

Texas Ranger Samantha Payne reopens a 15-year-old missing person case, and uncovers evidence that suggests that the boy was likely murdered on a ranch belonging to wealthy family man, Scott Briggs. When Scott’s estranged son unexpectedly returns home during the investigation, Samantha becomes even more convinced that the Briggs family was involved, and will stop at nothing to discover the truth about the boy’s death - even putting her own life in jeopardy.

A Wise Fool

Jean, a wealthy young Canadian back from a trip to Europe, meets and falls for Carmen, a pretty young Spanish girl. They marry and have a daughter, but soon afterward Jean discovers his wife is having an affair. She takes her daughter and leaves him, and Jean's luck gets even worse--he loses his business in a fire and his thieving father-in-law steals what little money he has left.

The Woman Racket

During a raid, a cop lets a pretty speakeasy employee escape and later begins dating her. Although she loves him, his salary and dull life leave her wanting.

Nine Girls

One of the members of a sorority is found murdered. Although the police are called in to investigate, some of the girls decide to do some sleuthing on their own to unmask the killer.

Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman

A.J. Raffles, an educated and handsome cricket champ with entry to the best social circles steals precious trinkets and jewels, purely for the love of the game and the thrill of the chase, outwitting police and detectives.

Ride Along

For the past two years, high-school security guard Ben has been trying to show decorated APD detective James that he's more than just a video-game junkie who's unworthy of James' sister, Angela. When Ben finally gets accepted into the academy, he thinks he's earned the seasoned policeman's respect and asks for his blessing to marry Angela. Knowing that a ride along will demonstrate if Ben has what it takes to take care of his sister, James invites him on a shift designed to scare the hell out of the trainee. But when the wild night leads them to the most notorious criminal in the city, James will find that his new partner's rapid-fire mouth is just as dangerous as the bullets speeding at it.

The Runaway Bride

Mary Gray elopes to Atlantic City, NJ, but begins having second thoughts about the marriage. Then she becomes inexplicably locked in her hotel room, and a series of cops, robbers and kidnappers passes through. Desperate, Mary trusts the shifty chambermaid Clara who whisks her away to the mansion of wealthy George Blaine. There, Mary must pretend to be a lowly cook, but that seems better than sticking with the guy she was engaged to.

Johnny Skidmarks

Johnny Scardino is working for blackmailers, photographing wealthy guys in seedy motels. One such assignment turns the wrong way and blackmailers die one by one. Is Johnny the next on the list?

Kick In

After serving time in Sing Sing, Chic Hewes wants to go straight, but when he refuses to be a stool pigeon for the cops, they hound him mercilessly. Hewes witnesses a car accident in which Jerry Brandon, the son of the district attorney, runs over a child. He also meets Molly, the D.A.'s daughter. Because he feels the child's mother was treated unfairly, Hewes decides to pull one last heist to square things.

Accused of Murder

A police detective finds himself entangled in the web of the underworld when he falls in love with a nightclub singer accused of murdering a crooked lawyer.

After Midnight

When Joe, a hold-up man, tries to rob Mary, a nightclub hostess, she winds winds up knocking him out. She takes pity on him, however, and nurses him back to health. He decides to go straight and marry her. Mary buys a $1000 Liberty Bond as an investment, while Joe saves up and buys a taxi to start his own business. Then Maisie, Mary's wild and money-crazy sister, shows up, which leads to tragedy.

Baby Take a Bow

Eddie Ellison is an ex-con who spent time in Sing-Sing prison. Kay marries him as soon as he serves his time. Five years later, Eddie and his ex-convict buddy Larry, have both gone straight, and Eddie and Kay have a beautiful little girl named Shirley. However, Welch has kept a close eye on them for years. He believes in "once a criminal, always a criminal." Then, when Eddie's employer's wife's pearls go missing, it comes out that Eddie and Larry both spent time in prison, and they're fired. Welch suspects that Eddie and Larry have something to do with the theft of the pearls. Will Welch prove that Eddie and Larry had something to do with the theft, or will the truth prevail?

Pushover

A police detective falls for the bank robber's girlfriend he is supposed to be tailing.

Gang Related

Two corrupt cops have a successful, seemingly perfect money making scheme- they sell drugs that they seize from dealers, kill the dealers, and blame the crimes on street gangs. Their scheme is going along smoothly until they kill an undercover DEA agent posing as a dealer, and then try to cover-up their crime.

