5 Classic Noirs with Major Horror Vibes

A Technicolor sun-drenched noir, Leave Her to Heaven is unlike anything else from the classic Hollywood era.

The film is like the original Gone Girl with Gene Tierney’s Ellen Berent giving Amy Dunne a real run for her money. Ellen is dedicated to being the best wife she can possibly be, and it doesn’t matter what the cost might be to everyone around her—or even herself.

Tierney earned the only Oscar nomination of her career for this role, and it’s honestly hard to believe she didn’t pick up a golden statue, because her tour-de-force performance as Ellen will shake you to your core.

Prepare yourself for some serious noir hijinks with this one.

Undercurrent is one of those films that seems like it shouldn’t exist at all.

Katharine Hepburn in a gothic noir with romantic undertones? Robert Mitchum as a mysterious but seemingly good-hearted man with too many secrets of his own? And it’s all helmed by famed director Vincente Minnelli?

This 1946 forgotten classic checks all those boxes and more.

Hepburn plays Ann Hamilton, a scientist’s daughter who falls in love with a rich society man. However, soon after marrying him, she finds herself drawn into the mystery of what happened to his missing brother Michael—while also realizing she might just be falling in love with the possibly dead man.

There’s everything you want from a noir: intrigue, crime, and glorious black-and-white cinematography.

It’s unbelievably strange to see Katharine Hepburn in a sort of damsel-in-distress role, but she sells it with enough steely resolve to rise about the usual tropes.

The ending is a little mangled and messy, but if you can get past that, this is a noir gem that’s absolutely worth your time.

While it’s not strictly a noir, Suspicion absolutely has some of the hallmarks of the genre, such as shadowy locales, haunting black-and-white cinematography, and, of course, the prospect of murder, which earns it a place on this list.

Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine star as an unlikely couple whose whirlwind courtship leads to marriage. However, since Fontaine’s Lina has all the money, and her new groom seems to have more debts than she realized, she soon begins to suspect him of plotting her murder.

The original ending was far bleaker—and much more horror-tinged—but even as it is, Suspicion remains one of the most unnerving entries in Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic filmography.

Cary Grant has never been so spooky.

I first saw Ladies in Retirement as part of Criterion Channel’s Gaslight Noir series, which focused on noir films set primarily in the late 19th century during—you guessed it—the literal gaslight era.

That being said, I was not expecting this little-known film to completely blow me away.

Featuring an incredible supporting cast that includes Elsa Lanchester (who’s best known to horror fans as the Bride of Frankenstein), the story follows Ellen (played by the luminous Ida Lupino), a companion and housekeeper who insists on bringing her eccentric and unpredictable sisters to live with her and her employer.

However, when her employer loses patience with the unstable sisters, she instructs Ellen to get rid of them. In the end, Ellen gets rid of someone, and that’s when the mystery and mayhem really pick up.

Although she isn’t discussed nearly enough these days, Ida Lupino was an iconoclast who was way ahead of her time. She’s the only woman to direct an episode of The Twilight Zone (the unforgettable “The Masks” episode), and she was also the first woman to direct a film noir when she helmed The Hitch-Hiker in 1953.

Ladies in Retirement was early in her career, and there was doubt initially if the 23-year-old Lupino could pull off the spinster role. Needless to say, she channels the desperate role with aplomb, turning in one of her most unsung performances.

Put this one on your streaming queue; it’s an unsettling good time.

We started this list with a Gene Tierney classic, so let’s finish it the same way.

In her other iconic role, Tierney plays the eponymous Laura, a glamorous advertising executive whose murder kicks off the entire plot.

Like Rebecca before it, Laura is one of those films that feels like a ghost story, even if there are no literal ghosts. But in a way, there almost is a phantom incarnate: a haunting portrait of Laura hangs in her apartment, and we learn about her through numerous flashbacks.

And as if that isn’t gothic enough, the detective working the case finds himself falling in love with the dead woman, until a plot twist midway through the film changes everything.

Plus, if that isn’t enough horror street cred for you, Vincent Price has an early role as Laura’s ne’er-do-well boyfriend.

Truly, if you haven’t seen Laura, then please be sure to fix that as soon as possible; it’s not only one of the very best noirs in cinema history, but it’s also one of the very best films of any genre.