Best movies like The Thirteenth Chair

An adaptation of Madame Bovary transported to Rye, New York in the 1930's. All characters have been renamed.

An unhappily married woman is caught up in scandal and murder when her affection toward a young man is misinterpreted.

Nick and Nora Charles investigate when Nora's cousin reports her disreputable husband is missing, and find themselves in a mystery involving the shady owners of a popular nightclub, a singer and her dark brother, the cousin's forsaken true love, and Nora's bombastic and controlling aunt.

A married couple on the verge of separation are leveled by the news their 18-year-old son committed a mass-shooting at his college, then took his own life.

It was Leonora Eames' childhood dream come true. She had married Smith Ohlrig, a man worth millions. But her innocent dream became a nightmare once she realizes the truth about her husband - he is power mad and insane! Since he will not grant her a divorce, she leaves her life of luxury on Long Island and goes to work as a receptionist in an impoverished doctor's office in NYC's lower east side. After Smith deceives her into a temporary reconciliation, Leonora becomes pregnant. By the time she realizes she is expecting, she and one of the doctors, Larry Quinada (James Mason), have fallen in love. But she is again lured backed to her wealthy husband to give her child financial security. Her sadistic husband is hell-bent on keeping her and her child prisoner. What will happen to Leonora?

After some years of tension, Richard begins a sexual relationship with his sister Natalie. Now married, the relationship proves dangerously obsessional.

Pinkerton marries Cho-Cho San in Japan, whilst on shore leave. When he leaves, she keeps his Japanese home as he left it. He returns three years later, having married again in America, and tells Cho-Cho that their affair is over. She has had a child in his absence, who is sent to her family, before she kills herself.

In 1970s Hollywood, Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.

The ice-cold diva Paula ruthlessly exploits the guys she dates. While blackmailing the married Don with a recent one-night-stand, she has a secret affair with Henry, who works as researcher for the weekly authentic TV show "Crime of the Week", which Don writes for. When Henry fails to help her to a role, she insults him deadly... and ends up dead herself. Now Don desperately tries to hide his traces, but Henry sabotages his efforts and suggests he write the unsolved murder case for next week's show...

Five men have to prove their innocence when a blackmailer is murdered.

While dining out with friends, Sy suggests the difficulty of separating comedy from tragedy. To illustrate his point, he tells his guests two parallel stories about Melinda ; both versions have the same basic elements, but one take on her state of affairs leans toward levity, while the other is full of anguish. Each story involves Melinda coping with a recent divorce through substance abuse while beginning a romantic relationship with a close friend's husband.

Wealthy writer Stephen Byrne tries to seduce the family maid, but when she resists, he kills her. Long jealous of his brother John, Stephen does his best to pin the blame for the murder on his sibling. Also affected by Stephen's arrogant dementia is his long-suffering wife Marjorie.

A society gigolo goes after a rich mother and her daughter, but tries to find true happiness with his girlfriend, who is neither rich nor in "society."

An ambitious U.S. Senator reflects back on his life after the death of a woman whom he loved and kept in contact with only through correspondence.

Mysterious Orfamay Quest hires Los Angeles private investigator Philip Marlowe to find her missing brother. Though the job seems simple enough, it leads Marlowe into the underbelly of the city, turning up leads who are murdered with ice picks, exotic dancers, blackmailed television stars and self-preserving gangsters. Soon, Marlowe's life is on the line right along with his case.

A nutty inventor, his frustrated wife, a philosopher cousin, his much younger fiancée, a randy doctor, and a free-thinking nurse spend a summer weekend in and around a stunning - and possibly magical - country house.

Thirteen women who were schoolmates ask a swami to cast their horoscopes. The news they receive is not good for any of them.

Skyscraper Souls is a Pre-Code 1932 drama film starring Warren William and Maureen O'Sullivan. The film was directed by Edgar Selwyn and is based upon the novel Skycraper by Faith Baldwin. The film depicts the aspirations and lives of several people in the Seacoast National Bank Building. Among them is David Dwight, the womanizing bank owner who keeps his estranged wife happy by paying her bills. His secretary Sarah wants him to get a divorce so they can marry.

A con woman tries to swindle her partner-in-crime husband with the help of one of her former marks. But is she to be trusted?

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.

