The Blue GardeniaMovies like The Blue Gardenia
- Key Features:
- Film noir, Murder mystery, Femme fatale, False accusation, Amnesia, Journalistic investigation, Suspicion, Los Angeles, 1950s
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Film noir enthusiasts, Mystery lovers, Fans of classic cinema
- Emotional Arc:
- Confusion → Suspicion → Revelation
The Blue Gardenia

Upon waking up to the news that the man she’d gone on a date with the previous night has been murdered, a young woman with only a faint memory of the night’s events begins to suspect that she murdered him while attempting to resist his advances.
The Blue Gardenia
A woman fights to convince the police that she witnessed a murder while looking out her bedroom window.

Frank Johnson, a sole witness to a gangland murder, goes into hiding and is trailed by Police Inspector Ferris, on the theory that Frank is trying to escape from possible retaliation. Frank's wife, Eleanor, suspects he is actually running away from their unsuccessful marriage. Aided by a newspaperman, Danny Leggett, Eleanor sets out to locate her husband. The killer is also looking for him, and keeps close tabs on Eleanor.

In 1940s Los Angeles, two former boxers-turned-cops must grapple with corruption, narcissism, stag films and family madness as they pursue the killer of an aspiring young actress.

Actor Lester Blaine has all but landed the lead in Myra Hudson's new play when Myra vetoes him because, to her, he doesn't look like a romantic leading man. On a train from New York to San Francisco, Blaine sets out to prove Myra wrong...by romancing her. Is he sincere, or does he have a dark ulterior motive?

Suave antiques dealer Alfredo Martelli is picked up by the police with no justification. At the precinct, Martelli realizes what the investigation is all about-- that he is the main suspect in the killing of his wealthy ex-lover. Is he guilty, or is he just a sleaze?

A violent screenwriter and a female neighbor fall in love after she clears him of murder, but she begins to have second thoughts.

A private detective is drawn into a complex murder mystery when he is hired to track down a missing young woman.

A hit man and his partner try to find out why their latest victim, a former race-car driver, did not try to get away.

Claiming that he doesn't know his own past, a rich man enlists an ex-con with an odd bit of detective work. Gregory Arkadin says he can't remember anything before the late 1920s, and convict Guy Van Stratten is happy to take the job of exploring his new acquaintance's life story. Guy's research turns up stunning details about his employer's past, and as his work seems linked to untimely deaths, the mystery surrounding Mr. Arkadin deepens.

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.

Private eye Philip Marlowe investigates a case of blackmail involving the two wild daughters of a rich general, a pornographer and a gangster.

Private detective Philip Marlowe becomes embroiled in an investigation involving a wealthy Californian family after a beautiful blonde hires him to track down her former lover.

Catherine, a novelist with an insatiable sexual appetite, becomes a prime suspect when her boyfriend is brutally murdered -- a crime she had described in her latest story.

In their blue hotel room, a clandestine couple of two married lovers plan an impossible future, as death shutters their already frail tranquillity. Now, the noose tightens more and more around innocents and sinners; but, was there a crime?

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.

Kit Preston begins to unravel when she receives threatening telephone calls informing her she's soon to be murdered.

A $10-million diamond rip-off, a stolen identity, a new life married to a diplomat. Laure Ash has risked big, won big. But then a tabloid shutterbug snaps her picture in Paris, and suddenly, enemies from Laure's secret past know who and where she is. And they all want their share of the diamond heist. Or her life. Or both.

A devious femme fatale steals her husband’s drug money and hides out in a small town where she meets the perfect dupe for her next scheme.

Private eye Jake Gittes lives off of the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-World War II Southern California. Hired by a beautiful socialite to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together.

Kathy leaves the newspaper business to marry homicide detective Bill, but is frustrated by his lack of ambition and the banality of life in the suburbs. Her drive to advance Bill's career soon takes her down a dangerous path.

When her American lover visits London, a wealthy woman’s jealous husband hatches a plan to murder her and inherit her fortune.

On the eve of World War II, zany heiress Amanda Kelly travels by train to Switzerland. While passing through Germany, she meets a sweet elderly lady, who suddenly vanishes. Distraught, she questions her fellow passengers who claim that the woman was never there. Unsure if it's all in her mind or if there's a more sinister plot afoot, Amanda teams up with photographer Robert Condon to discover the truth.

The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child.

