Thrillers in the 20s/30s
Alfred Hitchcock directed the first thriller movie in the UK. His silent film "The Lodger" opened a new type of film to the British market. He says that he was influenced by many techniques that he had seen in Germany during his travels and the Jack the Ripper murders.
Thrillers in the 1940s
In 1944, director George Cukor directed the film Gaslight which was a psychological thriller. This opened up subgenres of the thriller genre. The film was about a scheming husband, trying to make his wife insane to claim inheritance.
1950s
Hitchcock added technicolor to his films and this added to the thriller "strangers on a train" in 1951 which was about two passengers murdering the other people on the train in opposition with each other.
1970s
Alfred Hitchcock released the thriller film "Frenzy" in 1972 which was given R ratings for it's violent and explicit strangling scenes.
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1980s
Phillip Noyce directed the film "Dead Calm" in 1989 which was a psychological thriller about a cast away. This contained the elements of obsession and trapped protagonists and these became strong conventions of the genre.
1990s
Thrillers made in the period were mostly psychological and included themes of mental illness and character's escape. An example of this is Rob Reiner's film "Misery" which is based on the novel by Stephen King. It is about a characters called annie who is a fan of an immobile author and kidnaps him. br />
Present time
Thrillers still use many of the conventions of original thrillers made by Alfred Hitchcock, although recently they have tried to max the thriller genre with horror to evoke a stronger emotion from the audience. A recent example of this is "The House on the Left". There are many popular, award winning modern day thrillers such as Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky.
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