The 40 most popular 1940s action movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


Spy Smasher
1942 · 3h 35m · US
Prior to the United States' involvement in World War II, the masked vigilante Spy Smasher fights Nazi agents operating within the US, led by the treacherous sabotage leader codenamed The Mask.


Jungle Goddess
1948 · 1h 2m · US
When a plane carrying the daughter of a millionaire crashes in an African jungle, two pilots set out to collect the reward. They discover that she has become the goddess of a primitive tribe. An insurgent witch doctor and fierce wild animals make escape from the jungle difficult for the trio.


Radio Ranch
1940 · 1h 10m · US
Re-edited feature version of serial The Phantom Empire (1935). Singer Gene Autry discovers a race of advanced humans living beneath the earth.


Stagecoach Outlaws
1945 · 58m · US
Kirby sends his henchmen to break killer Matt Brawley out of jail. But Brawley has already broken out and they return with Fuzzy instead. Realizing they think he's Brawley, Fuzzy plays the part. He and Bill plan to round up the gang but Fuzzy is in trouble when the real Brawley shows up to expose the hoax.


Jungle Man
1941 · 1h 3m · US
An expedition sets out to darkest Africa to find the fabled City of the Dead, and must battle thick jungle, hostile natives, wild animals and a deadly epidemic.


Nazty Nuisance
1943 · 43m · US
Germany's Adolf Hitler, with his Axis-stooges, Italy's Mussolini and Japan's Suki Yama, although he tried to avoid taking them, is on his way, via submarine, to a tropical country to negotiate a treaty with the High Chief Paj Mab. However, an American P.T-boat crew is already there and have some plans for schickenbit-grubber and his buddies.


Canal Zone
1942 · 1h 19m · US
A cocky pilot at a Panama Canal bomber station clashes with his trainer over recklessness and a woman. After causing a fatal crash while hungover, he seeks redemption when his rivals crash in the jungle.


Guadalcanal Diary
1943 · 1h 33m · US
Concentrating on the personal lives of those involved, a war correspondent takes us through the preparations, landing and initial campaign on Guadalcanal during WWII.


Texas Renegades
1940 · 59m · US
Marshal Tim Smith is sent to Rawhide to battle rustlers. When the outlaw gang attempts to kill the new Marshal, they get the wrong man. Tim puts his identification on the dead man and poses as a known outlaw. This gets him into the gang where he is given the job of posing as the new Marshal.


Mighty Joe Young
1949 · 1h 34m · US
A young woman, Jill Young, grew up on her father's ranch in Africa, raising a large gorilla named Joe from an infant. Years later, she brings him to Hollywood to become a star.


Strange Journey
1946 · 1h 5m · US
Reformed racketeer "Lucky" Leeds flees from the police when he thinks they are about to arrest him for a murder he didn't commit. He and his wife Patti fly to his privately-owned remote island and have to crash land. Also on the island is a group of shipwrecked people, including a German professor, his daughter, an English journalist, a wealthy widow, a sailor and a Nazi Agent.


Foreign Correspondent
1940 · 2h · US
American crime reporter John Jones is reassigned to Europe as a foreign correspondent to cover the imminent war. When he walks into the middle of an assassination and stumbles on a spy ring, he seeks help from a beautiful politician’s daughter and an urbane English journalist to uncover the truth.


Dick Tracy
1945 · 1h 1m · US
Dick is faced with a series of brutal murders in which the victims, all from different social and economic backgrounds, are viciously slashed to pieces. Suspects abound but Tracy, getting a clue that there will be 15 murders in all, must find the common thread among the victims before more are killed.


The Fighting Seabees
1944 · 1h 40m · US
Construction workers in World War II in the Pacific are needed to build military sites, but the work is dangerous and they doubt the ability of the Navy to protect them. After a series of attacks by the Japanese, something new is tried, Construction Battalions (CBs=Seabees). The new CBs have to both build and be ready to fight.


Twelve O'Clock High
1949 · 2h 12m · US
In the early days of daylight bombing raids over Germany, General Frank Savage must take command of a 'hard luck' bomber group. Much of the story deals with his struggle to whip his group into a disciplined fighting unit in spite of heavy losses, and withering attacks by German fighters over their targets.


Forbidden Trails
1941 · 54m · US
Two ex-cons plan to kill the range rider marshal who sent them to prison and, when their plan fails, join forces with their former boss, a crooked saloon owner who has the same idea.


Gang War
1940 · 1h 3m · US
Two mobs fight for control of the jukebox racket.


Tarzan's Desert Mystery
1943 · 1h 10m · US
A letter from Jane, who is nursing British troops, asks Tarzan's help in obtaining a malaria serum extractable from jungle plants. Tarzan and Boy set out across the desert looking for the plants. Along the way they befriend a stranded American lady magician.


Marked Men
1940 · 1h 6m · US
A man accused of planning a prison break turns the tables on escaped cons by leading the group into the desert.


Battleground
1949 · 1h 58m · US
Members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division are fighting for their country amidst the rugged terrain of Bastogne, Belgium, in December 1944. Holley and his American compatriots have already seen one of their own, Roderigues, perish under enemy fire. The men try to rebuff another series of Nazi attacks, but what they really need is a change in the weather. Without clear skies, they'll never get the air support they need.


The Adventures of Dusty Bates
1947 · 1h 55m · UK
Dusty Bates observes some smuggled jewels hidden in a crate aboard a ship; he is pursued by low-lifes when the crate is put ashore.


