Top 250 Movies Like The Need

A list of the best movies similar to The Need. If you liked The Need then you may also like: Yukon Gold, Untamed Heiress, Uranium Boom, We're Going to Be Rich, West of Broadway and many more great movies featured on this list.

TV show

South African soap opera centering around the lives of the wealthy Haines family, the Matabanes, and the lives of the inhabitants of the mining town Horizon Deep.

Yukon Gold

In this Yukon adventure, a gold mining community is rocked by a murder. A Mountie investigates and encounters a female gambler. Action ensues, but justice prevails.

Untamed Heiress

Judy is the daughter of a famous opera singer who once bankrolled prospector Andrew "Cactus" Clayton. Now Clayton hopes to repay the favor, but first he must reclaim his stash of gold from the crooked Williams. Judy helps the old coot by taking on not only Williams, but duplicitous private detectives Walter Martin and Eddie Taylor, not to mention gangsters Spider Mike and Louie.

Uranium Boom

Ex-lumberjack Brad Collins (Dennis Morgan) and mining engineer Grady Mathews (William Talman) find uranium in the Colorado badlands. While Grady guards the claim, Brad goes to register it in town, where he meets and marries Jean Williams (Patricia Medina.) Returning to the claim, Brad learns that Jean was once Grady's fiancee. Grady, as one would expect, is somewhat put out and leaves the mine in Brad's hands, while he hooks up with a confidence man and engineers a scheme to break the back of Brad's somewhat rapidly-created mining empire.

We're Going to Be Rich

A perpetual dreamer talks his wife into moving with him from their home in Australia to South Africa, where he hopes to discover gold and finally become wealthy.

West of Broadway

A wealthy soldier returns home after WWI, discovers his socialite fiancee no longer wants to marry him, and weds an admitted gold-digger he's just met after a night of drinking and partying.

Westbound Mail

The gold mine belonging to "Gun" Barlow is worked out, and Barlow attempts to buy adjacent land, with the hopes his gold vein will continue, from town postmistress Marion Saunders who, keeping a vow she made to her father on his death-bed, refuses.

Wicked Little Things

Karen, Sarah, and Emma Tunney are all moving to a small town in Pennsylvania where, unknown to them, in 1913, a horrid mine accident trapped dozens of children alive, underground. But there's a problem. They're still alive.

October Sky

Based on the true story of Homer Hickam, a coal miner's son who was inspired by the first Sputnik launch to take up rocketry against his father's wishes, and eventually became a NASA scientist.

Outland

An honest marshal in a corrupt mining colony on Io, Jupiter's sunless third moon, is determined to confront a violent drug ring even though it may cost him his life. After his wife angrily deserts him, he waits alone for the arrival of killers hired by the company to eliminate him.

Adventures of Power

In his quest to become the world's greatest air-drummer, a small-town dreamer must overcome obstacles and ridicule to save the day.

Amazon

Widowed and broke Finnish businessman Kari takes his two teenage daughters with him to Brazil. A bush pilot introduces him to the idea of gold mining in the jungle, but a beautiful and educated local woman warns him about the possible consequences to the rain forest. Kari has mixed feelings about the project, until an accident puts him in the care of a local Indian tribe.

Antlers

A small-town Oregon teacher and her brother, the local sheriff, discover a young student is harbouring a dangerous secret that could have frightening consequences.

The Badlanders

Two men are released from the Arizona Territorial Prison at Yuma in 1898. One, The Dutchman, is out to get both gold and revenge from certain people in a small mining town who had him imprisoned unjustly. The other, McBain, is just trying to go straight, but that is easier said than done once The Dutchman involves him in his gold theft scheme. Based on the 1949 novel The Asphalt Jungle by W. R. Burnett, the story is given an 1898 setting. It is the second film adaptation of the novel following 1950's noir classic The Asphalt Jungle.

The Claim

A prospector sells his wife and daughter to another gold miner for the rights to a gold mine. Twenty years later, the prospector is a wealthy man who owns much of the old west town named Kingdom Come. But changes are brewing and his past is coming back to haunt him. A surveyor and his crew scouts the town as a location for a new railroad line and a young woman suddenly appears in the town and is evidently the man's daughter.

