

Several real-life child murderers, cannibals and serial killers – their nicknames are grisly enough: the Butcher of Hanover, the Vampire of Düsseldorf – terrorised Germany in the 1920s. The killer moment: It has to be the crop-duster sequence, which begins like a Western standoff and ends with the suavest man in cinema face down in the dirt. But it’s Grant’s movie: a Hollywood A-lister happy to be the punchline when the scene calls for it. And the cast? Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau and Jessie Royce Landis – heroes, villains and worried mothers, they’re all having a ball. It’s all a tribute to Hitch and his ensemble of behind-the-camera talents, including screenwriter Ernest Lehman, Saul Bass (designer of the iconic title sequence) and Bernard Herrmann, whose score lends menace and levity in equal measure. Of course, making a movie this effortless is hard work. The greatest joy in Alfred Hitchcock’s spy caper is how effortless it all feels: a gliding magic-carpet ride from New York to Mount Rushmore, via Chicago and a Midwestern bus stop, as Cary Grant’s ad man suffers a potentially fatal outbreak of Wrong Man-itis. If there’s a thriller out there more exhilarating, sexier or packed with iconic moments than this one, we’ve yet to see it. 🔪 The greatest pyschological thrillers ever made 🧨 The 60 most nerve-racking heist movies ever 😬 The 22 best thriller movies on Netflix

🕯️ The 35 steamiest erotic thrillers ever made Written by A bbey Bender, Joshua Rothkopf, Phil de Semlyen, Tom Huddleston, Andy Kryza, Tomris Laffly & Matthew Singer Our advice? Start with one of these synapse-frying masterpieces. Think of classic thrillers as fully-formed worlds standing by to welcome you in and shake you up. And they know that done right, its payoff can haunt you for a lifetime. The best filmmakers know that for a thriller to work, it needs to be a visceral experience: something you feel as much as watch. You can feel its skittish energy coursing through your body, leaving your mouth a bit dryer and your palms a little clammier. The span takes in everything from slow-burn noodle-twisters like Mulholland Drive, political conspiracies like All the President’s Men, ’40s film noirs, heist movies, crime capers, psychological head scratchers and Hitchcock’s entire back catalogue.īut you always know you’re watching one.

What makes a great thriller? It’s a deceptively broad genre that can be as hard to pin down as Harry Lime or Keyser Söze.
