Best movies like The Shanghai Gesture
Mystery-lure of the Far East!
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Shanghai Gesture Starring Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, Victor Mature, Ona Munson, and more. If you liked The Shanghai Gesture then you may also like: Jungle Siren, The Charlatan, The Mystery of the 13th Guest, The Petrified Forest, Poisoned Paradise 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 gambling queen uses blackmail to stop a British financier from closing her Chinese clip joint.
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The Charlatan
A woman goes to a sideshow fortune-teller to have her fortune told, and is astonished when the man looks into his crystal ball and goes into great detail about events in her past that few people ever knew about. Shaken, she leaves and later tells her girlfriend about the incident. The girlfriend insists that she invite the fortune-teller to a party they're having at her house. What the woman doesn't realize is that the "fortune-teller" is actually the ex-husband she abandoned years ago, when she took their daughter and ran off with her lover. When the "charlatan" is invited to the party, he sees an opportunity to take his revenge on his faithless ex-wife.
The Mystery of the 13th Guest
Murders result from an uncle's wish to eliminate beneficiaries to a will.
The Petrified Forest
Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and the two strike up a rapport. Soon enough, notorious killer Duke Mantee takes the diner's inhabitants hostage. Surrounded by miles of desert, the patrons and staff are forced to sit tight with Mantee and his gang overnight.
Poisoned Paradise
Margot Le Blanc loses her small fortune at Monte Carlo and makes the acquaintance of Hugh Kildair, an artist, who hires her as a housekeeper. A gang of thieves set a trap for Kildair when they find that he knows a mathematical system guaranteed to win at the gambling table.
Self Defense
Katy Devoux runs a gambling-drinking joint in British Columbia. She is a fair-playing business woman, but is ashamed of the source of her income, so she has had her daughter Nona raised in the states. Jeff Bowman, an unprincipled scoundrel and business rival, arranges for her daughter to come to town in hope of bringing shame to the mother. He overplays his hand and is killed by Tim Reed, a faithful retainer of Katy's and in love with Nona. The plea is self defense.
Seven Keys to Baldpate
Writer Kenneth Magee has bet that he can finish a story at rural resort Baldpate Inn, now closed for the winter. The owner has given him the "only" key to the front door. But there are six other keys, and peculiar characters, some of them up to no good, keep turning up as the mystery deepens.
The Long Wait
Soon after thumbing a ride from a truck driver, Johnny McBride is badly burned and suffers from complete amnesia when the vehicle he’s riding in blows a tire and goes over an embankment in a fiery blaze. McBride later receives a tip from an acquaintance that a photo of him was placed prominently in the window of a photography studio in a town called Lyncastle, so Johnny immediately leaves for the burg in the hopes that something there will jog his memory.
This Is My Affair
President McKinley asks Lt. Richard L. Perry to go underground to identify some obviously very well briefed Mid-Western bank robbers based in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
The Broken Land
A cowboy rides into a small town that is ruled with an iron fist by a corrupt sheriff. He becomes involved with a pretty young town girl and some residents who are trying to oust the sheriff, resulting in a robbery, a murder and his being pursued by a vengeful posse.
The Falcon in Danger
Two industrialists disappear from an airplane while the plane is in the air. Also missing is $100,000. The Falcon investigates and discovers a plot against the government.
Grand Canary
Based on an AJ Cronin novel, a disgraced doctor exiled to the Canary Islands, meets and falls in love with a married woman.
The Cobra Strikes
A newspaper reporter investigates the near-fatal shooting of a medical scientist.
Confessions of a Vice Baron
On the eve of his execution, a vice-rackets bigshot recalls his various exploits in crimes such as abortion and white slavery, in which he frequently operated under an alias.
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?
Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo
Although Charlie and Lee are in Monaco for an art exhibit, they become caught up in a feud between rival financiers which involves the Chan's in a web of blackmail and murder.
