This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene ...

Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Starring: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson
Directed By: Otto Preminger, Rouben Mamoulian

John Huston was eager for a lightweight lark, and The List of Adrian Messenger was just the project he needed. Philip MacDonald's upper-crust British murder mystery allowed Huston to work close to his Irish estate, including fox hunting and quail shooting well suited to Huston's lord-of-the-manor lifestyle. The mystery itself is clever enough: As a former MI-5 agent, George C. Scott is ...

Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Starring: George C. Scott, Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis
Directed By: John Huston

Rebecca is an ageless, timeless adult movie about a woman who marries a widower but fears she lives in the shadow of her predecessor. This was Hitchcock's first American feature, and it garnered the Best Picture statue at the 1941 Academy Awards. In today's films, most twists and surprises are ridiculous or just gratuitous, so it's sobering to look back on this film where every revelation ...

Manufacturer: Anchor Bay
Starring: Judith Anderson, Florence Bates, Nigel Bruce, Leonard Carey, Leo G. Carroll
Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock

A suave tennis player (Ray Milland) plots the perfect murder, the dispatching of his wealthy wife (Grace Kelly), who is having an affair with a writer (Robert Cummings). Amazingly, the wife manages to stave off her attacker, a twist of fate that challenges the hubby's talent for improvisation. Alfred Hitchcock wisely stuck to the stage origins of Dial M for Murder, ignoring the temptation ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams, Anthony Dawson
Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock

Manufacturer: Madacy Records
Starring: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Leslie Banks
Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock

Although it wasn't a box-office success when originally released in 1958, Vertigo has since taken its deserved place as Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal achievement. In fact, it consistently ranks among the top 10 movies ever made in the once-a-decade Sight & Sound international critics poll, placing at number 4 in the most recent survey. ...

Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Starring: Isabel Analla, Raymond Bailey, Barbara Bel Geddes, Paul Bryar, Ellen Corby

Hitchcock's first great romantic thriller is a prime example of the MacGuffin principle in action. Robert Donat is Richard Hannay, an affable Canadian tourist in London who becomes embroiled in a deadly conspiracy when a mysterious spy winds up murdered in Hannay's rented flat--and both the police and a secret organization wind up hot on his trail. With only a seemingly meaningless phrase ("the 39 ...

Manufacturer: Madacy Records
Starring: Peggy Ashcroft, Ivor Barnard, Wilfrid Brambell, Madeleine Carroll, Frank Cellier

Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Starring: Sidney Toler, Victor Sen Yung, C. Henry Gordon, Marc Lawrence, Joan Valerie
Directed By: Lynn Shores

The fractured Europe post-World War II is perfectly captured in Carol Reed's masterpiece thriller, set in a Vienna still shell-shocked from battle. Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) is an alcoholic pulp writer come to visit his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). But when Cotton first arrives in Vienna, Lime's funeral is under way. From Lime's girlfriend and an occupying British officer, Martins ...

Manufacturer: Homevision
Starring: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee
Directed By: Carol Reed

Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Starring: Sidney Toler, Marjorie Weaver, Robert Lowery, Ricardo Cortez, Donald MacBride
Directed By: Harry Lachman