Thriller Genre History

The first thriller film was produced by Alfred Hitchcock in 1926, it was called The Lodger and was a suspenseful Jack the Ripper story, Hitchcock is considered by many to be the father of the modern psychological thriller film as he has produced so many critically acclaimed thriller films, he was nicknamed "the master of suspense", six of his 15 films in the 20's and 30's were thrillers and almost everything he did afterwards was Thriller, he also produced The Man Who Knew Too Much.

In the 1940's and 50's, Alfred Hitchcock continued producing suspense thrillers such as the Oscar winning film Rebecca which is about a women in danger from her husband. During the 50's the use of technicolour filming techniques became more widely used, Hitchcock began to use it in his films during this time period, he produced Strangers on a Train in 1951 which was about two train passengers who both staged a series of murders trying to outwit each other.

In the 1960's the violence that appeared in thriller films increased rapidly with the release of Peeping Tom, with Carl Boehm as a psychopathic cameraman the film was released prior to Hitchcock's Psycho. After Hitchcock produced the thriller Psycho, which at the time stunned and frightened audiences for its graphic deaths and tension, the film itself is about a loner mother-fixated motel owner who kills the guests at his motel. Spy thrillers also began to appear, films like James Bond were very popular especially during this time because it was the height of the Cold War.

The 70's and 80's had spy films scattered through them and most of the James Bond films were released during these decades. The industry also see's the last Hitchcock film as he died in 1980, he released one of his last films in 1972, it was called Frenzy and it made nearly $12 million. These years also saw rapid increase in the number of slasher films and films tended to be far more violent as the industry began using improved makeup and special effects techniques.

The 90's and films today have seen a wide range of thrillers, there have been several films based on thriller novels, most famously by Stephen King. The 90's was an era of obsession based films with a stalker usually following or becoming obsessed with a certain character an example of this was The talented Mr Ripley. There was however another theme throughout the 90's and this was the hunting down of serial killers, the most famous of which is Silence of the Lambs, which received best-picture in 1991, Seven was another famous thriller of this decade. Since then the thriller genre has started to reuse elements from previous films and add more violence and brutality, an example of this includes The Last House on the Left.