Woman Trap
In Woman Trap, Hal Skelly is hard-bitten police sergeant Dan Malone, whose mission in life is to rid his community of gangsters. The revelation that Dan's own brother Ray is the secret head of all local criminal activities does not weaken Dan's resolve in the least. The barely relevant title is a reference to "heroine" Kitty Evans, the wife of a minor gang functionary. Screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz, presumably on a dare, makes a brief appearance as a crime reporter.
Moon Over Las Vegas
A beautiful woman goes to Las Vegas in a scheme to make her husbnd jealous, but once she gets there she becomes involved with another man.
Slander House
Owner of salon catering to fat society dames must deal with a dull fiance, a romantic stranger, the jealous blond who loves him, and the lecherous husband of a client.
One Dangerous Night
Reformed jewel thief the Lone Wolf investigates the murder of a playboy who was blackmailing three socialites.
The Crimson Key
Larry Morgan, a private detective, is hired by a woman who wants Larry to trail her husband. The husband is murdered and, shortly afterwards, the wife is also killed. Larry shuffles through a long list of suspects before revealing the killer...
Code of the Secret Service
Secret Service agents try to solve the theft of treasury banknote plates.
Deadline for Murder
A favor for an old friend leads a Los Angeles gambler (Kent Taylor) into a dangerous search for a missing document.
Forced Landing
In this high-flying mystery set aboard a cross-country flight to New York, some of the passengers are kidnappers who are trying to locate a hidden cache of loot. Unfortunately, something goes wrong during the trip and the pilots must land the plane in the Arizona desert during a terrible storm. There all of the passengers and crew find cramped accommodations in a lonely farmhouse where murder, mystery and mayhem occur.
Three Hours to Kill
After three years on the run, Jim Guthrie returns with the scar of a rope burn on his neck. In a flashback, we learn how he was framed for murder but then escaped from the lynch mob just as he was about to be hung. Tired of running, he has returned to find the real killer and the Sheriff has given him just three hours to do it.
Hardboiled Rose
A Southern Belle must work in a gambling house to pay off her father's debts, which drove him to suicide. She then meets a man who sweeps her off her feet and takes her away from it all.
Before Midnight
A detective tries to figure out who killed a man who predicted his own death.
Flight from Glory
Director Lew Landers' 1937 B-film, about a crew of misfit pilots working for an Argentinian air service, stars Chester Morris, Van Heflin, Whitney Bourne, Onslow Stevens, Richard Lane, Douglas Walton, Paul Guilfoyle, Solly Ward, Walter Miller and Rita LaRoy.
Tarzan's Hidden Jungle
Hunters trespass into Sukulu country, where animals are sacred, posing as photographers.
Massacre
Upon the death of his father, who was the tribal chieftain, Joe Thunder Horse returns to the reservation of his youth, only to discover that his people are dying of various diseases and are being systematically cheated of their possessions and basic rights by crooked Indian agents. He heads to Washington in hopes of righting these wrongs, only to experience prejudice and hatred all along the way.
The Leathernecks Have Landed
Dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Marines after starting a barroom brawl that gets his leatherneck buddy "Tubby" Waters killed, hothead "Woody" Davis infiltrates a gang of Shanghai gunrunners to bring the culprit to justice.
The Gambling Sex
A wealthy young socialite gets the gambling bug, and soon it goes from being just a fun pastime to an addiction, and she begins to lose more and more of her fortune.
The Sporting Age
Blinded in a train accident James Driscoll (Holmes Herbert), whose wife, Miriam Driscoll (Belle Bennett), has been having an affair with his young male secretary Phillip Kingston )Carroll Nye), regains his eyesight. He keeps this from his wife, who continues her affair. Finally, he invites his young niece Nancy Driscoll (Josephine Borio) in the hopes she will fall for Philip and vice-versa. His ploy works, James reveals he can see again, and husband and wife are reconciled.
Jungle Siren
A woman - raised in the jungle - tries to help an American stop a native uprising spurned on by Nazis.