100 Greatest Thrillers

It has somehow become "en vogue" to take any film that is widely considered a classic and tear it to shreds. It's common here on Flixster to read how 'over-rated' Psycho is or how Takashi Shimizu is a better director than Alfred Hitchcock.

EXCUSE ME?!?!?

From where I sit, such comments can generally be attributed to one of three major causes: 1) youth, 2) ignorance or 3) brain damage. In spite of what some seem to think, slaughtering a sacred cow is not going to impress your friends or raise your hellishly low self-esteem. Taking pot-shots at cinematic milestones (like Psycho) only exposes a person's complete inability to understand the rich history and complex evolution of American Horror.

As a child of the 60's, I grew up knowing Peter Lorre as a spooky looking character actor with supporting roles in old classics like The Maltese Falcon and Arsenic and Old Lace. Although I enjoyed his performances I never fully appreciated his talent until I saw this 1931 Fritz Lang masterpiece. In it, Lorre plays a psychotic child murderer stalking a German city. Lorre's approach to the character is unusual in the sense that he himself is tormented by the unspeakable acts he commits. There is a tangible emanation of right and wrong, of good versus evil, that Lorre projects. I found myself fascinatingly disgusted (or disgustingly fascinated) by my empathy for his character.

Peter Lorre - M

There are a handful of examples of so-called "character actors" who have had that one shining moment in a lead role and then, strangely, returned to bit parts and supporting performances. For Ray Milland it was The Lost Weekend, for Ernest Borgnine it was Marty, and for Peter Lorre it was most definitely M.

I've heard it said that Touch of Evil, NOT Citizen Kane, is Orson Welles' greatest cinematic achievement. While I'm not sure I would agree with that statement I do agree that it's clearly a masterpiece of film noir, especially in the camera work. If there is a detractor here it's buying into the casting of Charlton Heston as a Mexican lawman, for me that's a bit of a stretch. Otherwise, it's one of the best representations of movie making as an art form I've ever seen. Five stars.

John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate, based on Richard Condon's novel, follows the lives of a group of Korean War veterans as they discover that their subconscious has been 'altered' in a covert mind-control experiment. Using a fictitious U.S. Senator (played by James Gregory) as an obvious stand-in for the fanatical Senator Joseph McCarthy, Frankenheimer is able to turn 'the communist threat' inside-out and use it to show that American's have as much to fear from their own politicians as they do from their cold war antagonists.

All politics aside, this one is worth seeing just for Angela Lansbury alone. She's arguably cemented herself as one of the most despicable screen villains of all time with her performance as the cold-hearted (and incestuous) mother-from-hell.

I find it more than a little amusing when some young horror fan writes that he didn't find The Exorcist the least bit shocking or scary. Of course moviegoers today don't have the same visceral reaction, they're callused. And why are they callused? Because of groundbreaking films like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Shock, horror and fright are emotions that can't be sustained without an ever-increasing amount of stimulus. Genre fans are like crack addicts, the dosage has to be continually increased in order to maintain the same high. It's a phenomenon most of us can relate to. Kids of my generation really didn't find Tod Browning's Dracula or James Whale's Frankenstein all that scary. We were building up an immunity of sorts. A resistance. A tolerance. The Exorcist was our new drug. It did what horror films were supposed to do, it served as a catalyst for that fantastic, exhilarating euphoria of being scared. So go ahead kids, watch your Hostel (wince!) and your Wolf Creek (cringe!). I'm happy with my head-spinning, pea-soup-spitting, bed-levitating, she-did-WHAT-with-a-crucifix!? classic.
I find it more than a little amusing when some young horror fan writes that he didn't find The Exorcist the least bit shocking or scary. Of course moviegoers today don't have the same visceral reaction, they're callused. And why are they callused? Because of groundbreaking films like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Shock, horror and fright are emotions that can't be sustained without an ever-increasing amount of stimulus. Genre fans are like crack addicts, the dosage has to be continually increased in order to maintain the same high. It's a phenomenon most of us can relate to. Kids of my generation really didn't find Tod Browning's Dracula or James Whale's Frankenstein all that scary. We were building up an immunity of sorts. A resistance. A tolerance. The Exorcist was our new drug. It did what horror films were supposed to do, it served as a catalyst for that fantastic, exhilarating euphoria of being scared.

