The best John Holland’s thriller movies

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.

In the middle of a pictorial lecture on his recent expedition to the Mongolian Desert, Dr. John Benton,the famous explorer, drinks from the water bottle on his lecture table, collapses and dies. His last words "Eternal Fire" are the only clue Chinese detective Jimmy Wong and Captain Street of the police department have to work on.

Wealthy, reckless Californian Julie Merriday, accompanied by her boyfriend Harry Lindsay, an attorney, narrowly avoids crashing into a motorcycle driven by young Ben Gunther. Ben temporarily abandons his damaged cycle and accepts a ride from Julie but insists upon calling her Barbara. Later, at the Merriday beach house, Julie's Aunt Sarah tells Julie that her great great grandmother was named Barbara, and furthermore, that ancestress had an illegitimate child fathered by one Benjamin Gunther.

A group of Nazi survivors save Hitler's brain keeping it alive in a huge jar hooked up to a machine. The Nazis plan to release a deadly gas destroying all life on the planet. To ensure their success they kidnap Professor Coleman the only man on the planet with the antidote to the poison gas.

At the end of World War II, Nazi officials spirited the living head of Adolf Hitler out of Germany to a hiding place in the South American country of Mandoras, in order to revive the Third Reich at a later date. By the 1960s these men believe the time has come, so they kidnap a top scientist in order to force him to help keep Hitler alive. Several intelligence agencies find out about the plot and send agents to stop it. NOTE: "They Saved Hitler's Brain", despite bearing a 1963 copyright, was released years later. The 1963 film The Madmen of Mandoras was combined with new footage of "CID" agents Vic and Toni shot for the film and released to television as "They Saved Hitler's Brain". The Vic and Toni footage was clearly shot years later; the hairstyles and fashions did not become popular until the late 1960s.