The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The Psycho-thriller has been used as an umbrella term in older genre studies to refer to any horror film where the menace is not supernatural or science-fictional and is mundane in nature. The menace of such shows are commonly Psychos and Serial Killers, although not all psycho-thrillers necessarily feature psychos.
Psycho-thrillers can be murder mysteries – stories that build up to the revelation of who among a group is the killer – where there is more emphasis on the murders and stalking. Others take the structure of a Gothic novel where a protagonist may be at the centre of a series of happenings that unveil in terms of elaborate deception and gaslight schemes, where there is an emphasis on the suspense and horror elements.
The psycho-thriller began on screen in the 1920s as part of the Old Dark House thriller. Its greatest flourishing was in the 1960s with the success of Psycho (1960), which saw a number of copycat films about killers with gender-conflicted issues. Many of the copies draw on the earlier French classic Les Diaboliques (1955) in their creation of elaborate (frequently improbably contrived) plots involving schemes to kill, defraud or drive the protagonist insane. A unique subset of these were the Italian Giallo thrillers that offered up psycho-thrillers plots with an emphasis on extravagant visuals, sado-sexual eroticism and ultra-violent despatches.
The 1980s brought a series of thrillers about female stalkers with Fatal Attraction (1987) and several other works with people having their homes and workplaces invaded by disturbed individuals. In the 1990s, Basic Instinct (1992) brought the psycho-sexual thriller where there was much emphasis on eroticism and usually a desirable but psychopathic Femme Fatale at the centre.
Since the mid-2000s, the psycho-thriller has largely died away as a genre in theatrically-released films, although is still alive and well in numerous thrillers made for cable tv.
The great John Huston, the director of The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen and other classics, directs a psychotherapy psycho-thriller. Alas the thriller essentials slip entirely through his hands
Brian De Palma’s homage to Psycho. With De Palma at absolute peak form, this is dazzlingly stylish in its directorial set-pieces and comes with an often outrageous sexual pathology
In a similar vein to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, this a work of Gothic madness as Carrie Snodgress tends cranky sadistic father Ray Milland in a big old house
Forgotten Canadian film about a series of murders around a former funeral home that has been converted into a guest house. Released at the height of the slasher cycle but this comes more in the vein of Psycho
Trashy Australian psycho-stalker film set in the world of fashion modelling that was bizarrely passed off as a copy of Halloween in the US
One of the lesser known John Carpenter films, a tv movie in which Lauren Hutton is stalked by a neighbour spying on her from the apartment building opposite
Faye Dunaway is a fashion photographer who gains a psychic link into the mind of a killer. From a John Carpenter script but the thriller plotting is never up to the chic suggestiveness the film is given
A creaky old-fashioned psycho-thriller – one that draws heavily on Les Diaboliques and a contrived plot to drive somebody crazy – that came out the same year as Halloween and feels a whole world apart
A psycho-thriller with a difference where Jodie Foster plays a teenager with secrets who maintains the pretence of living with her late father while fending off a pedophile Martin Sheen
One of the films from Pete Walker, a greatly underrated director working in the British horror film in 1970s, in which pop star Jack Jones retreats to a country house only to be stalked by a psycho
1970s disaster movie with George Segal tracking Timothy Bottoms as a mad bomber blowing up rollercoasters
UK. 1976. Crew Director/Producer – Pete Walker, Screenplay – David McGillivray, Photography – Peter Jessop, Music – Stanley Myers, Makeup Supervisor – George Partleton, Art Direction – Chris Burke. Production Company – Peter Walker (Heritage) Ltd. Cast Lynne Frederick (Samantha Gray Falconer/Jean Longmarsh), Jack Watson (William Haskin), John Leyton (Alan Falconer), Stephanie Beacham (Beth), John […]
Another of the giallo psycho-thrillers from Dario Argento in his heyday as David Hemmings is witness to a murder and tries to find the killer. As with Argento’s films of this period, focused around a series of stylish and sadistic dispatches
Brian De Palma with Paul Schrader on script make a homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo with Cliff Robertson wandering Venice believing he has found the reincarnation of his late wife
A psycho-thriller that has gained a modest cult reputation. This comes seeped in Catholic guilt and director Alfred Sole delivers twists and turns with a fine hand. Featuring a young Brooke Shields in her film debut.