The Story of Dr. Wassell
1944 · 2h 20m · US
As the Japanese sweep through the East Indies during World War II, Dr. Wassell is determined to escape from Java with some crewmen of the cruiser Marblehead. Based on a true story of how Dr. Wassell saved a dozen or so wounded sailors who were left behind when able bodied men were evacuated to Australia.


Angel and the Badman
1947 · 1h 40m · US
A wounded outlaw finds unexpected mercy in the care of a rancher's daughter. The hope of love pulls him toward a different life until the law, and his violent past, close in on his new home. Now he must choose the kind of man he'll become.


Batman
1943 · 4h 20m · US
Japanese master spy Daka operates a covert espionage-sabotage organization located in Gotham City's now-deserted Little Tokyo, which turns American scientists into pliable zombies. The great crime-fighters Batman and Robin, with the help of their allies, are in pursuit.


Guerilyera
1946 · PH
Carmen Rosales plays herself in this dramatization of her time as a guerilla fighter.


Tarzan's Secret Treasure
1941 · 1h 21m · US
A scientific expedition happens to discover that gold exists on Tarzan's escarpment. The villainous Medford and Vandermeer kidnap Jane and Boy to extort from Tarzan the location of the gold.


Su última pelea
1949 · 1h 45m · AR
Tuberculosis and a passional crime prevent the final triumph to a boy from the slums who has opened his way in boxing.


Blonde Savage
1947 · 1h 1m · US
An expedition into the deep jungle discovers a native tribe led by a tall Caucasian blonde woman.


Captain Midnight
1942 · 4h 30m
Secret Service Major Steel is one of the few men in America aware of the fact that Captain Albright is also Captain Midnight, daring masked aviator dedicated to fighting gangsters and enemies of America.


Mystery of the Riverboat
1944 · 3h 38m · US
A movie serial in 13 chapters: Some swampland becomes valuable, and various factions squabble over ownership of it.


Reap the Wild Wind
1942 · 1h 59m · US
The Florida Keys in 1840, where the implacable hurricanes of the Caribbean scream, where the salvagers of Key West, like the intrepid and beautiful Loxi Claiborne and her crew, reap, aboard frail schooners, the harvest of the wild wind, facing the shark teeth of the reefs to rescue the sailors and the cargo from the shipwrecks caused by the scavengers of the sea.


North West Mounted Police
1940 · 2h 6m · US
Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers ("Isn't that a contradiction in terms?", another character asks him) travels to Canada in the 1880s in search of Jacques Corbeau, who is wanted for murder. He wanders into the midst of the Riel Rebellion, in which Métis (people of French and Native heritage) and Natives want a separate nation. Dusty falls for nurse April Logan, who is also loved by Mountie Jim Brett. April's brother is involved with Courbeau's daughter Louvette, which leads to trouble during the battles between the rebels and the Mounties. Through it all Dusty is determined to bring Corbeau back to Texas (and April, too, if he can manage it.)


I'm Still Alive
1940 · 1h 12m · US
Married to stuntman Steve Bennett, movie star Laura Money fears for his life and pressures him to quit his job. However, this demand soon puts a strain on their marriage.


Drums of Fu Manchu
1940 · 4h 29m · US
The nefarious Dr. Fu Manchu searches for the keys to the tomb of Genghis Khan, in order to fulfill a prophecy that will enable him to conquer the world. His nemesi, Dr. Nayland Smith and his associates fight to keep the evil doctor from getting his hands on the keys. In 1943 the serial was edited together into a feature movie also called Drums of Fu Manchu.


Isle of Forgotten Sins
1943 · 1h 22m · US
An evil sea captain and the forces of nature threaten two divers' search for a fortune in gold in the South Pacific.


Submarine Base
1943 · 1h 5m · US
Ship engineer Jim Taggert is rescued from a torpedoed tramp steamer by Joe Morgan, an American gangster that found New York too hot for him, and has become a fisherman operating from an out-of-the-way island off of the coast of South America. Morgan makes his headquarters at the Halfway House run by the parents of Maria Styx as a bar and dance resort catering to the planters and traders of the island. Taggert finds himself practically a prisoner along with a group of American girls acting as entertainers at the resort. Taggert shadows Morgan in his activities in a remote cove and finds that Morgan is supplying German U-boat commanders with torpedoes, but does not know that Morgan has rigged the torpedoes with clock devices that explode when at sea and sinks the U-boats.


El casado casa quiere
1948 · 1h 23m · MX
Interfering relatives complicate a couple's attempt to build their dream house.


Japoteurs
1942 · 9m · US
Superman vs. Japanese spies hijacking a new super-bomber.


High Sierra
1941 · 1h 40m · US
Given a pardon from jail, Roy Earle gets back into the swing of things as he robs a swanky resort.


Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
1944 · 1h 27m · US
Orphaned as a young child and adopted by a band of notorious thieves, now-grown Ali Baba sets out to avenge his father’s murder, reclaim the royal throne, and rescue his beloved Amara from the iron fist of his treacherous enemy.
1940s cinema is split by the war: propaganda and home-front melodrama, then the darker, more cynical film noir that followed. Italian neorealism emerged from the rubble at the decade's end.
Action cinema runs from the stunt-driven spectacle of Hollywood blockbusters to the choreographed precision of Hong Kong and Korean thrillers. The best of it treats physical performance as storytelling — chases, fights, and set pieces that reveal character rather than pause for it.