Coal Face

1935 documentary about the hard working life of Welsh coal miners.

The Magnificent Seven

Looking to mine for gold, greedy industrialist Bartholomew Bogue seizes control of the Old West town of Rose Creek. With their lives in jeopardy, Emma Cullen and other desperate residents turn to bounty hunter Sam Chisolm for help. Chisolm recruits an eclectic group of gunslingers to take on Bogue and his ruthless henchmen. With a deadly showdown on the horizon, the seven mercenaries soon find themselves fighting for more than just money once the bullets start to fly.

Pale Rider

A mysterious preacher protects a humble prospector village from a greedy mining company trying to encroach on their land.

Beneath

A crew of coal miners becomes trapped 600 feet below ground after a disastrous collapse. As the air grows more toxic and time runs out, they slowly descend into madness and begin to turn on one another. Inspired by true events.

Dawson City: Frozen Time

The true history of a collection of some 500 films dating from 1910s to 1920s, which were lost for over 50 years until being discovered buried in a sub-arctic swimming pool deep in the Yukon Territory, in Dawson City, located about 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Delirious

A soap opera writer gets hit on the head and wakes up as a character in his own show.

Dynamite Allen

Betty, a blind girl, is the sole "witness" to the murder of a mine owner and whose mistaken testimony convicts Sid Allen her own benefactor. Years later, the adult Betty returns to the mining town, her sight restored. Fearing that she may remember the truth, the real murderer, "Bull" Snide has the girl kidnapped.

Foxfire

A part-Indian mining engineer looks for gold in an Arizona ghost town with his socialite bride.

Framed

Truck driver Mike Lambert is a down-and-out mining engineer searching for a job. When his rig breaks down in a small town, he happens upon a venomous seductress. When her boyfriend robs a bank, they intend to frame Lambert.

Ghost Valley

A cowboy and a beautiful girl inherit a supposedly haunted gold mine.

Sons and Lovers

The son of a working-class British mining family has dreams of pursuing an art career, but when he strikes up an affair with an older, married woman from the town it enrages his kind but possessive mother.

Gold

Rod Slater is the newly appointed general manager of the Sonderditch gold mine, but he stumbles across an ingenious plot to flood the mine, by drilling into an underground lake, so the unscrupulous owners can make a killing in the international gold market.

Tornado

The owner of an Illinois coal mine struggles to keep his business in operation, all the while unaware that among his employees is a saboteur planning destruction and chaos.

Green Fire

In Colombia, mining engineer Rian Mitchell discovers Carrero, the lost emerald mine of the Conquistadors, but has to contend with notorious local bandit El Moro's gang and with coffee planter Catherine Knowland's love.

Groom Lake

When Kate discovers she has a terminal illness, she persuades boyfriend Andy to visit Groom Lake, a reputed hotbed of alien activity, hoping to discover proof of life beyond this terrestrial sphere. Soon, the pair crosses paths with desperate government scientists, eccentric locals and a surprising -- and inspiring --conspiracy of epic proportions.

Bad for Each Other

A doctor returned from the Korean War must choose between joining a glamorous practice and helping the poor.

Harlan County U.S.A.

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA.

Hell's Crater

During the days of the California gold rush, Jim Shamrick toils on his claim, Hell's Crater, for two years and then decides to enjoy himself in a nearby mining camp. Bill Gordon, the owner of the local dance hall, gets Jim drunk and then, with the aid of Cherry Maurice ( Grace Cunard ), robs him. When the prospector realizes what has happened, he abducts Cherry and forces her to labor in his mine for a year. Though nearly broken by the hard work, Cherry comes to love Jim and eventually marries him.

How Green Was My Valley

A man in his fifties reminisces about his childhood growing up in a Welsh mining village at the turn of the 20th century.

Lust for Gold

A man determined to track down the fabled Arizona gold mine known as The Lost Dutchman has an affair with a married treasure hunter, whose pursuit of the mine has lead her to double-cross her husband.

