Best movies like The Crooked Circle
A THIRILLING BATTLE ... for love and life between a two-fisted champ and the crooked underworld!
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Crooked Circle Starring John Smith, Fay Spain, Steve Brodie, Don Kelly, and more. If you liked The Crooked Circle then you may also like: Right Cross, The Ring, Body and Soul, Bowery Blitzkrieg, Breakdown 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 young prizefighter finds himself being squeezed on all sides to throw a fight.
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Body and Soul
Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the fighter becomes surrounded by shady characters, including an unethical promoter named Roberts, who tempt the man with a number of vices. Charley finds himself faced with increasingly difficult choices.
Bowery Blitzkrieg
The East Side Kids discover that one of their own, Danny, is torn between staying and school and becoming a boxer, and is getting mixed up with gangsters.
The Champion
Walking along with his bulldog, Charlie finds a "good luck" horseshoe just as he passes a training camp advertising for a boxing partner "who can take a beating." After watching others lose, Charlie puts the horseshoe in his glove and wins. The trainer prepares Charlie to fight the world champion. A gambler wants Charlie to throw the fight. He and the trainer's daughter fall in love.
The Crowd Roars
A young boxer gets caught between a no-good father and a crime boss when he starts dating the boss's daughter, although she doesn't know what daddy does for a living.
Diggstown
Gabriel Caine has just been released from prison when he sets up a bet with a business man. The business man owns most of a boxing-mad town called Diggstown. The bet is that Gabe can find a boxer that will knock out 10 Diggstown men, in a boxing ring, within 24 hours. "Honey" Roy Palmer is that man - although at 48, many say he is too old.
Hammer
Hotheaded laborer B.J. Hammer can't go long without ending up in a fight, and, after he comes out on top in a particularly impressive workplace scuffle, word of his brawling skills makes its way to Davis, a top boxing manager. Hammer is hired by Davis and begins a lucrative career in the ring, only to find out that his new employer wants him to throw a fight and take part in other illicit activities. Hammer reacts to this news violently, and the feud is on.
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
Boxer Joe Pendleton, flying to his next fight, crashes...because a Heavenly Messenger, new on the job, snatched Joe's spirit prematurely from his body. Before the matter can be rectified, Joe's body is cremated; so the celestial Mr. Jordan grants him the use of the body of wealthy Bruce Farnsworth, who's just been murdered by his wife. Joe tries to remake Farnsworth's unworthy life in his own clean-cut image, but then falls in love; and what about that murderous wife?
Iron Man
In Coaltown, Pennsylvania, miner Coke Mason hopes to better himself, buy a radio store, and marry Rose Warren. His gambler brother George thinks Coke can be more successful as a boxer, knowing that when he fights he's consumed with a murderous rage that makes him an "iron man." Seeing dollar signs in Rose's eyes, Coke reluctantly agrees, though he's fearful of the "killer instinct" that makes him a knockout success in the ring...and brings him the booing hatred of the fans. Will Coke throw off his personal demon before he kills someone?
The Prizefighter and the Lady
An ex-sailor turned boxer finds romance and gets a shot at the heavyweight title.
Champ for a Day
An up-and-coming heavyweight fighter, George Wilson, arrives in Vulcan City, a small mid-western town over-run by racketeers, to fight a heavily-favored Frankie Sebastian. George arrives but his manager Dolan is nowhere to be found. But Ma and Pa Karlsen, owners of Karlsen's Kozy Kottages motel and restaurant take him under their wing. He meets Miss Gormley who is also there to meet the no-show manager who is blackmailing her brother. Dolan still hasn't arrived by the date of the fight but, to the surprise of sports-promoters Tom Healy and Dominic Guido, George shows up and wins the fight. This wins him the friendship of trainer Al Muntz and the enmity of Willie Foltis, a punchy ex-fighter and a Healy henchman. This leads George to a fight with "Soldier" Freeman, whose manager Scotty Cameron has made arrangements for the favored-Freeman to take a dive, so he and Healy and Guido can clean up betting on the underdog. But Honest George has other plans.
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.
Woman-Wise
A crusading sportswriter exposes racketeers involved in paying off fighters to throw their matches.
Lady and Gent
Stag Bailey, a slow-witted prizefighter, and his girlfriend, speakeasy hostess Puff Rogers, take over the upbringing of Ted Streaver after his father, Stag's manager, is killed.
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.
Ringside Maisie
Young undefeated boxer Terry Dolan, who's been lying to his invalid mother about his career, confides to Maisie that he hates and is terrified by boxing and wants out. Not wanting to let down his best friend and manager Skeets Maguire, who has hopes of him becoming the next champion, he is reluctant to bring up the subject with him. Maisie convinces Terry to tell Skeets, whose unexpected reaction induces him to step into the ring again.
The Crime Patrol
Prizefighter Bob Neal (Ray Walker) is in debt to gangster Vic Santell (Hooper Atchley) for training expenses. Santell orders Bob to take a dive in the fourth round so Santell can recoup prior gambling losses. Taunted by his ring opponent, Bob wins the fight. Realizing that his profession and underworld characters connected to it are causing him problems, Bob decides to join the police force. After taking nurse Mary Prentiss (Geneva Mitchell) to a drive-in restaurant where the total bill is a depression-era cheap eighty-two cents, Bob and his fellow officers round-up a gang of fur thieves in a warehouse shoot-out.
Golden Gloves
An amateur boxer's girlfriend inspires him to face a ring pro entered by a gangster.
Flying Fists
A lumberjack knocks out a champion boxer in a brawl, gets drawn into the boxing world where he is unknowingly set up for a fixed fight.
The Miracle Kid
A young boxer finds his life turned upside down when he meets with sudden success in the ring.
Winner Take All
When a waiter makes a lucky hit and wins a benefit prizefight, gamblers rig some fights for him; but a reporter arranges for a real boxer to put him in his place.
The Square Ring
Boxing drama following the lives of 5 different fighters and their reasons for becoming boxers.
Born to Fight
An honest boxer refuses to throw a fight for a gambler. They get into a fight and the boxer knocks the gambler out. Thinking he's killed him and believing that the police are after him, the horrified boxer runs off and takes to the road, promising never to box again. However, one day he comes upon a small but scrappy young kid who has the potential to be a champion. The former boxer takes the kid under his wing and trains him, but the kid's ensuing success starts to go to his head. Pretty soon he finds himself mixed up with gamblers, too.
Two-Fisted Gentleman
Mickey, is a prizefighter whose bright career hits the skids when he comes under the guidance of Ginger, a female fight promoter, when he becomes involved with June Prentice and her high-society crowd.
Leather Gloves
A fallen prizefighter must choose between two women from vastly different walks of life.
Right Cross
A sportswriter forms a ring triangle with a fight manager's daughter and her Mexican-American boxer.