A giallo film from Umberto Lenzi, best known for creating the Italian cannibal film but Lenzi’s direction is crude and lacking style in comparison to the others working in this genre
A remake of the classic film noir psycho-thriller. Now the story is conducted in colour and with a name star cast but misses all the atmosphere the original had by a wide mile
Italian thriller that attained some censorship controversy when it came out. Minsy Farmer is an assistant coroner haunted and obsessed by the corpses she tends
Strange film from Spanish director Joseph Larraz about mysterious happenings at a country mansion
Okay stalker psycho-thriller designed as a vehicle for the British model Twiggy that after a slow start eventually develops some sharp twists and surprises
Made in the aftermath of the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express, a star-studded Agatha Christie adaptation about a guests at a remote hotel being bumped off by someone among their number
This tv movie was the first English-language remake of the classic French thriller Les Diaboliques. It follows the original closely and still works effectively, although being shot in colour rather than black-and-white lacks the stark tension. Sam Waterston gives a performance of amazing cruelty as the husband
A British psycho-thriller in the Baby Jane mold with Lana Turner as a deranged mother determined to wreck son Ralph Bates’s marriage
A psycho-thriller that offers up the plot of Jane Eyre by way of Psycho. With Bette Davis rising to form as an alcoholic mother
A forgotten item from the Anglo-horror cycle in which brother and sister Christopher Lee and Joan Collins conspire to fake a series of hauntings in order to obtain an inheritance hidden in a mansion
Creaky old film that feels like it belongs in the 1940s about a series of murders at a wax museum. It does have a great cast line-up of genre veterans
Called the only horror film Elizabeth Taylor ever appeared in (although one would dispute that somewhat), this feels like a Hammer psycho-thriller made with an A-list cast
Spanish director Jose Larraz gained a small cult reputation for his work amidst the 1970s Anglo-horror cycle. This is a psycho film where a model is stalked after witnessing a murder
A work of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? inspired Grand Dame Guignol with Agnes Moorehead as a Southern matriarch whose relatives are eliminating one another in the hunt for the family fortune
The last great film from Mario Bava, an exquisitely dreamy giallo/haunted house film that had the ignomity of being butchered and made into an Exorcist copy when it came out
TV movie that comes with a great opening hook – a family receive phone calls from a brother who died 15 years earlier
Alfred Hitchcock’s second-to-last film, a thriller with Jon Finch as a man on the run wrongly hunted as a serial killer. Hitchcock is on superb form and his dark humour perfectly tuned
One of the earlier films from British director Pete Walker, a whodunnit with a psycho stalking the cast of a theatrical rehearsal. Walker doesn’t stint on the flesh but proves tamer than usual when it comes to the blood
From the heyday of the giallo film, an extravagantly colourful psycho-thriller involving the killing of models by a killer with a black cat. This works all the tropes of the genre with considerable style
One of the better psycho-thrillers made by Hammer Films where a deft script is aided by good performances including Peter Cushing and a wonderfully bitchy Joan Collins
Giallo thriller from Lucio Fulci who gained a cult following in the 1980s for his gore-drenched films. This comes with more style than all of Fulci’s other unadulterated hackwork put together
TV movie psycho-thriller produced by Aaron Spelling (plus assorted Anglo-horror veterans) where heiress Barbara Parkins thinks she is going crazy. Barbara Stanwyck goes the Baby Jane route
The first film from Steven Spielberg, a tv movie that was released to theatres. Spielberg demonstrates style to spare in the gripping tale of a lone man on the road who finds himself stalked and followed by a murderous truck
A giallo film with Anthony Steffen as an aristocrat who likes to pick up red-haired girls and kill them in the dungeon in his villa, who then becomes haunted by the ghost of his late wife
Pete Walker was one of the most underrated directors of the 1970s Anglo-horror wave. This was his first film. Compared to Walker’s later works, this is more a psycho-thriller that sits on the borderline of being horror
A giallo thriller from Mario Bava that is often regarded as the prototype of the slasher film. The film borrows from Agatha Christie with people isolated on an island being killed amid Bava’s artily extravagant set-ups
Tense psycho-thriller with Mia Farrow as a blind woman stalked through her home by a killer who has slaughtered her family
David Hemmings stars in a well written thriller about a school teacher whose pupils confess to a murder and engage in a series of psychological games with him
A modest and well directed psycho-thriller from the Anglo-horror cycle with Susan George as a babysitter stalked by a deranged Ian Bannen
Dario Argento’s third film as director sees him firmly in giallo thriller territory, delivering a series of extravagantly arty and sadistic set-pieces as James Franciscus tries to find clues to a killer’s identity