Margaret's Museum

In a town where half the men die down the coalpit, Margaret MacNeil is quite happy being single in her small Cape Breton island town. Until she meets Neil Currie, a charming and sincere bagpipe-playing, Gaelic-speaking dishwasher. But no matter what you do, you can't avoid the spectre of the pit forever.

The Proud Valley

In a Welsh coal mining valley, a young man with a beautiful singing voice is called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice when a pit disaster threatens.

Scorched Earth

In a post-apocalyptic future, bounty hunter Attica Gage pursues a ruthless outlaw at the head of a dangerous criminal gang.

Passion Fish

After an accident leaves her a paraplegic, a former soap opera star struggles to recover both emotionally and mentally, until she meets her newest nurse, who has struggles of her own.

Silver City

Having masterminded the hold up of his company office, a mining engineer is barred from the industry. He then sets up shop as an assayer, scheming to acquire a rich silver mine lease from its operators.

Silver Dollar

A farmer strikes it rich out West, then leaves his wife for a young beauty.

Tennessee's Partner

A tough, womanizing high-stakes gambler known only as Tennessee has an uneasy relationship with Duchess, madam of a thinly-disguised bordello, and no other friends at all. But he's saved from murder by a lonesome cowpoke ('My friends call me Cowpoke'), in town to meet his fiancée Goldie on the steamboat. When she arrives, there's a mysterious undercurrent between Goldie and Tennessee, whose newfound friendship with Cowpoke is destined to be severely tried...

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Fred C. Dobbs and Bob Curtin, both down on their luck in Tampico, Mexico in 1925, meet up with a grizzled prospector named Howard and decide to join with him in search of gold in the wilds of central Mexico. Through enormous difficulties, they eventually succeed in finding gold, but bandits, the elements, and most especially greed threaten to turn their success into disaster.

Tremors 4: The Legend Begins

This prequel of the bone-chilling Tremors begins in the town of Rejection, Nev., in 1889, where 17 men die under mysterious circumstances. Spooked by recent events, the miners who populate the town leave in droves until there's nothing left but a shell of a community. It's up to the remaining residents to get to the bottom of the deaths -- but they must do so before they, too, are eradicated off the face of the planet.

Mother Lode

A couple of youngish adventurers go into the wilderness of British Columbia in search of a lost colleague. Their plane crashes and they find themselves at the mercy of a crazed old Scottish miner, who has lived in isolation for many decades searching the mountain caves for a chamber of long lost gold. He is prepared to do anything - including murder - to keep his gold for himself.

Canyon Crossroads

A mining engineer, who is shunned by his peers for his unorthodox beliefs concerning the whereabouts of large uranium deposits, joins forces with a girl and her father to search for the mineral. When the father is hurt in an accident, daughter and engineer continue the project, aided by a Native American guide. Unbeknownst to the group, a reputable citizen of the town, really of low moral value, is shadowing them, his intention to jump their claim.

Pals in Paradise

Bill Harvey discovers a lost mine, rich with gold. Geraldine "Jerry" Howard has the claim to it left her by her father. Bill tells her that the death of the claimant, her father, makes a claim void. Infuriated, she goes to John Kenton, a crooked lawyer, for aid. Kenton sees an opportunity for wealth if he marries Geraldine, but Bill tells her that Kenton is only after her money. She gets more infuriated. While Bill and a posse are raiding an immoral cabaret, Kenton raids the Paradise freight depot to steal the money. The depot catches fire and Kenton shoots his henchman to save himself. The town and Geraldine think Kenton is a hero. It is up to Bill to prove otherwise.

Lone Star State of Mind

Earl and Baby, two young lovers with a plan to escape their small Texas town. But when Baby's dim-witted cousin Junior gets tangled up in a whole heap of trouble, Earl has just 48 hours to save the day, rescue Junior and keep his promise to get his Baby to Los Angeles in time for sweeps.

Return to Peyton Place

Residents of the small town of Peyton Place aren't pleased when they realize they're the characters in local writer Allison MacKenzie's controversial first novel. A sequel to the hit 1957 film.

