The 40 most popular 1960s mystery movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


2001: A Space Odyssey
1968 · 2h 29m
country: United Kingdom
Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world's most advanced super computer.


Psycho
1960 · 1h 49m
country: United States
When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life, she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where manager Norman Bates cares for his housebound mother.


High and Low
1963 · 2h 22m
country: Japan
A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.


In the Heat of the Night
1967 · 1h 49m
country: United States
African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.


A Shot in the Dark
1964 · 1h 42m
country: United Kingdom
Inspector Jacques Clouseau, smitten with the accused maid Maria Gambrelli, unwittingly turns a straightforward murder investigation into a comedic series of mishaps, testing the patience of his irritable boss Charles Dreyfus as casualties mount.


Blow-Up
1966 · 1h 51m
country: United Kingdom
A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.


Marnie
1964 · 2h 10m
country: United States
Marnie is a beautiful but emotionally withdrawn thief, stealing from employers before disappearing under new identities. When her new boss, Mark Rutland, discovers her secret, his fascination turns to obsession, and he blackmails her into marriage, convinced he can cure her. But as he probes deeper into Marnie’s fractured mind, long-buried fears and compulsions begin to surface.


Charade
1963 · 1h 53m
country: United Kingdom
After Regina Lampert falls for the dashing Peter Joshua on a skiing holiday in the French Alps, she discovers upon her return to Paris that her husband has been murdered. Soon, she and Peter are giving chase to three of her late husband's World War II cronies, Tex, Scobie and Gideon, who are after a quarter of a million dollars the quartet stole while behind enemy lines.


Madam Slender Plum
1967 · 1h 34m
country: Hong Kong
Before director Lo Wei helped to discover Bruce Lee and the king of kung-fu comedy Jackie Chan, in Madam Slender Plum, Lo perpetuates the career of yet another Shaw's non-action, femme fatale starlet; the sleek and sexy, puppy-eyed Eurasian Jenny Hu. It's a melodrama with a touch of murder-mystery in the vein of an old Alfred Hitchcock movie where Diana Chang plays the mother with Jenny playing her oldest daughter.


Harper
1966 · 2h 1m
country: United States
Harper is a cynical private eye in the best tradition of Bogart. He even has Bogie's Baby hiring him to find her missing husband, getting involved along the way with an assortment of unsavory characters and an illegal-alien smuggling ring.


Alphaville
1965 · 1h 39m
country: France
Lemmy Caution is on a mission to eliminate Professor Von Braun, the creator of a malevolent computer that rules the city of Alphaville. Befriended by the scientist’s daughter Natasha, Lemmy must unravel the mysteries of the strictly logical Alpha 60 and teach Natasha the meaning of the word “love.”


Theorem
1968 · 1h 35m
country: Italy
A wealthy Italian household is turned upside down when a handsome stranger arrives, seduces every family member and then disappears. Each has an epiphany of sorts, but none can figure out who the seductive visitor was or why he came.


L'Avventura
1960 · 2h 24m
country: France
Claudia and Anna join Anna's lover, Sandro, on a boat trip to a remote volcanic island. When Anna goes missing, a search is launched. In the meantime, Sandro and Claudia become involved in a romance despite Anna's disappearance, though the relationship suffers from guilt and tension.


Angelique: The Road to Versailles
1965 · 1h 45m
country: France
Angelique is saved by the king of the cutthroats when she is endangered in the streets of Paris. After her hero is killed, she has many amorous affairs and becomes a successful businesswoman.


The Night of the Generals
1967 · 2h 28m
country: France
A German intelligence officer investigates a prostitute's killing in Warsaw during World War II. He lands on three major Nazi generals as suspects, two of whom are also involved in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.


The Innocents
1961 · 1h 40m
country: United Kingdom
In a mid-19th century Essex country house, a young governess for two children becomes convinced that the house and grounds are haunted by ghosts and that the children are being possessed.


Carnival of Souls
1962 · 1h 18m
country: United States
Mary Henry ends up the sole survivor of a fatal car accident through mysterious circumstances. Trying to put the incident behind her, she moves to Utah and takes a job as a church organist. But her fresh start is interrupted by visions of a fiendish man. As the visions begin to occur more frequently, Mary finds herself drawn to the deserted carnival on the outskirts of town. The strangely alluring carnival may hold the secret to her tragic past.


Bunny Lake Is Missing
1965 · 1h 47m
country: United Kingdom
A woman reports that her young daughter is missing, but there seems to be no evidence that she ever existed.


The Pit and the Pendulum
1961 · 1h 20m
country: United States
In the sixteenth century, Francis Barnard travels to Spain to clarify the strange circumstances of his sister's death after she had married the son of a cruel Spanish Inquisitor.


Blood and Black Lace
1964 · 1h 28m
country: Germany
Isabella, a young model, is murdered by a mysterious masked figure at a fashion house in Rome. When her diary, which details the house employees' many vices, disappears, the masked killer begins killing off all the models in and around the house to find it.


The Prize
1963 · 2h 14m
country: United States
A group of Nobel laureates descends on Stockholm to accept their awards. Among them is American novelist Andrew Craig, a former literary luminary now writing pulp detective stories to earn a living. Craig, who is infamous for his drinking and womanizing, formulates a wild theory that physics prize winner Dr. Max Stratman has been replaced by an impostor, embroiling Craig and his chaperone in a Cold War kidnapping plot.


The Trial
1962 · 1h 59m
country: France
Arrested for an unnamed crime, Josef K. is trapped in a surreal bureaucratic maze where justice is unknowable and guilt is assumed.


