A Brief History of Thriller

The history of the Thriller Genre dates back to the early 1920’s with the creation of Harold Lloyd's comic Saftey Last, with its protagonist performing a life threatening stunt on the side of a skyscraper, the audience felt a slight thrill as they clutched at their seats wandering if he was going to make it. This being the only source of suspense being shown on screen, the thriller genre was seen as more of a one shot movie not fully keeping its audience on the edge of their seats. 

This soon changed with the creation The Lodger in 1926 by Alfred Hitchcock the potential face of Thriller. In his first thriller and third silent movie Alfred Hitchcock changed and paved the way of Thriller that we have come to know. Incorporating a Jack the Ripper story into a silent film Hitchcock’s The Lodger introduced themes that would run through much of Hitchcock’s later work: the innocent man on the run, hunted down by a self-righteous society.

After his outstanding success Hitchcock continued to make Thriller movies. Within the period of 9 years Hitchcock had produced more than 15 thrillers, 6 of which are still respected in today’s society and media. It was not until 1950 did Hitchcock begin to incorporate the use of colour into his movies, this however did not last as he opted to create one last Thriller movie in black and white known as ‘Psycho’ in the 1960’, ten years after he had incorporated colour into his films. The use of unprecedented violence of the shower scene, the early death of the heroine, the innocent lives extinguished by a disturbed murderer were all hallmarks of Hitchcock and the final stepping stone of the Thriller genre.

Since then thrillers of today borrow themes and elements from those in the past decades incorporating them into their movies. With the use of better technology and equipment such as CGI, which have allowed for more elaborate and realistic scenes.  To limit the repetitiveness of some thrillers have maintained the aspects of horror; having more having more gore/sadistic violence, brutality, terror and body counts to compensate for the full lack of originality. This however has caused some of them to strive to far away from the thriller genre and enter the horror genre examples of these are Saw, Stephen Kings 'IT' and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Apart from that there have been great thrillers created in todays society such as Pulp Fiction (1994), Memento (2006) and Seven (1995).