After spending time in prison following an assault charge, Connor Bates now works in a library and spends his free time running, swimming, and trying to piece his world back together. When he meets Marilyn Chambers, the wife of a wealthy businessman, they collide into an intense physical and emotional relationship that quickly escalates into idle talk about her husband’s murder.

After a whirlwind romance with a wealthy widower, a naïve bride moves to his family estate but can't escape the haunting shadow of his late wife.

A young man is plunged into a life of subterfuge, deceit and mistaken identity in pursuit of a femme fatale whose heart is never quite within his grasp.

In Paris, a young girl is found dead in a Parisian square, wearing an evening dress. Commissioner Maigret will try to identify her and then understand what happened to the victim.

Six people travel by train overnight from Marseilles to Paris. When the train arrives at its destination, one of the passengers, a girl, is found dead in a sleeping berth. The police led by Inspector Grazzi investigate the other five passengers, suspecting that one of them was responsible. However, as the investigation is stepped up, the other passengers start turning up dead. It is then up to the last remaining two to solve the case, before they become the next victims.

At a party, someone goes insane and murders three women. Falsely accused of the brutal killings, Jerry is on the run. More bizarre homicides continue with alarming frequency all over town. Trying to clear his name, Jerry discovers the shocking truth...people are losing their hair and turning into violent psychopaths and the connection may be some LSD all the murderers took a decade before.

A color-blind psychiatrist is stalked by an unknown killer after taking over his murdered friend's therapy group and becomes embroiled in an intense affair with a mysterious woman who may be connected to the crime.

Four women were murdered, each was knifed and, though they had their clothes torn, they weren't molested. As the famed police inspector Jules Maigret pieces the clues together, he comes to realize that for the elusive man that he suspects to be unmasked, he has to set him a trap.

Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.

When a young female student is savagely killed in a park during a thunderstorm, the culprit seems obvious: TV sports personality Alessandro Marchi, seen fleeing the scene of the crime by numerous eyewitnesses. The evidence against him is damning... but is it all too convenient? And when the killer strikes again while Marchi is in custody, it quickly becomes apparent that there's more to the case than meets the eye...

A vicious serial sex killer is on the loose, and landscape gardener and shop-window outfitter Loris is the prime suspect, thanks to his unfortunate habit of getting caught in compromising situations (for which there is always a totally innocent explanation that the police fail to spot). Undercover policewoman Jessica is assigned by eccentric police psychologist Taccone to follow Loris.

When a string of jewel robberies hits the French Riviera, suspicion falls on retired thief John “The Cat” Robie. To clear his name, he sets out to trap the copycat himself—entangling a wealthy widow and her beguiling daughter in a seductive game of pursuit, deception, and desire.

Career criminal Johnny Clay recruits a sharpshooter, a crooked police officer, a bartender and a betting teller named George, among others, for one last job before he goes straight and gets married. But when George tells his restless wife about the scheme to steal millions from the racetrack where he works, she hatches a plot of her own.

Police commissioner Santamaria is investigating the murder of the ambiguous architect Mr. Garrone. The investigations soon drive him into the Torino's high society. Santamaria suspect Anna Carla and at the same time falls in love for her. Lello is the lover of Massimo, Anna Carla’s gay friend. He is following another direction in order to find out the truth, and his results are confusing the Policeman. But another murder happens...

Police Lt. Leonard Diamond vies to bring a clever, well connected, and sadistic gangster to justice all the while obsessing over the gangster's girlfriend.

Newspaper men compete against each other to find a serial killer dubbed "The Lipstick Killer".

A wealthy wife's affair with her daughter's guitar tutor is threatened when the tutor is attacked and rescued by a hired killer, leading him to suspect their secret is out.

A former boxer turned taxi driver earns the scorn of his nagging wife and gets mixed up with jewel thieves.

Seen-it-all New York detective Frank Keller is unsettled - he has done twenty years on the force and could retire, and he hasn't come to terms with his wife leaving him for a colleague. Joining up with an officer from another part of town to investigate a series of murders linked by the lonely hearts columns he finds he is getting seriously and possibly dangerously involved with Helen, one of the main suspects.

A young doctor falls in love with a disturbed young woman and apparently becomes involved in the death of her husband. They head for Mexico trying to outrun the law.

Two detectives clash over the hunt for a burlesque dancer’s killer in Los Angeles’ Japanese district.

A Korean War vet returns to his job as a railroad engineer and becomes involved in a sordid affair with a co-worker's wife and murder. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment, in 1997.

