Best movies like The Dark Hour

A private detective, soon to enlist in the army, is drawn into one final case when his police officer father is killed in the line of duty. Soon his prime suspect is murdered as well, and he finds himself framed for the crime. As more witnesses get murdered, he finds himself on the run from both the police and former Prohibition violators who seem to have found a new racket.

"The Unknown" was the final entry in Columbia’s I Love A Mystery series. A woman hires two detectives to keep her alive long enough to claim her inheritance.

A young woman marries against her father's will, but the happy life she expected turns into a series of tragedies.

This one has Nylon, an American dancer fleeing Morocco after her employer gets into trouble with the police, and she stops off at Tangiers on her way to Gibraltar. $50,000, in gold, is stolen from the ship's safe and the captain tells the police that the purser was the thief and that he had to kill him in self defense, but the purser must have hidden the money before he got dead. The purser isn't in any position to make a disclaimer. Everybody buys that with the exception of an insurance detective, Shapley, who, along with the audience, suspects the captain of being the thief shows up to investigate further. Written By Les Adams

A police commissioner investigates the murder of a nightclub owner who was under police protection.

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.

Special investigator Duke Martin is in London to investigate the authenticity of a rare postage stamp called the Barbados Overplate. Someone is willing to commit murder to get his or her hands on the stamp, which puts a crimp in Duke's efforts to romance every beautiful woman he meets.

A penniless socialite is hired by two young men as a front in their plan to start a magazine. Soon, however, they find themselves more interested in her than in their publishing venture.

Clue finds six colorful dinner guests gathered at the mansion of their host, Mr. Boddy -- who turns up dead after his secret is exposed: He was blackmailing all of them. With the killer among them, the guests and Boddy's chatty butler must suss out the culprit before the body count rises.

Wealthy Mr. Kennedy shoots his secretary, Channing, during a parlor game, but it turns out the gun was loaded with real bullets. Luckily, criminologist Phillip Montrose is on hand to help the police. When Kennedy quickly ends up dead as well, the police think it's a tidy murder-suicide, but the family lawyer knows of a letter that voiced Kennedy's suspicions about someone who was out to get him. Soon, the cops are on the trail of a ruthless and clever killer who is one step ahead of even Montrose.

London has become enthralled by the antics of the contemporary Robin Hood, but when a band of bad guys start framing him for their misdeeds, the hero has to catch the criminals and clear his name.

Lionel Twain invites the world's five greatest detectives to a 'dinner and murder'. Included are a blind butler, a deaf-mute maid, screams, spinning rooms, secret passages, false identities and more plot turns and twists than are decently allowed.

A remake of the 1927 horror film "The Wizard". Dr. Larry Forbes arrives in a remote French village to visit his fiancée who lives with her scientist father Dr. Renault and his Ape-like manservant Noel. Several Murders coincide with Dr. Forbes arrival, with clues pointing in multiple directions.

Meet the McTeagues. They've come to stake a claim in their wealthy uncle's will… only he's not dead yet!

A female private eye joins forces with a police detective to investigate the suspicious murder of a millionaire.

A telephone operator plays homicide detective with her boyfriend, making it harder for the police.

While on vacation, the Falcon is arrested for kidnapping after striking up a friendship with a girl who's nurse has been recently murdered.

A young millionaire (Richard Carlson) joins the real world and meets a maid (Jane Randolph) and mobsters.

Dinner party guests become murder suspects when an extortionist they all hated turns up dead.

Julie Fresnel is a co-ed at Redgate University and her father, Dr. Henri Fresnel, is the new French professor. Julie attraction from the make students drops a bit when two of her admirers are found murdered. When an attempt on the life of a third one is made. Seth Dunlap, an instructor at the school, decides to turn detective and find the killer. Assisted by his sister, who is in love with the third student, Dunlap begins to follow the the small trail of clues left by the killer.

Science fiction serial.

A private eye and a niece investigate when six World War I veterans start dying in the same week.