Cripple Creek

It's 1893 and gold is being smuggled out of the country. Instead of stealing gold bars, the outlaws are stealing high grade ore, having it smelted, and then having it plated to look like lead. The Government sends agents Bret and Larry who arrive in Cripple Creek posing as Texas gunfighters. Bret finds the smelting operation and Larry learns of the payoff. But the crooked town Marshal is suspicious of the two men and the reply of his inquiry to Texas exposes them putting their lives in danger.

Son of the Gods

The popular Caucasian-looking son (Richard Barthelmess) of a wealthy Chinese businessman lives away from his widowed father and passes as white, but experiences prejudice, rejection, insult, and heartache when the socialite (Constance Bennett) he loves learns of his heritage.

Gold Is Where You Find It

Colonel Ferris, a wealthy farmer in northern California, is strongly opposed to hydraulic mining, a new method developed during the gold rush of the 1870's, which is flooding the area's prosperous farmlands. Despite Ferris' political stance, Jared Whitney, a mining engineer from the East, becomes friends with the colonel's son Lance and falls in love with his daughter Serena. Family tensions deepen when the colonel's brother Ralph gives up farming to go to San Francisco to work for his wife Rosanna's father, Harrison McCooey, a leader in the mining venture. When Lance follows Ralph, the colonel, focusing his anger on Jared, forbids him to see Serena.

Something New

A young woman visiting in Mexico is kidnapped by a gang of bandits, who drag her through the rugged wilderness to their hideout. She manages to leave word for her friend Bill, who knows the country well. But when Bill cannot find a horse, his only available form of transportation is his roadster. Nevertheless, he is determined to come to her rescue, even though it means trying to drive the car across miles of rocky, broken terrain.

South of Suez

Greedy diamond mine owner Eli Snedeker, resentful that his ex-foreman John Gamble stopped him from taking over kindly, but drunken, mine owner Roger Smythe's mine just as he was about to strike it rich, kills Smythe and blames it on Gamble. Grabbing the diamonds, Gamble flees Africa to England where he changes his name and begins a new life. What he hasn't counted on, though, is meeting and falling in love with Smythe's daughter Katherine, who falls in love with him but can't marry him until she can deal with her hatred of John Gamble, the man she believes killed her father.

Lovers Courageous

A daydreaming dramatist and his beloved persevere through hard times in the hope that one of his plays will be a hit.

Desert Gold

Chet Kasedon is after the Indians hidden gold mine but Chief Moya will not reveal it's location. He has also hired mining engineers Gale and Mortimer to locate the mine. When Gale sees Kasedon's cruelty to Moya, he switches sides.

Gold

Kenny Wells, a modern-day prospector, hustler, and dreamer, is desperate for a lucky break. Left with few options, Wells teams up with an equally luckless geologist to execute a grandiose, last-ditch effort: to find gold deep in the uncharted jungle of Indonesia.

Gun Fever

Luke Ram seeks revenge against the white renegade who lead a Sioux raiding party against his father's stagecoach way station, killing all the inhabitants except himself. He's joined by his mining partner, young Sam Weller, not realizing that they man they seek is Weller's father, in whose gang Sam rode as a young man.

Station West

When two US cavalrymen transporting a gold shipment get killed, US Army Intelligence investigator John Haven goes undercover to a mining and logging town to find the killers.

Striking Poses

When a beautiful paparazzo for a tabloid magazine finds herself pursued by a ruthless stalker, she is determined to emerge from this deadly game alive, and independently wealthy.

Space Rage

In this sci-fi/western film set two hundred years from now, a bank robber, Grange is captured and sentenced to the penal colony on the mining planet Proxima Centauri 3 where he meets bounty-hunter Walker, and the Colonel, a retired policeman from LA who was considered the best of his kind. Grange is a dangerous lunatic and Walker and the Colonel must team up to keep him from escaping.

Curse of the Forty-Niner

A group of friends discover gold deep inside an old mine. But by taking the gold and think they've hit it big, they awaken a long dead miner who's Hell Bent on protecting his treasure.

Harlan County War

A Kentucky woman whose mine-worker husband is nearly killed in a cave-in, and whose father is slowly dying of black lung disease, joins the picket lines for a long, violent strike.