Devil in a Blue Dress

In late 1940s Los Angeles, Easy Rawlins is an unemployed black World War II veteran with few job prospects. At a bar, Easy meets DeWitt Albright, a mysterious white man looking for someone to investigate the disappearance of a missing white woman named Daphne Monet, who he suspects is hiding out in one of the city's black jazz clubs. Strapped for money and facing house payments, Easy takes the job, but soon finds himself in over his head.

Escape

A convict sentenced to three years for killing a detective escapes from a prison and goes on the run aided by a local girl.

Money for Nothing

When unemployed dockworker Joey Coyle finds $1.2 million that fell off of an armored car, he decides to do the logical thing: take the money and run. After all, he says, finders keepers. He turns to his ex-girlfriend Monica, who works in an investment firm, for advice, before turning to the mob for help laundering the money. While Joey makes plans to leave the country, however, a detective is following his ever-warmer trail in order to recover the cash.

Life Without Dick

By accident, Colleen Gibson shoots and kills her gold-digging cheating boyfriend, Dick, a private eye who happens to have a hitman on his tail. Danny the hitman works for his brother-in-law, a cheerful but nasty Irish mobster, hasn't actually killed anyone, and wants to be a singer. He falls for Colleen. she likes him, too. He can solve her problem (Dick's body), she can solve his (meeting the mobster's demands that he kill people like Dick). Danny has an ex-girlfriend, who might still hold the key to his heart, two cops are sniffing around for Dick, a junk yard owner gets a conscience, and a talent show is coming up. Bullets, music, and true love are set to collide.

Mitchell

A tough-guy cop pursues two drug runners across the city to bust a large syndicate. Very much an anti-hero, Mitchell often ignores the orders of his superiors and demonstrates disdain for by-the-book development work as well as normal social graces.

Playing Around

New York girl has a dull boyfriend and seems destined for a dull marriage when she meets a rich playboy who has money to burn and places to go.

Silence

Jim Warren, a crook, is married to Norma, but there was a flaw in their marriage papers and he must marry her again to protect their unborn child. He returns home and gives her some money but it has been stolen and she is sent to jail as an accomplice. To get her out, he is forced to marry another woman and Norma, thinking Jim has deserted her marries Phil Powers, and gives birth to Jim's daughter. Years later, Jim meets his daughter in the midst of a blackmail scheme against Norma over her earlier imprisonment. The daughter shoots the blackmailer, and Jim takes the blame.

Small Town Crime

Mike Kendall, a disgraced ex-cop, is fighting a losing battle with the bottle. When he finds a woman left for dead at the side of a road, Kendall turns private eye to track down her killers, taking one last shot at redemption.

To Be Fat Like Me

Pretty, popular, and slim high-schooler Aly Schimdt had plans of earning a sports scholarship to college but a knee injury ruins her chances. She decides to enter a documentary contest in the hopes of winning money for college. She believes that overweight people, like her mom and brother, seem to make excuses about how the world perceives them. So Aly decides to attend a rival high school as a heavily overweight person for the documentary, but not change her personality. Aly intends and hopes to prove that personality will outshine physical appearance. But when she's met with ridicule, harassment, and name-calling she begins to see things differently.

The Arrangement

A drug deal hijacked by a third party, they leave the drugs and take the money. A stripper witnesses a murder and now the Mafia's after but there is nowhere safe to hide.

The Flame

George McAllister (John Carroll), the black sheep of a wealthy family who has squandered his share of the family inheritance, lives in constant jealousy, hatred and resentment of his half-brother Barry (Robert Paige), who has been supporting him. George gets his girlfriend, Carlotta Duval (Vera Ralston), a job as Barry's nurse, with the idea being to marry him, kill him, and inherit his money—and marrying George. But instead of going ahead with the original plan, she finds that she is really in love with Barry.

Flaxy Martin

Attorney Walter Colby has ties to the mob, but he begins to regret his criminal affiliations. When his girlfriend, showgirl Flaxy Martin, who also has shady connections, becomes a suspect in a murder, Walter takes the fall. However, on his way to prison, he escapes, determined to bring the real killer to justice.

