History of Thrillers

A history of thrillers

The thriller since the beginning of the genre has always included suspense this is what distinguishes the thriller movies from every other movie from any other genre.

The thriller genre was first used with books and it is noted that Greeks first used it when they made the books about the odyssey. Since then many books have used traditional forms of the thriller genre. There are various forms of thrillers but the first films to be classified, as thrillers were The Bat and The Lodger during the 1920’s. They were Psychological Thrillers, which in a way they are the original types of thrillers along with spy thrillers. These are the original thrillers and have since shaped the way thrillers have been written. The most famous thrillers since are psycho and the James Bond movies.

The first picture is The latest James Bond movie Quantum of solace. The movies are so popular that this was the 22nd James Bond movie. The first came in 1962.

The second picture shows the famous shower scene from the movie Psycho. This movie was probably Sir Alfred Hitchcock's most famous movie made in 1960.

The thriller genre has since been transformed and now has some of the widest ranges of subgenres that all use classic thriller characteristics but use traits of other genres such as horror-thrillers are very common nowadays. The reason why it has changed so much in the past couple of years is the changing face of technology so now thrillers that used to make very realistic situations from mass murders such as psycho can now be unrealistic but using the traditional conventions of the thriller.

The Godfather of all thriller movie directors has to Sir Alfred Hitchcock who has made some extremely famous movies. These include: Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds. He actually started doing silent films in Britain before moving on to do thrillers in black and white with sound. He started working in the Islington studios before moving to the gainsborough pictures. He went on to work all over Europe before working in Hollywood. Hitchcock’s first finished movie as a producer was the pleasure garden. His first movie in America was Rebecca. His movies have influenced many moviemakers but we want to use some of his most famous techniques such as the use of the wrong man or the innocent blond woman. We also like the use of low level lighting during the movie to show the dark mysterious places we are fascinated by is what makes the James Bond movies so intriguing. Today’s more famous thriller writers include Tarantino, Spielberg and Mann.

This is another great Hitchcock movie called The Birds this was made in 1963 a couple of years after Psycho.