10 Classic Adventure Movies from the 1940s

Adventure films from the mid-century years—the Golden Age of Hollywood—may lack the impressive special effects we're accustomed to today, but they can certainly still thrill an audience. The best of them are packed with excitement and entertainment, and they tell a great story. Here we've rounded up ten iconic adventure movies from the 1940s. And, of course, you can spot some famous 1940s actors and famous 1940s actresses in the casts of some of these great films. We realize we left a good number of excellent titles off this list, but you have to draw the line somewhere. But have you seen all of these? Every one is worth a viewing. And if it's been a long time since you've seen some of them, go ahead and seek them out again. So, reminisce and find some recommendations with this list of classic adventure movies from the 1940s.

Top '40s Adventure Films

1. The Mark of Zorro – 1940; directed by Rouben Mamoulian; starring Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, and Basil Rathbone. A Spanish aristocrat adopts a secret identity to fight for justice in the early days of California.

2. The Sea Hawk – 1940; directed by Michael Curtiz; starring Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, and Claude Rains. It's swashbuckling adventure on the high seas when Queen Elizabeth I hires a buccaneer to attack the Spanish Armada.

3. The Thief of Bagdad – 1940; directed by Ludwig Berger and Michael Powell; starring Conrad Veidt, Sabu, and June Duprez. If you're familiar with the Disney movie Aladdin, it might ring some bells to hear that this film is about a king who teams up with a thief named Abu to reclaim his throne after he's tricked and banished from Bagdad by the evil Jaffar.

4. The Sea Wolf – 1941; directed by Michael Curtiz; starring Edward G. Robinson, Ida Lupino, John Garfield, and Alexander Knox. A movie based on Jack London’s famous novel about mutiny aboard a sealer captained by a mean-spirited man named Wolf Larsen.

5. Sahara – 1943; directed by Zoltan Korda; starring Humphrey Bogart, Bruce Bennett, and J. Carrol Naish. A group of survivors from the fall of Tobruk in WWII struggle with a lack of water in the Libyan desert and face a German threat.

6. Lifeboat – 1944; directed by Alfred Hitchcock; starring Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, and Walter Slezak. Legendary director Hitchcock tackles a story by legendary writer John Steinbeck in this film adaptation about the survivors of a destroyed merchant ship in a lifeboat with one of the crew members of the U-boat that torpedoed them during WWII.

7. Oliver Twist – 1948; directed by David Lean; starring Robert Newton, Alec Guinness, and Kay Walsh. This film adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic tells the tale of an orphan who ends up living amongst a den of thieves.

8. Red River – 1948; directed by Howard Hawks and Arthur Rosson; starring John Wayne, Montgomery Clift and Joanne Dru. A cattle drive turns to mutiny when an adopted son seeks to overthrow his tyrannical father who's leading the expedition.

9. The Three Musketeers – 1948; directed by George Sidney; starring Lana Turner, Gene Kelly, and June Allyson. A film adaptation of the classic Alexandre Dumas novel recounting the tale of a trio of musketeers protecting King Louis XIII from the scheming of Cardinal Richelieu.

10. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – 1948; directed by John Huston; starring Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt, and Bruce Bennett. Two Americans in Mexico team up with an old prospector to search for gold in the mountains.