The Hard Truth

A suspended cop and his girlfriend blackmail an electronics expert into helping them break into the safe of the girlfriend's boss, a corrupt city councilman who's on the local mob's payroll.

Gang War

Saxophone player Clyde meets a woman named Flowers, and teaches her to dance. He later discovers that gangster boss "Blackjack" is also in love with her. "Blackjack" is also battling gang boss Mike Luego in a violent turf war.

Man Trouble

A hard-boiled nightclub owner saves a beautiful young girl from drowning. He promptly falls in love with her, but she prefers a younger, more-genteel lover.

Murder Is My Business

Michael Shayne is a private detective who is disliked greatly by Pete Rafferty, local chief of police detectives. Rafferty notifies the newspaper press that he is going to close Shayne's agency, just as Michael is about to be hired by the wealthy Eleanor Ramsey, who is being blackmailed. She is the stepmother of what she considers to be two grown-up brats, Dorothy and Ernest, and she considers their father to be of little value to the world himself. They all conspire to get their hands on her money, even to the extent of attempting to hire Shayne to frame an insurance robbery. Mrs. Ramsey is murdered, and Rafferty is trying to pin the killing on Shayne, despite the fact that suspicion points to Buell Renslow, brother of the slain woman. Shayne's secretary, the fetching Phyllis Hamilton, decides to do a little detective work to help her boss.

The Frog

In this Edgar Wallace adaptation, Sergeant Elk (a lugubrious Gordon Harker) sets out to unmask the Frog, the evil mastermind heading up a mysterious network responsible for a litany of sensational crimes. Wallace was one of the first British authors to capitalise on the potential of cinema to increase his already considerable celebrity. His luridly titled thrillers depicting shady underworlds remained popular film sources long after his death in 1932. This lavish production boasts a distinguished cast and delivers on all fronts: from romance and exotic cabaret acts, to heaps of tension and a dramatic reveal.

My Lady of Whims

Aspiring author Prudence "Prue" Severn leaves her staid home for the wild life in New York's artistic Greenwich Village community. Her concerned family hires two thrill-seeking ex-doughboys, bow-tied Bartley "Bart" Greer and his trigger-happy buddy Lee, to look after her and, hopefully, persuade her to come home. They move into Prue's apartment building, where she lives with a sculptress pal. Although interested in Bart, Prue senses he is being paid to watch over her-- so she decides to elope with the handsome Rolf.

The Devil Is Driving

Gabby Denton, a hard-drinking, down-on-his-luck drifter, seems to get a chance at redemption when his brother-in-law helps get him a job as a mechanic. Not realizing the garage he works for is actually a front for a stolen car ring, Gabby soon finds himself mixed up in both murder and a liaison with the boss's girl.

The Glass Shield

J.J. is a rookie in the Sheriff's Department and the first black officer at that station. Racial tensions run high in the department as some of J.J.'s fellow officers resent his presence. His only real friend is the other new trooper, the first female officer to work there, who also suffers similar discrimination in the otherwise all-white male work environment. When J.J. becomes increasingly aware of police corruption during the murder trial of Teddy Woods, whom he helped to arrest, he faces difficult decisions and puts himself into grave personal danger in the service of justice.

Love Bound

A gold-digging woman wins a big settlement against an older married man, which threatens to destroy the man's family. His son, discovering that the woman is part of a ring of blackmailers and that she is planning to flee the country, takes along his hulking chauffeur and follows her onto an ocean liner. There the two pretend to be a pair of wealthy playboys so that the woman will make a play for him and try to blackmail him, too, so he can then expose her and prove his father's innocence. Complications ensue.

Hearts in Exile

In Czarist Russia, attractive Anna Ivanovna has consecrated her life to work among Russia's persecuted poor. She dispenses food, medicine, and funds to the needy, from a busy charity headquarters. Two men, separate in station, are in love with Ivanovna: Poor doctor Paul helps as much as he can, and wealthy merchant Serge donates money. The relentless and lascivious Chief of Police, also attracted by Ivanova's beauty and virtue, determines to possess her, and sentences all three to fifteen years in Siberia and East Russia on false charges.