A psycho-thriller directed by renowned cinematographer William A. Fraker that is never more than a series of elliptical, soft-focus images
One of Hammer Films’ psycho-thrillers. Unlike the others, this is in colour where it loses much of the edgy tension the others had from shooting in b/w. The plot is slow to kick in but does produce some worthwhile twists
Overlooked psycho-thriller from Robert Fuest, director of the Dr Phibes films, about a girl whose friend goes missing while on a cycling tour through France. Fuest does an great job in making the French countryside into something sinister
Italy’s Dario Argento laid out the essence of the style – the arty murder set-pieces; flamboyant camerawork; the stylish music scores; and the psycho-thriller plots – in his first giallo film here
One among the spate of 1960s psycho films with Stella Stevens dealing with her brother and sister, one of whom is a killer
Psycho-thriller about a woman who has an abortion and then years later is married and pregnant when she is stalked by her ex-boyfriend demanding that the child is his. From an early Larry Cohen script
Robert Aldrich had massive success with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and later produced another Grand Dame Guignol film here with Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon playing psychological games with one another
Psycho-thriller where derelict Michael Sarrazin is taken home by Gayle Hunnicutt and gets wound up in a series of games between her and batty aunt Eleanor Parker
One of the psycho-thrillers made by he great and underrated Curtis Harrington during the 60s/70s. The film draws much from Les Diaboliques, right down to casting its leading lady. Harrington delivers suspense with an expert hand
Film about a series of sensationalistic murders at a circus. Producer Herman Cohen is clearly trying to replicate the success of his Horrors of the Black Museum. Joan Crawford chews the scenery in grand style as the circus owner
One among the series of German krimi films adapted from Edgar Wallace about a series of murders at a girls college. Shot with wonderfully lurid and colourful schemes
Bert I. Gordon, best known for his giant bug films of the 1950s, makes a torrid psycho-thriller about a young girl being cheated of her inheritance as people around her are being killed possibly by the ghost of her mother (Zsa Zsa Gabor)
William Castle psycho-thriller (from a Robert Bloch script) that creates an incredibly haunted mood between dream and reality only to fall apart in an absurdly contrived ending
Psycho-thriller from Otto Preminger about the disappearance of a young girl. As much for the twists and turns of the story, Preminger enjoys the portrayal of the darkly laced characters on the periphery
Gimmick master William Castle turns to making a psycho-thriller about two teenage girls making prank calls and uttering the title phrase – only to inadvertently call a man who has just killed his wife
William Castle psycho-thriller made to exploit the successes of both PsychoWhat Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with an axe-wielding Joan Crawford letting all stops go
The film that formulated giallo cinema. Drawing inspiration from the success of Psycho, Mario Bava strips the psycho-thriller down to a parade of killings amid extravagantly arty surroundings and with a gorgeous colour palette
Robert Aldrich’s successor to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with Bette Davis on the receiving end this time. This is arguably a superior film with a tightly contorted psycho-thriller plot and a decaying Southern setting
One of several psycho-thrillers made by Hammer Films soon after the success of Psycho. Despite a plot that collapses under its contrivances, Freddie Francis shoots amazing cinematographic compositions
A low-budget copy of the Vincent Price Edgar Allan Poe films with a patriarch seemingly returned from the dead and eliminating his relatives with a series of sensationalistic deaths
A home invasion thriller starring Olivia de Havilland as a wheelchair-ridden woman who is brutalised and tormented after three hoodlums break in as she is trapped in an elevator cage during a power cut
A work of brooding Italian Gothic, a loose sequel to The Terror of Dr Hichcock. Featuring oodles of atmosphere and the genre’s indisputable queen Barbara Steele as a wife haunted by a dead husband
One of the psycho-thrillers made at Hammer Films by Freddie Francis, starring Oliver Reed at his bad boy best. Francis’s visual compositions are absolutely extraordinary
One of the psycho-thrillers made by Hammer Films during the early 1960s. The absurdly contrived plot is blatantly borrowed from Les Diaboliques, although eventually produces passable tension
The second film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, a psycho-thriller made for Roger Corman where Coppola shows the glimmerings of style that made him a major director a decade later
Interestingly torrid 1960s psycho-thriller featuring a number of then unknown faces
The third of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films, the only one without Vincent Price. Here Ray Milland develops a fearful obsession of being buried alive