Nicholas Rood, dishonest mine owner, finds a Black Doll on his desk and knows that vengeance is about to overtake him for murdering his former partner. He is knifed as he talks to his daughter Marian. She summons her fiancé Nick Halstead, a private detective. He finds that six people had a motive for the murder; Rood's sister Mrs. Laura Leland; her son Rex; Rood's associates Mallison and Walling; Esteban, a servant and Dr. Giddings. Sheriff Renick and his deputy Red get the clues all mixed up, but Nick finally narrows the search down to one suspect...

Ellery Queen's vacation is interrupted when murder strikes next door to his oceanside cabin.

Four bandits swoop down on a California bank and flee with $98,000, leaving a truck as the only clue to their identity. Jane Hartman, bank secretary, recognizes the truck as one on which her brother Charles worked. Fleeing to her brother, she is trapped by the gang, composed of its master-mind, Gibbs, Sidney, a gunman, and Randall, a blackballed airplane pilot. Under threat of bodily harm to her brother, she lures truck-driver Tony Andrews to the hideout, and he is forced to help them in their escape attempt.

A ruthless, crooked stockbroker is murdered at his luxurious country estate, and detective Philo Vance just happens to be there; he decides to find out who killed him.

A Pathe serial in ten chapters of two-reels each: Dan Winterslip, a wealthy man in Honolulu, has not spoken to his brother, who owns a hotel next to Winterslip's estate, in over twenty years. Minerva, sister to the estranged brothers, comes from Boston to try to reconcile the two men. John Quincy Winterslip, Dan's nephew, receives a letter instructing him to retrieve a box from an attic in San Francisco and dump the contents into the ocean. He is on board a ship bound for Hawaii in which other passengers are also after the box. Dan Winterslip is murdered. Charlie Chan, a Chinese detective, offers to help solve the killing and the mysteries surround the box. Chan is looking for the person whose wristwatch is missing the number 'three.'

A cop on suspension is framed for murder when he noses in on a murder investigation.

Margaret Drew runs her trucking company single-mindedly, if not ruthlessly. The only thorn in her side is writer Michael Holmes who is writing a book on some of her tough ways. With no time for men, the effect an attractive stranger has on her at her sister's wedding is unnerving. When it turns out this is the hated writer, she starts seriously to lose her bearings. Surely it can't become Maggie and Mike?

A San Francisco astrologer correctly predicts a ship passenger's death and then helps the police look for the murderer.

Detective Andy Doyle suspects that a suicide is actually a murder. He suspects the victim's son, Wallace who is blind and he pursues him until he gets to the truth.

When a Texas playboy is murdered in a New York City nightclub the Falcon investigates. When he learns that the victim was slipped rattlesnake venom, the trail leads to Texas, his own kidnapping and near death.

Dwight Stanford and his wife, Penny, are a pair of spendthrifts who can't hold on to money, dependent for support on Dwight's rich uncle, who sends them a monthly allowance. Conrad Norris, Dwight's cousin, disapproves of Dwight and Penny, and resents his uncle's generosity. The uncle is the victim of a hit-and-run accident and, there being no will, Conrad, as next of kin, inherits. Switch, the uncle's lawyer, tells Dwight he is shutout with no hope of appeal. Dwight starts writing mystery novels about a fictional detective named Steven Knight, which become instant hits and the money pours in.

Defense Atorney Gerald Waring uses great skill and ingenuity in his efforts to save the life of a young man charged with the murder of his father. Witness after witness piles up damaging evidence against the accused youth, but expert cross-examination by Waring digs out the startling truth behind the killing and subsequently reveals the identity of the real killer in a surprise-twist ending.

A series of murders in the West End of London baffle the officers of Scotland Yard and draw the interest of a crime reporter to the case.

A detective (Edmund Lowe) trails a professor (Henry Daniell) who stole credit for his wife's research, then killed her.

Inspector Killian tries to solve a murder case with his assistant Carney.

