The History of Thriller Film's

The thriller genre first came about in the form of poems and literature. Ancient 'Epic Poems' such as 'Homer's Odyssey' and 'Epic Of Gilgamesh' use similar narrative techniques as modern thrillers. Another example of thriller in ancient literature is 'Little Red Riding Hood' in 1697, which uses conventions such as a lone, young girl walking through the woods, a villain in the wolf and her grandma being in disguise. These things are very very close to the conventions of modern thriller films.


The first modern thriller is called 'The Riddle of the Sands' and was released in 1903. It was described as 'an open-air adventure thriller about two young men who stumble upon a German armada preparing to invade England'  This was originally a novel, but  has since been made into a film and a TV film. 

Alfred Hitchcock's first thriller was called The Lodger (1926), a suspenseful Jack the Ripper story. His next thriller was Blackmail (1929), his and Britain's first sound film. Of Hitchcock's fifteen major features made between 1925 and 1935, only six were suspense films, such as Murder!, Number Seventeen, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The 39 Steps. From 1935 on, however, most of his output was thrillers. One of Hitchcock's film's, Rebecca, a psychological thriller, won an Oscar, which is very unusual for a thriller film.

Hitchcock was not the only director of thriller's during this period. There was also George Cukor, who's thrillers included conventions that are still very common today, such as insanity; weak females; scheming, powerful males; police detectives; serial murderers. 
In the 1950's, bigger film stars began to get involved in thrillers, people such as Marilyn Monroe, Ralph Meeker, James Mason and Grace Kelly. 



      

'Psycho' (1960), another of Hitchcock's films was an incredibly famous thriller film, about a loner mother-fixated motel owner and taxidermist. The most famous scene in Psycho is where the shadowy mother figure brandishes a knife towards the camera 


It was in the 1970's and 80's that thrillers started to become violent, with Hitchcock's first British film in almost two decades, 'Frenzy' being rated R for its vicious and explicit strangulation scene. 
Spy, conspiracy and science fiction thriller's were also scattered throughout these decades. 

'Thriller- A Cruel Picture' is on of the first films to be completely banned. The story is about a quiet girl, Frigga/Madeleine, who is sexually assaulted during her childhood, and the trauma makes her mute. When she becomes older, she accepts a ride from a man, Tony, who makes her a heroin addict, and then becomes her pimp. At one point, she is stabbed in the eye for refusing a client. She starts saving up money to buy weapons and take classes in driving, shooting, and martial arts to take revenge. The original running time was 107 minutes. After being banned by the Swedish film censorship board, it was cut down to 104 minutes and then 86 minutes, but still banned. It was finally released after being cut down to 82 minutes. In the United States it had also been cut to 82 minutes.



Through my research, I have concluded that conventions of thrillers have been incredibly important since the beginning of the thriller genre and are still very important today, as the audience would expect to see thins such as insanity or violence or hidden identity. This has helped me to realise that in order for my own thriller to be successful and effective, I need to incorporate as many conventions as possible as the audience would expect to see these conventions. I have also concluded that although my thriller needs to have elements of violence, there cannot be too much violence or any reference to sexual violence, as this would lead to my thriller being banned or those scenes would need to be cut.