Psycho-thriller featuring a mad Bette Davis torturing her sister Joan Crawford. This held considerable shock at the time for seeing two former glamorous Hollywood stars beyond their glory days and going nuts. The film’s success inspired a whole fad of imitators
Classic psycho-thriller with Robert Mitchum (who was never better) as an ex-con determined to take revenge against lawyer Gregory Peck. Stark and superbly sustained psychological suspense
William Castle gained fame for his horror films made with a series of promotional gimmicks. With the success of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Castle made a blatant copy here, the first of his psycho-thrillers
The first of Hammer’s psycho-thrillers – a departure for the studio with them abandoning their Victorian era setting for a contemporary one – in an attempt to copy the success of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Quite a reasonable effort that comes without the improbably contrived plots of some of their later psycho-thrillers
The second of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films with Vincent Price. This feels too much as though Corman was trying to make another House of Usher, nevertheless it creates its own thunderously overwrought atmosphere, even if it has little to do with the Poe story
One of the defining classics of the genre, enormously influential, muchly imitated and parodied and possibly the most over-analysed film ever. Alfred Hitchcock expertly creates a creepy psycho-thriller in which he delights in lulling us and undermining expectation
The first of William Castle’s films set around outrageous promotional stunts – here he took an insurance policy out against audience members dying of fright. The film entirely belies its promise to scare an audience to death
An eerie work of film noir adapted from Cornell Woolrich in which Kevin McCarthy has a nightmare of killing a man and then wakes up and finds that details of his dream are starting to come true
Classic French psycho-thriller that is gripping in its psychological games before reaching an unforgettable twist ending. It has been twice remade and its plot much imitated by others but never bettered
Absolutely extraordinary directorial debut from actor Charles Laughton who transforms the story of an evil preacher (Robert Mitchum) pursuing two children into something approaching a stylised Expressionist fairytale
The fourth film version of The Lodger with Jack Palance as a new tenant that a family believe might be Jack the Ripper This has neither the style or the melodrama that the previous versions did
Very obscure but undeniably interesting film in which boarding house owner Ida Lupino hires Robert Ryan as a handyman before finding he is mentally disturbed and he makes her a prisoner
One of the most darkly engrossing of Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers, a classic about two strangers who make a murder pact after meeting on a train. Where any other director would have made a straight thriller, Hitchcock lingers on the mordant humour with unnerving effect
Fritz Lang made this psychological thriller during his American period – a retelling of the Bluebeard story by way of Rebecca. Lang delivers an times stunning evocation of film noir
Alfred Hitchcock conducts an experiment in shooting a film in only eight takes. Based on the true-life Leopold-Lowe case where two gay students murdered a child as an exercise in moral superiority.
George Cukor was one of the legendary Hollywood directors. Here he dives into film noir with Ronald Colman as a stage actor who psychopathically over-identifies with Shakespeare’s Othello
Psycho-thriller with an unknown Lucille Ball as a showgirl used by Scotland Yard as a lure to trap a maniac killer
Early Vincent Price film with he as a sinister psychiatrist terrorising a woman who witnessed him murdering his wife
Agatha Christie created the slasher film (sort of). This murder mystery (usually known by several less politically correct names) with a series of murders on an isolated island holds the kernel of what became the slasher template. This was the first film adaptation.
Sound remake of the silent Alfred Hitchcock film, starring big man Laird Cregar as the new lodger that a family believe might be Jack the Ripper. Cregar gives a wonderfully melodramatic performance
Considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films, this centres around Joseph Cotten as the favourite uncle who comes to town as his niece increasingly suspects that he may be a serial killer
The most obscure among the classic horror titles produced by Val Lewton – a beautifully stark and haunted piece about a man trapped at sea aboard a ship with a murderous captain
James Mason stars as a brooding composer who may be a murderer in this Gothic thriller
A 1940s good/bad twin psycho-thriller with Albert Dekker as a psychopathic twin escaped from an asylum come back to claim the inheritance taken by his brother
An obscure British thriller about murders in an apartment building of eccentric tenants. This turns into something really quite strange
Cited as the first film noir, this is a fascinating psycho film about a man tormented by guilt over convicting the wrong man
Gripping psychological thriller in which a niece suspects that Robert Montgomery who has charmed her aunt may be a psychopathic killer