So go ahead kids, watch your Hostel (wince!) and your Wolf Creek (cringe!). I'm happy with my head-spinning, pea-soup-spitting, bed-levitating, she-did-WHAT-with-a-crucifix!? classic.

Certainly ranks amongst the best of the Hitchcockian thrillers. Ingrid Bergman shines as the alcoholic of loose morals (so much nicer than saying "hoebag", don't you think?) turned American spy.

*NOTE: Anyone else notice that Hitchcock seems to have an affinity for overbearing mothers? (Notorious, Psycho, The Birds, etc.)

Today I got my Bickle on. I don't get my Bickle on every day. In fact, it had been a few years since I last got my Bickle on, but today I was on vacation, with nothing better to do.

Anyone who knows me knows that I can be a bit obsessive. I can brain-lock on a subject and orbit it for days and days, weeks even! Bickle is like that. He gets obsessed with crime and moral degradation and pretty soon that's all he can think about. I can relate to that. Lucky for me I live in an area where the worst crime I see is my fat-ass neighbor encouraging her poodle to crap in MY lawn instead of her own. But hey, as psychotic as I am, I can even obsess about that. It won't be long before I buy a .44 magnum, shave my hair into a mohawk and then it's bye-bye Mister Fi-Fi...

This may be one of the most overlooked and under appreciated classics of all time. A box office flop when first released, this film was simply too far ahead of its own era.

Told in a manner that is part film noir and part Gothic horror, the story steadily becomes more nightmarish and less anchored in reality as it progresses. Sets, over the course of the film, become more stage than screen (some of the backdrops are obviously one-dimensional). They're often silhouetted with unnatural back lighting, adding to the overall ominous feel of the picture. Other scenes, most notably Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) at the bottom of the lake, are shot with an awareness of cinematography that is nothing short of brilliance.

Robert Mitchum is suburb as the villainous Harry Powell, rivaling his equally evil but dimensionally different character in Cape Fear. The Night of the Hunter ranks among my all-time top 100 films and should not be missed.

Some of my favorite Hitchcock 'moments', especially the amusement park scenes. Hitch takes a merry-go-round (could there be anything more innocuous?) and makes it nightmarishly threatening. Brilliant.

Not all monsters are grotesque and ugly, sometimes they are as beautiful and breathtaking as Barbara Stanwyck. Considered by many to be the best and most influential film noir ever made, Double Indemnity has become the standard by which all others are judged. For my money, from the cast and direction to the cinematography and scripting, it's a near perfect film. Definitely one of my all-time top 20 movies.

Where Frankenstein's creation is always a monster, and the Wolf Man is a monster only when the moon is full, the Mummy is, as Universal Studios puts forth here, not a monster at all - the Mummy is a man. True, he initially makes his appearance wrapped head to toe in bandages, but throughout the vast majority of his screen time he's a walking, talking, breathing fellow in dire need of moisturizer. In later incarnations, such as those produced by Britain's famous Hammer Studios, the mummy is little more than a mindless fiend intent on destroying everyone he meets, but here he's a character of depth, sophistication and dark ambition. Film fans expecting to be frightened out of their wits by this picture are bound to be disappointed. Instead they'll find a presentation that, with a few exceptions, is more thriller than horror. All this is more observation than critique. I love this movie, but not for the same reasons that I love other Universal Studios horror classics. The brilliance here lies in the dialog, in the intent, and in the performances. Where Frankenstein is unbound and the Wolf Man is unleashed, the Mummy is simply unwrapped.

Whereas Psycho changed the way the world viewed showers, and Jaws made swimming in the ocean forever less appealing, and even Diabolique led us all to view swimming pools with cynicism, Shadow of a Doubt shows us that something as benign as "family" can become horrifying and evil. Hitchcock took the fright out of old European castles and dark back alleys and put it right smack-dab in our living room. It raises the question, "Is something sinister sitting across from you at the dinner table every night?" ...well? ...is it?

Director Polansk's films are always laced with not-so-subtle sexual overtones and Repulsion is certainly no exception. Catherine Deneuve is wonderful as the paranoid manicurist who slowly descends into complete madness.

Disturbing and unsettling.