Boomerang Bill

When New York City police officer O'Malley learns of a young man who is about to embark on a life of crime by taking part in a robbery, he takes the boy aside and tells him the story of Boomerang Bill, another wanna-be gangster who wanted to be a big shot in the New York crime scene. It seems that Bill fell for a pretty young dance-hall girl, and went up against local gang boss Tony the Wop when he insulted her. Tony, who never forgot a slight, found a way to make things very, very tough for Boomerang Bill, in a way that he never saw coming.

There's Always a Woman

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.

Dancing in Manhattan

In this comedy, a garbage truck driver stumbles across $5,000. He decides to use the money for a wild night on the town. He and his girlfriend do not know that the money represents the spoils of a blackmailer's scheme.

Alias the Lone Wolf

Michael Lanyard, aka the Lone Wolf, is sailing to America when he meets pretty Eve de Montalais. Eve wants to sneak her valuable necklace through U.S. customs so that she can use the money from its sale to help straighten out her brother. The only problem is that there is a gang of jewel thieves on board who are just as determined to steal the necklace.

The Big Fight

Based on the David Belasco stage production of the Max Marcin play in which heavyweight-champion Jack Dempsey played the role of the fighter, Tiger: This "behind-the-scenes look of a heavyweight-championship fight" looks much like all of the other boxing films in which the Champ gets involved in a frame-up and is asked to take a dive.

Dressed to Kill

A mob boss' gang gets suspicious about their boss' new girlfriend, a beautiful young girl who doesn't seem to be the type who'd hang out with gangsters. They're not quite certain if she's actually a police agent or just a "groupie".

Permanent

Six unrelated people must push through their past and the mob underworld to discover what has controlled each of them all these years. Sex, Drugs, Guns and God have created a series of events which will leave each of them changed forever.

The Last Hour

Steve Cline returns to the U.S. after earning his fortune in South America. He reads in the paper that his brother Tom was arrested for safecracking. Tom escapes and runs to the home of Sadie McCall, whose father Reever heads a forgery ring. Steve rushes to meet his brother, but Tom is killed in a police raid. Reever gets away and Steve falls for Sadie, but Steve takes the blame for the murder and faces death by hanging. Reported by some to be Gary Cooper's first film as an extra. However this is not confirmed in any way.

Out of the Storm

Donald Lewis is a low-paid clerk in a high-profile shipbuilding firm. When the company is robbed in broad daylight, Lewis gathers up $100,000 on his own and skeedaddles, figuring that the lost funds will be attributed to the holdup. Before his girlfriend Ginny can persuade him to go straight, the hapless Lewis finds himself hotly pursued by cops and crooks alike.

American Pluck

Blaze Derringer is a Texas cattle baron's son. He goes to a cabaret on his birthday, helps a pretty young woman and her guardian avoid a raid, but gets tossed from college for bad behavior. His disgusted father dispatches him to seek his fortune. Blaze jumps a freight, befriends a fake British duke and a sporting African-American, and is offered a prize fight in Galveston. He wins, but may have killed his opponent, so he takes the offer of the woman from the cabaret to accompany her to Begonia, where she's a princess about to be crowned. A court minister, the dastardly Count Verensky, has plans to share the throne and her affections. Can the plucky American help the Europeans sort things out?

Help! Help! Police!

While vacationing with his father Edward at a Palm Beach hotel, George Welston becomes smitten with Eve Pendleton, the daughter of Edward's business rival Judson. After George prevents Pendleton from getting an option on a deal by racing in his car with his father's $100,000 deposit, Pendleton favors Eve's other suitor, Arthur Trask, whose gentlemanly manner conceals his intent to rob Eve and her wealthy friends.

Common Clay

Young Ellen Neal gets work as a servant with the wealthy Fullerton family. She falls in love with the Fullerton's handsome young son. But he leaves her with child, and when she attempts to gain recognition for her child, the Fullerton family treats her as a blackmailer. But a surprise awaits them all.

The Rendering

Ten years after being molested in art school by habitual rapist Theodore Gray, who is serving 25 years but eligible for parole, Sarah Reynolds leads a happy life in a gallery and with her handsome husband, lawyer Michael Reynolds, and helps police detective Nick Sousa, who put Grat away, as sketch-artist. Then new cases following Gray's MO occur, and a victim who got away gives a description Sara hesitates to confide to paper: it fits Michael scarily. She turns it in, yet once he's behind bars searches in and is blackmailed to plead Gray's paroling or his crime cahoots will torture Michael to death.

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