How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer

Three generations of women in a Mexican American family experience sexual awakenings over the course of a summer.

Disappearance

A family driving through Nevada decides to take some snapshots at an out-of-the-way ghost town named Weaver, and horrible things start happening.

Beauty for Sale

A beautiful woman lands a job at an exclusive salon that deals with the wives of wealthy businessmen. Her contact with these men leads to a series of affairs.

The 33

Based on the true story of the collapse of a mine in San Jose, Chile—that left 33 miners isolated underground for 69 days.

Haunters of the Deep

Josh Holman encounters the ghost of a child mine worker with a special warning on the headlands of his Cornish home town, as an old tin mine is about to be re-opened after the discovery of valuable deposits of ore.

Captain Calamity

A South Seas skipper fights off thieves and pirates who are after a lost treasure.

The Brave Don't Cry

The Brave Don't Cry aspires to the "feel" of a documentary, right down to the deliberate absence of background music. A mine in Scotland falls victim to a cave-in, trapping some one hundred workers. Rescue parties are formed as the tremulous families of the miners wait in agony. As in the actual incident upon which this film is based, the rescue is nip and tuck and times, but eventually successful. The faces of real-life Scottish mining folk are melded with the professional actors in The Brave Don't Cry, adding poignancy to this otherwise cut-and-dried film.

Draegerman Courage

After a mine cave in, the rescue crew risks their lives to search for two trapped miners.

Mother o' Mine

Mrs. Standing, an old-fashioned country mother, sacrifices to put her son John through college so that he might have a better life. Upon completing school, John goes to the city where his financial success blinds him to the basic values taught to him by his mother.

His Greatest Sacrifice

Richard Hall is a successful writer, while his wife, Alice, is interested in pursuing a career as a singer. She meets James Hamilton, a musical agent, who arranges an opera engagement with Rimini, an impresario. Hall quarrels with his wife over this, and they separate, with Hall taking their daughter Grace.

Hell's Outpost

A returning Korean War vet becomes embroiled in a fight over possession of a tungsten mine.

Fury Below

Jim Cole, heir to a mining operation, takes over the mine, which is suffering from unexplained low production, and is facing a strike by the miners. Jim will soon loose the mine if production doesn't increase and the sabotage continues. Mary Norsen, office-secretary, accidentally learns of a plot by Fred Johnson to wreck the mine and force Cole to sell his coal-mine. She and her brother, Joe, join Cole in his fight to stop Johnson.

Lady in a Jam

A psychiatrist's patient, a nutty heiress, travels west to find gold in her grandfather's abandoned mine. The psychiatrist, unable to talk her out of it, decides to follow her out there.

Brothers O'Toole

The O'Toole Brothers are Eastern con men, exceptionally good at talking their way out of tight situations. When they ride into Molybdenum, Colorado, not suspecting the riches beneath the streets, they turn the sleepy mining town upside-down for their search for the gold. High-spirited hijinks ensue, with the brothers involved in everything from stolen gambling equipment to a "belchin', cussin' and spittin' " contest.

Girl Rush

During the California Gold Rush, two down-on-their-luck vaudevillians attempt to become wealthy by bringing a girlie show to an all-male western mining town.

The Three Weird Sisters

Three older sisters live on their family estate in Wales. This household once proudly reigned over a mining town, but the mines dried up and the estate and the town have fallen on hard times. When the land crumbles and a number of homes in the town are destroyed the sisters promise to rebuild the homes.

Pit Pony

Glace Bay, Nova Scotia Canada, 1901. Willie MacLean is a 10-year-old boy with a love for horses and liking to school to cape the difficult times his family has. Willie's stern, but benevolent father is a coal miner in a local mine along with his older brother John. But when Willie's father is injured and John is killed in an accident at the mine, Willie is forced to step into his brother's shoes to support his older sister Nelle, and two younger sisters until their father recovers. Willie soon finds work at the mine lonely (aka: the pit) and unfriendly in which he forms a bond with a pit pony horse in order to make it though each day.