Foxhall Ridgeway, arriving in New York City from the West, stumbles onto a murder in the hotel room next to his. He gets tangled up into the affair, and with the aid of Phoebe, the hotel telephone operator who takes a liking to him, and also Countess Louise Browssiloff, who innocently had left some personal belongings in the murdered man's room and is most anxious to recover the incriminating evidence, Foxhall solves the murder mystery.

A man's ex-wife is found murdered, and he finds himself to be the prime suspect.

A woman finds herself unwillingly mixed up in a series of murders. At the behest of the district attorney, private detective Duncan MacLain (Kent Taylor) investigates the probability of corruption in high government circles.

Young Raymond Rudford,sculptor, is on trial for slitting the throat of his uncle, who had adopted and raised him after Raymond's parent's died when he was a young boy. The prosecution allows his motive was fear of being disinherited if he married his fiancé, the fair Alicia Atherton, against his uncle's wishes, and the prosecution lays a mountain of evidence against Raymond, including his razor, dragged from an artificial lake on the estate, as the murder weapon; Raymond's bloody fingerprints and footprints found at the scene of bedroom crime, and his bloody shoes, found in his cupboard and bloody monogrammed-handkerchief found under his uncle's death bed. Raymond's only defense is that he could not have committed the crime as he goes into a paroxysm of dread at the mere sight of blood, a phobia he has had ever since childhood when his dog was run over by a lorry and the dog's blood was splattered into his face.

Haunted by the murder of her politician husband 6 years ago, former police detective Joanne Kilbourn (Wendy Crewson) keeps looking for clues, with the help of her old partner (Victor Garber). When a prime suspect is caught, it looks as if the killer may finally be brought to justice … but in a shocking turn of events, the suspect is gunned down as he's brought to the police station. Is there more to her husband's death than Joanne realized?

A fresh-faced young detective gets set up, framed for murder, and alibied by a smart blonde.

Charlie attempts to solve a triple murder in which a dead man's finger prints show up at all three murder sites, and all three victims were connected with the conviction and execution of an evidently innocent man.

Just as her life is coming together, Allison experiences a terrible tragedy when her boyfriend is murdered by an intruder from whom the woman herself barely escapes. The police capture a man they believe to be the killer, but Allison, still unsettled, has her doubts. Things take a frightening turn when she meets her friend's new boyfriend and suspects him to be the killer.

Attorney Joshua Scranton hires "Budge" Edwards and Larry Donovan, who has just bought into Edwards' detective agency, to protect Estelle Hudson, a client of his who is to inherit three-million dollars the next Thursday. He tells them he has reason to believe the girl is in danger from five relatives who stand to benefit from her death.

Scion of the once-rich Mitchell family, Herbert Wynn is found shot to death. Nurse Adams, bored by hospital routine, is recruited by the police to ferret out clues as she tends to Wynn's elderly aunt Julia. Jokingly given the 'rank' of Miss Pinkerton, after the famous detective agency, Adams probes into the mystery, but not before a second death.

Sally, a girl of the tenements, is being raised by three bachelor foster-fathers, a pawnbroker, an organ-grinder and a peddler, and is very happy preparing their meals and keeping the house, while the old men bask in the attention she gives them. However, this happy home is broken up when Sally wealthy aunt appears on the scene and takes Sally back to her luxurious penthouse in order to give her the advantages of money and social position. But Sally's heart is back across the river with her plumber sweetheart, Jimmie Adams.

Tough insurance investigator Mahoney goes to LA to look into the murder of a fellow investigator. It's found that the murdered man knew three different women — all blondes — and with each he had had a love affair. What is their connection to the crime? And will Mahoney bed all of them as well?

Longshoreman Johnny Barnes is in love with Kitty Tracy, barmaid at her father's waterfront saloon, and he beats up Cassidy, a crooked politician who has been annoying her. Cassidy is murdered that night and Johnny is jailed for the crime. Kitty, her father Andy Tracy, and waterfront-priest Father Cameron believe Johnny is innocent but all evidence points to his guilt.