Screenplay: Jim Thompson

Direction Stanley Kubrick

Cast Kirk Douglas · George Macready · Adolphe Menjou · Ralph Meeker

Plot Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) is the commander of the battle-decimated 701st Infantry Regiment of the French Army, dug in along the Western Front in a stalemated WWI. It is 1916...

Direction Stanley Kubrick

Cast Sterling Hayden · Coleen Gray · Vince Edwards · Jay C. Flippen

Plot Based on Lionel White's crime novel 'Clean Break'. Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) is an ex-con with a plan to steal $2 million from a San Francisco racetrack. He assembles an...

Direction Sam Peckinpah

Cast Steve McQueen · Ali MacGraw · Ben Johnson · Sally Struthers

Plot Doc McCoy (Steve McQueen) has been granted parole. The catch is that Sheriff Beynon expects a small favor from McCoy for his generosity: robbing another bank! Beynon does not really...

Direction Alain Corneau

Cast Patrick Dewaere · Myriam Boyer · Marie Trintignant · Bernard Blier

Plot Frank is a small time salesman in a Paris industrial suburb who supplements his meager earnings by stealing from his boss, Staplin. The latter has Frank tossed in jail, whereupon...

Direction Stephen Frears

Cast Anjelica Huston · Annette Bening · John Cusack · Pat Hingle

Plot When con artist Roy Dillon (John Cusack) is visited by his Mother, Lilly (Anjelica Huston), who is also a con artist, she sends Roy off to the hospital because of...

Direction Bertrand Tavernier

Cast Philippe Noiret · Isabelle Huppert · Jean-Pierre Marielle · Stéphane Audran

Plot 1938, in a French african colony. Lucien Cordier is the cop of this village, populated with blacks and a few whites (usually racialist and lustful). He is a washout, everyone...

Direction James Foley

Cast Jason Patric · Rocky Giordani · Rachel Ward · Bruce Dern

Plot 1990 was a good year for gritty adaptations of the books of Jim Thompson. In addition to The Grifters, this disturbing yet highly entertaining melodrama represented a miniature revival for...

Direction Michael Winterbottom

Cast Casey Affleck · Jessica Alba · Kate Hudson · Bill Pullman

Plot Casey Affleck plays Lou Ford, a sheriff's deputy in a small Texas town circa 1957. When the son of the town's richest man starts up an affair with a prostitute...

Direction Burt Kennedy

Cast Stacy Keach · Susan Tyrrell · Tisha Sterling · Keenan Wynn

Plot Lou Ford (Stacy Keach) is the sheriff of a small midwestern town. Abusive to suspects, his demeanor disguises a walking time bomb of hidden evil ready to explode into a...

Direction Roger Donaldson

Cast Alec Baldwin · Kim Basinger · Michael Madsen · James Woods

Direction Michael Oblowitz

Cast Philip Loch · Elis Imboden · Christian Durango · Sloan Cobb

Plot Marty Lakewood is a reporter forced to leave Chicago and his family because he had uncovered too much police corruption. He returns to his small home town on the California...

Direction Tom Cruise

Cast Peter Gallagher · Nancy Travis · Isabella Rossellini · John Reilly

Plot From a story by Jim Thompson. Grifter Mitch Allison (Peter Gallagher) 'borrowed' $25,000 from his con-artist wife Bette (Nancy Travis) and went off to double the money by hitting a...

Direction Jack Bond

Cast Neil Tennant · Chris Lowe · Joss Ackland · Dominique Barnes

Plot A young boy's holiday at a seaside resort includes a crazy blind priest, nuns in suspenders and a whole bunch of fat ladies.

Direction Maggie Greenwald

Cast Loretta Gross · Andrew Lee Barrett · Jackson Sims · Steve Monroe

Plot Based on a book by the great crime novelist Jim Thompson, this dark thriller is set in a small coastal community in New Jersey, where the only action in town...

Direction John Peyser · Tom Gries · Boris Sagal · Robert Gist

Cast Peter Mark Richman · Gene Coogan · Eddie Hice · Gavin MacLeod

Plot A former underworld lawyer goes to work for the Federal Government, determined to bring one hundred top criminals to justice.

Direction Steven Shainberg

Cast Elias Koteas · William H. Macy · Laure Marsac · Jay Leggett

Plot Sonny lives with his intellectually disabled older brother, and works as a bellhop at a second-rate hotel. This changes when Monique a beautiful, suicidal nut-case checks in. Sonny is offered...