Cupid & Cate

Cate has a small boutique where she sells vintage clothes. She is dating some snob whose mother thinks that Cate is a second-class citizen because of her line of work. Harry meets Cate and they fall in love instantly. Francesca is a doctor who finds out that he has cancer, and tells Cate so that she would break up with Harry...

Burning Rage

While coal fires burn beneath a depressed mining town a greedy businessman stops at nothing to buy up the mineral rights.

One Desire

The "one desire" of ex-gambler Clint Saunders and bar woman Tacey Cromwell is to escape their shady former lives and settle down to respectability. With Clint's younger brother and an orphaned girl in tow, the couple moves to a Colorado mining town where their love is tested by Judith Watrous, daughter of the town banker, who has her sights on Clint.

Dead Man's Burden

A western set on the New Mexico frontier a few years after the Civil War and centered on a struggling young family and the mining company who wants to buy their land.

Locusts

A swarm of locusts appears on the horizon near a Midwestern town and the inhabitants must find a way to destroy or divert them before the insects devour the area's valuable crops

Stones for Ibarra

A couple moves to a small Mexican town called Ibarra. They help open a local mine which brings new life to the town and the local ways help the two of them find peace they were missing.

Giant Mine

CBC's dramatic account of the tragedy of Yellowknife's Giant Mine, in which 9 miners were killed during a bitter labour dispute.

The Fighting Westerner

A mining engineer teams up with a crusty deputy sheriff to solve the mystery killings at an old mine where the owner's family waits for him to die, and where a valuable radium strike may have been made.

The Trail of the Silver Spurs

The Range Busters are investigating a gold robbery from the Denver Mint in a supposedly deserted ghost town, but they soon find they're not the only town resident with a nose for gold.

South Pacific Trail

Rex, Slim and the boys are fired by a wealthy rancher but decide to help him out when his daughter intends on marrying a shifty, gold-digging actor. Meanwhile, the rancher's foreman executes plans for a train robbery.

Man from the Black Hills

As other "B"-western series kept dropping like flies in 1952, Johnny Mack Brown kept grinding 'em out for Monogram. In Man From Black Hills, Johnny tries to help locate his saddle pal Jim Fallan's (James Ellison) long-lost father. Arriving in a small mining town, Johnny and Jim discover that Jim's father has established a financial empire--and that a local opportunist (Randy Brooks) has capitalized on this by claiming to be the old man's son.

Sudden Bill Dorn

Bundy has found gold on the Kent ranch but directs everyone to Ghost Town as he tries to take over the ranch. But Bill and Kent's niece Lorna have taken possession. When it appears Bundy is attracted to Lorna, his jealous girl friend has men destroy the ranch and the explosion helps uncover the gold vein.

The Mysterious Rider

Billy the Kid and his pal Fuzzy escape from the Marshal and find themselves in the ghost town of Laramy. The city was abandoned because of Sykes and his gang, who are in search of a gold mine.

West Is West

Dick Rainboldt (Carey) signs up to work at a gold mine without realizing that he's being hired as a strikebreaker. He takes the job primarily because of a pretty girl who lives in the town. The superintendent and manager of the mine convince Rainboldt to blow up the mine and make it appear like the strikers did it. But Rainboldt turns the tables on the plotters and reveals their scheme. The mine owner rewards him with a big assignment and the girl promises to marry him.

Opened Shutters

When her father, an indigent artist, dies, Sylvia Lacey goes to live with her Aunt Martha and her uncle, Judge Trent, in New England, where she is unwanted and humiliated. Though she and John Dunham, her uncle's young law partner, fall in love, she believes he intends to marry the daughter of a wealthy neighbor.

Pal o' Mine

Opera singer Julia Montfort (Irene Rich) returns to the stage when her husband, Verdugo Montford (Josef Swickard) loses his job...and then gives him work secretly paid for by herself. When a temperamental artist Babette Hermann (Pauline Garon) reveals the secret, Verdugo becomes disillusioned. Later, though, his faith in his wife is restored.

The Golden Cocoon

The story of a much put-upon woman who becomes involved with a professor of political economy only to be thrown over by him for the daughter of a wealthy businessman.

Sort results by:

X close
Clear filters
...