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Thrillers & Suspense

Thriller and Suspense Films promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. A genuine thriller is a film that relentlessly pursues a single-minded goal, to provide thrills and keep the audience cliff-hanging on the 'edge of their seats' as the plot builds towards a climax. Plots of thrillers often involve characters which come into conflict with each other or with outside forces - the menace is sometimes abstract or shadowy. Below is a grand line-up of the best in contemporary Thrillers & Suspense made since 1965. Following a similar theme, with generally a darker look is the "Film Noir" feature, well worth checking out. The exploits of "James Bond 007" may also be accessed stage left. Right: Frances McDormand makes an arrest in the Coen Bros "Fargo".

Sherlock Holmes: Pursuit to Algiers / The Woman in Green (1945)

7.6/10
Director: Roy William Neill
Starring: Basil Rathbone, Henry Daniell, Hillary Brooke, Nigel Bruce, Leslie Vincent

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are widely celebrated as cinema's perfect Homes and Watson, filming more than a dozen adaptations of Sir Arthur Conan D... Read more

The Spiral Staircase (1945)

7.5/10
Director: Robert Siodmak
Starring: Dorothy McGuire, Elsa Lanchester, Ethel Barrymore, George Brent, Kent Smith, Rho...

This compelling suspenser stars Dorothy McGuire as a servant, left mute by a childhood trauma, caring for invalid Ethel Barrymore in a Victorian New E... Read more

The Paradine Case (1945)

6.5/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Gregory Peck, Alida Valli, Ann Todd

A very little known, but very interesting Alfred Hitchcock film, based on a novel by Robert Hitchens. Gregory Peck is the lawyer who falls in love wit... Read more

Captain America - 15 Chapter Serial: Chapters 1-5 (1944)

Director: John English, Elmer Clifton
Starring: Lionel Atwill, Dick Purcell

Captain America is a 1944 Republic black-and-white serial film loosely based on the Timely Comics (today known as Marvel Comics) character Captain Ame... Read more

Sherlock Holmes: The Scarlet Claw / The House of Fear (1944)

7.6/10
Director: Roy William Neill
Starring: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Gertrude Astor

'The Scarlet Claw' (1944) - The village of La Morte Rouge in Canada has an old legend about a marsh monster. Many residents are afraid that the monste... Read more

Sherlock Holmes: The Spider Woman / The Pearl of Death (1943)

7.6/10
Director: Roy William Neill
Starring: Basil Rathbone, Gale Sondergaard, Nigel Bruce, Rondo Hatton

'The Spider Woman' (1943) - Adrea Spedding (Gale Sondergaard) makes her social calls accompanied by an unnervingly unsmiling mute child. She is secret... Read more

Sherlock Holmes in Washington / Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1942)

Director: Roy William Neill
Starring: Basil Rathbone, Hillary Brooke, Milburn Stone, Nigel Bruce, Halliwell Hobbes, Ma...

'Sherlock Holmes in Washington' (1942) - When a British secret agent carrying vital documents is kidnapped on his way to Washington, the ministry call... Read more

Saboteur (1942)

7.2/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane, Norman Lloyd

Robert Cummings is a wartime factory worker wrongfully accused of sabotage in this Hitchcock thriller. Helping him on the lam is Priscilla Lane. Featu... Read more

Holt Of The Secret Service (1941)

6.7/10
Director: James W Horne
Starring: Jack Holt, Evelyn Brent, Tristram Coffin

A murderous gang of counterfeiters has kidnapped the government's best engraver and is forcing him to print virtually undetectable phony money. The Se... Read more

Swamp Water (1941)

7.1/10
Director: Jean Renoir
Starring: Walter Huston, Walter Brennan, Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Virginia Gilmore, John...

French auteur Jean Renoir made his US debut with this thriller about a man wrongly sentenced to hang who escapes from prison to clear his name. After... Read more