Emilie has been hired to care for the four sons of wealthy Adam Stoddard and his wife, Molly. After Molly dies, Adam and the boys grow to depend on Emilie even more. At the same time, Emilie falls in love with Adam. The boys grow up, but Adam insists that Emilie stay on as part of the family. Her relationships with both the boys and Adam become strained after one son marries a gold-digging viper named Hester. Written by Daniel Bubbeo

Nick Van Alstyne owns the Henrietta silver mine and is very rich. His son Bertie is naive and spoiled. His daughter Rose is married to shady investor Mark. Mark wrecks Bertie's wedding plans by making him take the blame for Mark's illegitimate daughter. Mark also nearly ruins the family business by selling off Henrietta stock at too low a price. Bertie, of all people, must come to the rescue on the trading floor.

Although his murdered friend was by all accounts a scoundrel, Edward Wales is determined to trap his killer by staging a seance using a famous medium. Many of the 13 seance participants had a reason and a means to kill, and one of them uses the cover of darkness to kill again. When someone close to the medium is suspected she turns detective, in the hope of uncovering the true murderer.

A senator's brother turns up murdered, and the senator tries to pin the blame on a man he knows is innocent.

A young man ruthlessly climbs the corporate ladder only to attempt suicide when the stock market crashes.

A woman believes herself to be the reincarnated spirit of an ancient prince's lover. Meanwhile, a murderer turns out to be the reincarnated spirit of the prince himself.

In this drama, a truck driver begins wooing a young woman who still lives with her father who constantly brags how he, not the town mayor, was responsible for catching a regiment of Germans during WW I. Unfortunately, no one in town takes him seriously. Later the daughter meets a German immigrant who confirms her father's claim. She then convinces her boy friend to use this information to blackmail the mayor into giving him a new truck and some extra amenities lest he tell the truth.

A woman lives in Acapulco with moochers and a husband who married her for her money.

An ex-newspaper woman who is now a suburban housewife can't resist getting involved in an investigation of the murder of a philandering dentist who had been having affairs with several of her neighbors.

Bookkeeper Sam Wilson learns from his boss, Malcolm Jarvis, that he is losing his job because the company is closing down. Jarvis then makes a strange proposition, saying he intends to commit suicide but wants Sam to make it look like a murder, in order for his wife and son to inherit Jarvis's life insurance. Sam declines, but when he goes to see Jarvis and finds his dead body, he reluctantly goes along with the scheme.

Mystery writer Barry Craig (Allyn Joslyn) and his wife Jane (Evelyn Keyes), prefer solving crimes rather than writing about them. They get a chance when killings plague the fashion photography studio of Ralph McCormick (Edmund Lowe). After his secretary, Julie Taylor(Anita Louise) reports an attempt to murder her there, Erika McCormick's (Ann Savage) Aunt Isabel Fleming (Mary Forbes) is stabbed and the evidence points to Madge Lawrence (Bess Flowers) an older model and an apparent suicide. Police Inspector Joseph Clinton (Frank Craven) declares the case closed...but then Erika is murdered.

Ben Gold gets the break of his life as aspiring author, but must stay home with his kids, Luke and Madison, to make his 5 months deadline. His feminist wife, workaholic fashion executive Alex, selfishly decides to take in promising rebel designer Zoe Miller, who left her boyfriend Trey. The teenager soon wins the family's hearts. Written by KGF Vissers

Jim Broadbent wrote and starred in this short film directed by none other than Mike Leigh. As a member of the landed gentry, the 23rd Earl of Leete has a duty to maintain and expand his lands. Shot in the style and manner of a BBC documentary, Broadbent tells his family history to the crew, who slowly come to realise - as do we - that things are not what they seem.

A woman is wrongly accused of murdering her husband in Edwardian London. Just before the outbreak of World War I, Edith Graydon married her boyfriend Percy Thomson. He survives the war but theirs is not a happy marriage. She doesn't really love him and he feels it every day. He's also possessive and their daily life is a constant battle. She meets and falls in love with Frederick Bywaters, her sister's one-time boyfriend. They have a long affair and her desperate attempts to get either a formal separation of divorce from her husband falls on deaf ears. They are at their wits end and Bywaters decides to do something about it. On a dark evening when Edith is walking with her husband, Bywaters stabs him to death. Edith is charged with murder along with Bywaters and both are found guilty. She claims her innocence right up until the day they are both executed by hanging in 1923. Based on a true story.