The Detective
1968 · 1h 54m
country: United States
New York City Police detective Joe Leland investigates the grisly murder of Teddy Leikman, the gay son of a politically influential department store owner. While investigating, he discovers links to official corruption in NYC in this drama that delves into a world of sex and drugs, homophobia, homosexuality and bisexuality.


Murder Ahoy
1964 · 1h 33m
country: United Kingdom
During an annual board of trustees meeting, one of the trustees dies. Miss Marple thinks he’s been poisoned after finding a chemical on him. She sets off to investigate at the ship where he had just come from. The fourth and final film from the Miss Marple series starring Margaret Rutherford as the quirky amateur detective.


5 Card Stud
1968 · 1h 43m
country: United States
After a card shark is caught cheating, he is taken out and lynched by the drunkards he was playing against. Soon afterwards, the men who were in the lynch mob start being murdered, one after another; all by hanging.


Murder Most Foul
1964 · 1h 30m
country: United Kingdom
A murderer is brought to court and only Miss Marple is unconvinced of his guilt. Once again she begins her own investigation.


The Ghost and Mr. Chicken
1966 · 1h 30m
country: United States
Luther Heggs, a typesetter for the town newspaper, pitches an idea for a story about a local haunted house where a famous murder/suicide occurred 20 years earlier. After the editor assigns Luther to spend one night alone in the mansion, Heggs has a number of supernatural encounters and writes a front page story that makes him a hometown hero...until the nephew of the deceased sues him for libel.


Hauteclaire
1961 · 1h 25m
country: France
The action takes place under the Restoration, at the Château de Savigny, near Nerville, a devout and prudish little town in the Cotentin region. Doctor Torty is the doctor. He tells a story of which he is the only one to know the secret, that of a criminal couple, without any remorse. The pretty Hauteclaire Stassin, daughter of the master of arms, meets the Count of Savigny, married to the noble and languid Delphine. Madly in love with the count, Hauteclaire joined the castle as a servant. Shortly after, the countess died of poisoning. Will the guilty lovers go unpunished?


Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte
1964 · 2h 13m
country: United States
An aging, reclusive Southern belle plagued by a horrifying family secret descends into madness after the arrival of a lost relative.


Woman Despiser
1967 · 1h 30m
country: Turkey
A psychopath serial killer and a necrophiliac rapist wearing a Halloween mask and gloves chooses victims based on the fact that their first initial is the same as the district in which he kills them.


The Terror
1963 · 1h 19m
country: United States
Lt. Andre Duvalier awakens on a beach to the sight of a strange woman who leads him to the gothic, towering castle that serves as home to an eerie baron.


Arabesque
1966 · 1h 45m
country: United States
When a plot against a prominent Middle Eastern politician is uncovered, David Pollock, a professor of ancient hieroglyphics at Oxford University, is recruited to help expose the scheme. Pollock must find information believed to be in hieroglyphic code and must also contend with a mysterious man called Beshraavi. Meanwhile, Beshraavi's lover, Yasmin Azir, seems willing to aid Pollock -- but is she really on his side?


Murder She Said
1961 · 1h 27m
country: United Kingdom
Miss Marple believes she's seen a murder in a passing-by train, yet when the police find no evidence she decides to investigate it on her own.


A Study in Terror
1965 · 1h 35m
country: United Kingdom
When Watson reads from the newspaper there have been two similar murders near Whitechapel in a few days, Sherlock Holmes' sharp deductive is immediately stimulated to start its merciless method of elimination after observation of every apparently meaningless detail. He guesses right the victims must be street whores, and doesn't need long to work his way trough a pawn shop, an aristocratic family's stately home, a hospital and of course the potential suspects and (even unknowing) witnesses who are the cast of the gradually unraveled story of the murderer and his motive.


The Legend of Lylah Clare
1968 · 2h 10m
country: United States
A dictatorial film director hires an unknown actress to play the lead role in a planned movie biography of a late, great Hollywood star.


Psyche 59
1964 · 1h 34m
country: United Kingdom
An industrialist's wife tries to remember the shocking sight that made her blind.


Midnight Lace
1960 · 1h 48m
country: United States
Kit Preston begins to unravel when she receives threatening telephone calls informing her she's soon to be murdered.


Tales of Terror
1962 · 1h 29m
country: United States
Three stories adapted from the work of Edgar Allen Poe: 1) A man and his daughter are reunited, but the blame for the death of his wife hangs over them, unresolved. 2) A derelict challenges the local wine-tasting champion to a competition, but finds the man's attention to his wife worthy of more dramatic action. 3) A man dying and in great pain agrees to be hypnotized at the moment of death, with unexpected consequences.


The List of Adrian Messenger
1963 · 1h 39m
country: United States
Adrian Messenger, a famous writer, asks his friend Anthony Gethryn, a former British agent, to help him investigate the whereabouts of the people who appear on a list, without asking him the reason why he should do so.


Taste of Fear
1961 · 1h 22m
country: United Kingdom
A wheelchair-bound young girl returns to her father's estate after ten years, and although she's told he's away, she keeps seeing his dead body on the estate.
The 1960s broke the old rules everywhere at once — the French New Wave, the collapse of the Hollywood Production Code, and new waves across Europe and Japan reshaping what a film could show and say.
Mystery films are structured around withheld information, trusting the audience to work alongside the investigator. The genre ranges from cozy whodunits to bleak, unresolved character studies.