A History Of Thrillers

A thriller's main elements include suspense, tension and apprehension, and the main forms of thriller are mystery, crime and psychological. After the assassination of President Kennedy, political and paranoid thrillers became very popular. Audiences who tend to watch thrillers can accumulate clues and find out who, for example, was the murderer, etc.


Subgenres of thriller:

- Conspiracy thrillers,
- Crime thrillers,
- Disaster thrillers,
- Erotic thrillers,
- Legal thrillers,
- Medical thrillers,
- Mystery thrillers,
- Political thrillers,
- Psychological thrillers,
- Rape and revenge films,
- Religious thrillers,
- Supernatural thrillers,
- Techno thrillers.


Main characteristics of the thriller genre:

Thrillers tend to use cliffhangers and thrills to keep the audience (or reader) interested. Tension and suspense is a large factor within thriller films, and things such as sound, editing and lighting help to create a tense atmosphere within the scene, as well as the situation the character (or characters) has found themselves in. Death is also a large factor as many characters lose their lives in a thriller film.
Thrillers are known for usually taking place in urban areas, such as New York, etc, although it has been known for a thriller film to be set in other areas, such as polar regions and exoctic countries, or even the ocean. In many thrillers, the hero is usually an ordinary citizen who's life does not involve a lot of danger, however, in most crime thrillers in particular, the hero tends to be a harder, stronger character who is accustom to danger and the like.


Timeline of thriller movies:

1926:-
         - The Bat (Roland West)
         - The Bells
         - The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock)

1928:-
         - Spies (Fritz Lang)

1929:-
         - Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock)

1931:-
         - Charlie Chan Carries On (Hamilton MacFadden)

1932:-
         - Freaks (Tod Browning)
         - Tangled Destinies (Frank Strayer)

1934:-
         - The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock)

1938:-
         - They Drive By Night (Arthur B. Woods)
         - The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock)

1940:-
         - Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson)

1942:-
         - L'Assassin Habite au 21 (Henri-Georges Clouzot)

1945:-
         - Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock)

1949:-
         - Whirlpool (Otto Preminger)

1950:-
         - Side Street (Anthony Mann)

1953:-
         - The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino)

1958:-
         - Elevator To The Gallows (Louis Malle)

1960:-
         - Psycho  (Alfred Hitchcock)

1963:-
         - Charade (Stanley Donen)

1966:-
         - Cul-de-sac (Roman Polanski)

1969:-
         - Z (Costa-Gavras)

1970:-
         - And Soon The Darkness (Robert Fuest)

1973:-
         - The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman)

1978:-
         - The Big Sleep (Michael Winner)

1980:-
         - Bad Timing (Nicolas Roeg)

1984:-
         - Blood Simple (Joel Coen)

1987:-
         - Extreme Prejudice (Walter Hill)

1990:-
         - Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow)

1995:-
         -  Assassins (Richard Donner)

1999:-
         - Fever (Alex Winter)