Herbie Altman is framed for Stock fraud by his boss when the SEC starts investigating his company. Sent to prison, he helps a fellow inmate successfully invest his money. Soon all the inmates want his help. To manage all the money, he forms CON INC. and runs it from the prison under the noses of the warden and the guards. But when the IRS and SEC begin to investigate this successful company, it looks like he may be in trouble again

Jim Ackland, who suffers from a head injury sustained in a bus crash , is the chief suspect in a murder hunt, when a girl that he has just met is found dead on the local common, and he has no alibi for the time she was killed.

A young novelist falls for a married blond beauty. She's too afraid to leave her thuggish husband and the idea of "accidental" death comes up. The writer doesn't go through with it and they break off. However, she's not done with him yet.

Helen attracts the unwanted attention of the commander of her husband's new army base. Colonel Andrew Case arranges to have Helen's husband travel on base business so that he can force Helen to be his new plaything. Helen fights back.

Maggie and her husband Richard are both college professors and have a daughter, 17-year-old Jenny. Their marriage is falling apart, and when Richard admits to having an affair with a student at the college they both work at.

A young cowhand befriends a disreputable gambler and pulls him out of some trouble. Hoping to square things with his new friend, the gambler seeks to warn him about the cowhand's fiancée, about whom the gambler knows some unsavory details.

Wealthy widower Richard Keaton engages young widow Elizabeth 'Liz' Guinness as the 4th consecutive nanny for his pre-teen, equally science-devoted son Andrew, with instructions to disturb neither. She learns of mother Alycia's fatal fall, an official suicide but was probably murder. Dad keeps Andy at a distance, so he draws towards Liz. Real danger starts when Richard's brother, novelist Blain, arrives with his friend Jillian, to sell the ancestral estate against Richard's will.

A detective tries to figure out who killed a man who predicted his own death.

Paul Vanderkill is extraordinarily wealthy because his grandfather happened to buy farmland in what was to become Midtown Manhattan. The Loveland Dance Hall is one of the tenants of the Vanderkill estates. To reassure his aunt Sophie, Vanderkill visits Loveland to determine whether it is as disreputable as Sophie suspects. There he meets a dime-a-dance girl, Madeleine MacGonagal, who charms him with her quaint proletarian accent. They begin a secret affair, which turns into a secret marriage when pregnancy ensues. When the baby fails to survive, Madeleine decides that since he had married her only for the baby's sake, she should make haste to Mexico to secure a divorce. There she meets Panama Canal Kelly, a former suitor who now owns a silver mine. Her plans for divorce and quick remarriage are complicated when Vanderkill arrives to confront her.

Perry must defend the husband of an old flame from a murder charge.

After Lisa Temple is brutally attacked and suffers from amnesia, it seems her bitter character has changed for the better, which causes her estranged husband Paul to have second thoughts about leaving her. As she rebuilds her life, Lisa and Paul fall in love again. However; there is danger lurking and one last angry memory waiting to surface. Will their love survive?

A young woman's suicide attempt is stopped by an old man passing by. The two fall in love -- but the relationship between the young girl and old man is threatened when a blackmailer from her past shows up.

After years of fighting off the advances of her old flame Steve, Lisbeth settles into a steamy, casual romance with journalist Alan. Against the advice of her happily married aunt Celia -- who encourages her to demand a serious commitment -- Lisbeth continues to see Alan, even after she hears he may have a wife in France. When Alan's work sends him abroad, a lovesick Lisbeth struggles to understand her feelings.

Nancy Courtney, a once wealthy socialite, has had to struggle to maintain a facade of prosperity ever since her father's death. Although she loves writer DeWitt Taylor, who is indifferent to amassing a fortune, her mother urges her to marry stockbroker Norman Cravath instead. Nancy acquiesces to her mother's wishes but, despite the fact her new husband does everything he can to please her, she is miserable in her marriage.

The boys are a dentist and his assistant traveling to the Old West to open a new practice. Once in town, they buy a business--only to wake up the next day and see that the entire population of this bustling town had left for the California gold fields early that morning! Then, they discover an evil plot to sell out these settlers to some hostile Indians, so they spring to the rescue.

Elna Curry, once a concert pianist, develops an unfounded jealousy of neighbor, Trudie Morrow. Elna who suffers from neurasthenia, believes that Trudie is having an affair with her husband, John, and vows revenge on Trudie. John explains to Trudie Elna's condition and plan. Trudie, being good-hearted tells John that she'll move. One evening, John returns late from work to discover Elna dead. John burns Elna's suicide note to protect Trudie. This results in John being charged for murder and put on trial.