When socialite and heiress Julie Wardh begins receiving blackmail letters attributed to a mysterious serial killer, she suspects her cruel and sadistic former lover Jean is behind them. With her husband Neil frequently out of town, she falls into the arms of her friend's cousin George, and as the unknown assassin begins to make his move, she fears that one of the three men in her life may be the killer.

Julie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves the town. She will track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is her goal? What is her purpose?

A high-priced call girl is forced to depend on a reluctant private eye when she is stalked by a psychopath.

The wife of a psychoanalyst falls prey to a devious quack hypnotist when he discovers she is an habitual shoplifter. Then one of his previous patients now being treated by the real doctor is found murdered, with her still at the scene, and suspicion points only one way.

Baltimore, Maryland. Sylvia sees a girl being attacked from her lover Terry's bedroom window. The assailant flees and his victim is saved. But that same night another girl is found murdered.

Los Angeles, 1958: a detective holes up in a downtown hotel awaiting killers to come get him. During the course of one night he will meet various occupants of the hotel and the truth of how he came to be in his present situation will be revealed.

A nightclub singer enlists her brother-in-law to track down her husband's killer.

After Faye and her psychotic boyfriend, Vince, successfully rob a mob courier, Faye decides to abscond with the loot. She heads to Reno, where she hires feckless private investigator Jack Andrews to help fake her death. He pulls the scheme off and sets up Faye with a new identity, only to have her skip out on him without paying. Jack follows her to Vegas and learns he's not the only one after her. Vince has discovered that she's still alive.

Strange things begin to occur as a tiny California coastal town prepares to commemorate its centenary. Inanimate objects spring eerily to life; Rev. Malone stumbles upon a dark secret about the town's founding; radio announcer Stevie witnesses a mystical fire; and hitchhiker Elizabeth discovers the mutilated corpse of a fisherman. Then a mysterious iridescent fog descends upon the village, and more people start to die.

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 struggling actress tries to help a friend prove his innocence when he's accused of murdering the husband of a high-society entertainer.

P.C. George Dixon is a long-serving traditional copper who is due to retire shortly. He takes a new recruit under his aegis and introduces him to the easy-going night beat. Dixon is a classic ordinary hero but also anachronistic, unprepared and unable to answer the violence of the 1950s.

A nerdy film student and lifelong voyeur begins to believe that two lovely young strangers may have conspired to commit a brutal murder.

A dabbler-in-crime and his assistant hire an ex-police reporter to recover some stolen papers.

A police inspector suspects a serial killer is afoot in the university city of Bologna, luring in his victims through online video chats before murdering them and assuming their identity.

A self-assured businessman murders his employer, husband of his mistress, which unintentionally provokes an ill-fated chain of events.

A retired detective accepts a simple task, unaware that it will tear open old, forgotten, but deadly wounds.

In a moment of madness a middle-aged, married and respectable pharmacist kills a young woman who is sun-bathing by a lake. Unable to take in what he has done, he flees from the scene of the crime and behaves as if nothing has happened. Eventually her boyfriend is charged with the crime and, in a strange twist of fate, the killer finds himself serving on the jury.

Claude Massoulier is murdered while hunting at the same place as Julien Vercel, an estate agent who knew him and whose fingerprints are found on Massoulier's car. As the police discover that Marie-Christine Vercel, Julien's wife, was Massoulier's mistress, Julien is the prime suspect. But his secretary, Barbara Becker, while not quite convinced he is innocent, defends him and leads her private investigations.

A dentist finds himself a murder suspect after a sexy patient seduces him into prescribing her drugs.

In a shadowy world stitched from nightmares, a young woman's harrowing journey in a seedy hotel unveils her traumatic past. Haunted by violence and stalked through desolate streets, her psyche unravels as she confronts an abusive husband and unsettling memories.

Claude is a ruthless and efficient contract killer. His next target, a woman, is the most difficult.

Nothing is what it seems when a twisted one-night stand spirals into a serial killer’s vicious murder spree.

Star-crossed lovers Thérèse and Laurent think they've gotten away with murder after Thérèse's weakling husband "falls" from a speeding train. But when forced to contend with a blackmailer's demands and the mute accusations of Thérèse's mother-in-law, it's only a matter of time before the law, their passion or blind chance trips them up.

In Depression-era West Virginia, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.

A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.

Two Los Angeles homicide detectives are dispatched to a northern town where the sun doesn't set to investigate the methodical murder of a local teen.

Fed up with her small-town marriage, a woman goes after the big time and gets mixed up with the mob.

A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.