Plotted meticulously and by the numbers, Laura is a textbook example of classic 1940's film noir. This dialog driven murder mystery is more notable for its outstanding casting than its slightly formulaic script.

I'm a tremendous fan of Gene Tierney, overbite and all, and she's absolutely wonderful in the title role, but it's a little difficult to write about her performance without giving away elements of the plot that would spoil the ending for those who have not yet seen the film. Suffice it to say that the intangible darkness that one occasionally glimpses behind those beautiful eyes plays perfectly into the psyche of her character.

Was there ever a role that Vincent Price could not master? He has played everything from villainous heavies to reluctant heroes. Here in Laura he is Tierney's love interest and a prime suspect in her murder. Even though his part is one of an unscrupulous, unsympathetic leech, he still carries an aura of utter likability that is crucial to making Laura's attraction believable. There just aren't a great many actors who could have pulled that off and yet Vincent does it with ease.

And how about the talented Clifton Webb as the snobbish and possessive columnist Waldo Lydecker? His character reminds me of the cantankerous Dr. Smith from the old TV series "Lost in Space". He's rude, condescending, and spends a considerable amount of his screen time sitting in the bathtub. It is hard to imagine this role being played by anyone else.

Combine the aforementioned with genre staples like Dana Andrews and Judith Anderson and the result is a film worthy of its stature as a noir classic.

Precursor to later episodic horror (i.e. TV's Night Gallery and The Twilight Zone). Five house guests recount their nightmares to each other with each one a little more sinister than the last. A spine-tingling horror classic that scared me as a child and still today creeps me out.

Mild by today's standards but caused quite a stir in 1960. Peeping Tom is now a little dated but still fantastically bizarre and frightening.

The Coen formula is simple but effective. Take a misdeed, a sin if you will, and let it set off a chain of events that eventually leads to an ultimate redemption and a righting of the wrong. It's a cycle that, in the hands of the masters, never gets old and never seems cliche'.

10 strangers arrive on an island, each persuaded to come under false pretenses and each guilty of a horrific crime. One by one they start to die, victims of an elaborate plot to right past wrongs. The question is: who's doing the killing?

Terrific little murder mystery that blends intrigue, suspense and humor to deliver an hour and a half of blissful skulduggery.

I enjoyed this considerably, but did anyone else get the impression that director Michelangelo Antonioni suffers from attention deficit disorder? His style of editing, with short sequences and quick cuts, seems better suited for an MTV music video than a feature film. Perhaps that's part of Antonioni's genius, that (for 1966) he was way ahead of his time. (?)

Chocked full of naked dancing and bizarre sexual debauchery, The Wicker Man is just twisted enough to elicit a few jaw-dropping WTF moments. This 1975 original manages to do what the ill-fated 2006 remake failed to accomplish, it genuinely feels wicked and creepy. And here's something they don't tell you in the synopsis, it's a MUSICAL! Yes my friends, a "horror musical". That puts it in the same genre with Sweeny Todd and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (although the songs aren't quite as overt). So, if you're up for a macabre sing-a-long boobie-fest that's anything but mainstream, The Wicker Man might just be your cup of tea.

"Is it safe?"

My first reaction was 'Wow!' There is so much more to this film than the unmasking at the organ. There are flashes of humor, the Red Death and even some snorkeling. Fantastically iconic, or iconically fantastic - whichever you prefer.

If it is true that Hitchcock's Psycho would have been less effective if it had been filmed in color then the opposite could be said for Dario Argento's Suspiria. It is the abnormally bright hues, especially the reds, that help give the entire picture a surreal sort of feel and atmosphere.

Released in 1977, it has lost some of its initial shock value. In fact, modern "gore-mongers" who enjoy graphic offerings like Saw and Hostel will no doubt find the violence soft-core and perhaps even a little comical. Still, Suspiria is an important, if not timeless, genre classic.

A bizarre offering from the mind of David Lynch. I'm still not sure if any of the characters are completely sane. In fact, I could make a strong case that there was some serious drug use going on during the writing and filming of this one. Still, this is one of those rare "Wow!" kind of movies. A ground-breaking thriller with iconic imagery. It's easy to see how Blue Velvet has become a cult classic.

*BONUS QUESTION: Consider the films Blue Velvet, Lust For Life and Reservoir Dogs. What do these three movies have in common?