Five chilling true-crime classics that capture primal American fears

The Heiress: William Wyler unveils the psychological ferocity of Henry James’s Washington Square

The primal pull of Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter

Cocktails, wisecracks, and murder: The Thin Man’s married couple for the ages

Gleaming surfaces and twisted depths: Laura’s mirror-world of wayward desire

Love amid the treetops: the lyrical abandon of Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan’s Tarzan and Jane

The Incredible Shrinking Man: A cinematic nightmare both all-American and Kafka-esque

Purple Noon: A superior take on The Talented Mr. Ripley

Dark, sexy, funny: What makes Out of Sight the best film version of an Elmore Leonard novel

Faith and faithfulness in John Huston’s Wise Blood

Tinseltown meets the Great White Way: Classic musicals that thrived on stage and screen

The Natural is a sports movie that swings for the fences—and knocks it out of the park