When a prominent art dealer is found murdered, the man's death leads to an intriguing investigation steeped in sex, corruption and crime. District Attorney David Corelli gets assigned to the case and discovers that a key suspect is his ex-lover Katrina Gavin, a beautiful psychologist who has settled down with his old friend and peer. As Corelli gets deeper into the case, he uncovers dark secrets with far-reaching implications.

Remake of the 1931 Fritz Lang original. In the city, someone is murdering children. The Police search is so intense, it is disturbing the 'normal' criminals, and the local hoods decide to help find the murderer as quickly as possible.

She’s the most beautiful, most short-sighted, most sentimental, most perplexing, most obstinate, most untrustworthy and most troubling of heroines. The lady in the car has never seen the sea. On the run from the police, she keeps telling herself that she’s not crazy… Only...

One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.

A French man spies on a lovely younger woman across the way. When he's spotted by the woman shortly after being questioned by the police about a local murder, the man's simple life becomes more complicated.

A simple funeral turns a man's world Topsy turvy. He wakes up in a posh hotel room, totally clueless about how he got there. Slowly, he recalls what happened a day before.

A shy, lonely film buff embarks on a killing spree against those who browbeat and betray him, all the while stalking his idol, a Marilyn Monroe lookalike.

Upon arriving to a small town, a drifter quickly gets into trouble with the local authorities — and the local women — after he robs a bank.

Not long after they cross paths at an art gallery, architect Ray Reardon and hypnotically sensual Lena are married with children. But as strange incidents occur, Ray begins to realize he may not really know the woman he married.

An embittered woman seeks escape in marriage, only to fall for her husband’s best friend.

The wife and mistress of a cruel school master collaborate in a carefully planned and executed scheme to murder him. The plan goes well until the body, which has been strategically dumped, disappears. The psychological strain starts to weigh on the two women when a retired police investigator begins looking into the man's disappearance on a whim.

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

An innocent man turns fugitive as he reconstructs events that implicate him for a murder and robbery he did not commit.

After being implicated in a murder, a young woman flees New York City and moves to Los Angeles, where she rents a room from a writer. They begin an affair, but it seems she's been followed by a homicidal duplicate of herself.

Fashion designer Joanna Crane leads a double life. By night she is China Blue, a prostitute who's attracted the attention of a sexually frustrated private detective, and a psychopathic priest in possession of a murderous sex toy.

An aging, reclusive Southern belle plagued by a horrifying family secret descends into madness after the arrival of a lost relative.

Baron von Sepper is an Austrian aristocrat noted for his blue-toned beard, and his appetite for beautiful wives. His latest spouse, an American beauty named Anne, discovers a vault in his castle that's filled with the frozen bodies of several beautiful women.

A woman appeared to have a fairy-tale life, but six years into her marriage, the fairytale crumbles when her husband is found buried in the backyard of their home with numerous stab wounds.

In the late 1940s, a murderous couple known as the 'The Lonely Hearts Killers' kills close to a dozen people. Two detectives try to nab the duo who find their targets via the personals in the paper.

Paul Braconnier and his wife Blandine only have one thing in mind: to find a way to kill each other without risk. After listening to a radio show, Paul decides to go to Paris to meet a famous lawyer in the acquittal of the murderers. He tells the lawyer that he killed his wife. The lawyer asks Paul to reconstruct the circumstances of the drama. Without knowing it, he explains, in spite of himself, the way for Paul to murder his wife by putting the odds on his side to avoid death penalty or even be released...

A down-on-his-luck PI is hired by his old flame to investigate a murder. But while the case at first appears routine, it slowly reveals itself to be a complex interwoven web of crimes, suspects and dead bodies.

Over-the-hill gumshoe in Los Angeles seeks to avenge the killing of an old pal, another detective who was involved in a case concerning a murdered broad, stolen stamps, a nickel-plated handgun, a cheating dolly, and a kidnapped pussycat.

Ambulance driver Frank Jessup is ensnared in the schemes of the sensuous but dangerous Diane Tremayne.

When an elderly millionaire is found dead with cocaine in his system, his will leaves $8 million to Rebecca Carlson, who was having an affair with him. District attorney Robert Garrett decides to prosecute Rebecca, arguing that she deliberately engaged in wild sex with the old man to overexcite him and lead to his premature death. Defense attorney Frank Dulaney defends Rebecca in court while getting sucked into a dangerous affair with her.

In 1950s Los Angeles, a special crime squad of the LAPD investigates the murder of a young woman.
