The best Peter Illing’s drama movies

In the opening years of World War II the Royal Navy was fighting a desperate battle to keep the Atlantic convoy routes open and the British Isles supplied. Of great danger were the numerous surface/commerce raiders that had slipped out of German waters just before war was declared. Supplied by axis cargo ships or tankers, they primarily attacked and sank merchant shipping, and they could and did strike anywhere and everywhere. This is the story of one such ship – the 'Admiral Graf Spee' – and how 3 lightly armed Royal Navy cruisers with mere 6 and 8 inch guns boldly took on this powerful 'pocket battleship' armed with 11 inch guns.

A disgraced merchant marine officer elects to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and, as a result, vindicate his good name.

A man hypnotizes a young woman into being an opera singer.

An American reporter falls in love with a Russian ballet dancer.

Tony and Felix own a tramp boat, and sail around the Caribbean doing odd jobs and drinking a lot. They agree to ferry the beautiful but passportless Irena to another island. They both fall for her, leading to betrayal and a break-up of their partnership. Tony takes a job on a cargo ship. After a collision he finds himself trapped below deck with time running out (the ship is aflame), and only Felix, whom he hates and has sworn to kill, left to save him.

Anglo-Indian Victoria Jones seeks her true identity amid the chaos of the British withdrawal from India.

Nazis chase a U.S. newsman (Robert Mitchum) paid to smuggle names of Greek resistance leaders to London.

Ana, the Princess of Eboli, wears a black patch over her right eye, where she was blinded as a youth when fighting a duel in defense of her king, the despotic Philip. Thereafter she and the monarch were close friends, although his passion for her was never consummated. She marries one of Philip's ministers, bore him a son, and soon became a widow. Now Philip calls upon her to assist in coaching a commoner, Antonio Perez, for the office of first secretary to the crown.The result is more than Philip bargained for as Ana and Antonio become lovers and create a scandal in court, always the scene of perpetual intrigue. Philip has Antonio arrested on a drummed-up charge of murder, and when Ana refuses to leave Madrid, she too is arrested. After spending time in jail, she is transferred to her home and held in check. Antonio escapes and makes his way to Ana, who persuades him to leave the country and take her son.

Spectacular account of the infamous Eureka Stockade, and the events leading up to it.

Visiting in England, an American surgeon Doctor John Marlowe is decoyed to a middle European country, and discovers the operation he is to perform is on the Vosnian dictator. When the latter dies, he is replaced by a look-alike, but Marlowe then becomes the object of a shoot-to-kill, vicious pursuit by the secret police of Vosnia since it is vital to Vosnia that the dictator's death does not become known. Fleeing, he seeks help from an actress, Lisa Robinson, and the two are harried across the countryside.

A young employee of the British State Department falls in love with the daughter of a top Russian diplomat, much to the panic of their respective countries' officials, who suspect espionage. The cast includes David Knight, Odile Versois, Theodore Bikel and David Kossoff.

Spurred on by the death of his drug-addicted sister at the hands of ruthless narcotics kingpin Frank McNally, U.S. drug enforcement agent Charles Sturgis embarks on an investigation that takes him from New York to London, Lisbon, Rome, Naples and finally Athens in pursuit of McNally's shapely associate, Gina Broger.

Adapted from the novel of the same name by Hammond Innes. Bruce Campbell (Dirk Bogarde) inherits "Campbell's Kingdom" in the Canadian Rockies on the death of his grandfather. He has been diagnosed with an unspecified terminal illness and decides to see if he can find the oil that his grandfather believed was present on his land, and to clear his family name; his grandfather had wrongly been found guilty of fraud when his oil exploration company went broke. Owen Morgan (Stanley Baker) is the boss of a company that is constructing a dam that when complete will flood the "Kingdom". It's a race against time to prove that the oil is there before the dam is completed.

Alfred Dreyfus, a German-Jewish captain serving in the French Army, is falsely accused of treason and made a scapegoat for military espionage in an act of institutional anti-Semitism. Sent to prison, he becomes a cause célèbre for the novelist Émile Zola, who dubs it the "Dreyfus Affair." Eventually, Dreyfus is pardoned when the military cover-up is made public, and he returns to France. But his name is forever tarnished by the accusations of treason.

The ex-girlfriend (Juliette Greco) of a German fugitive hides with the captain (O.W. Fischer) and crew of a ship on the Rhine.

When a sedate wife and mother decides her family takes her for granted, she pens a movie script -- and it becomes a hit film. Suddenly faced with instant celebrity, she must choose between being a highly paid author and a middle-class housewife.

A shipping tycoon with a record becomes a suspect when money goes missing from the company vault.