Menu

Movies

TV Shows

Watch

Awards & Events

Celebs

Community

English (United States)

- Language

- Fully supported

- English (United States)

- Français (France)
- Deutsch (Deutschland)
- हिंदी (भारत)
- Italiano (Italia)
- Português (Brasil)
- Español (España)
- Español (México)

AllAll

EN

- Fully supported
- English (United States)

- Français (France)
- Deutsch (Deutschland)
- हिंदी (भारत)
- Italiano (Italia)
- Português (Brasil)
- Español (España)
- Español (México)

Export

# Hitchcockian Thrillers

by jzappa • Created 13 years ago • Modified 13 years ago

List activity

9.5Kviews

• 18 this week

34 titles

Sort byList orderList orderAlphabeticalIMDb ratingPopularityNumber of ratingsRelease dateRuntimeDate added

- Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade (1963)

19631h 53mApproved

7.8 (87K)Rate
83Metascore

Romance and suspense ensue in Paris as a woman is pursued by several men who want a fortune her murdered husband had stolen. Whom can she trust?

Famously referred to as “the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made.”

- Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark (1967)

19671h 48mApproved

7.7 (34K)Rate
81Metascore

A recently blinded woman is terrorized by a trio of thugs while they search for a heroin-stuffed doll they believe is in her apartment.

The plot is as full of holes as a pasta strainer, but the self-contained set pieces of juicy suspense build-up comes from the Hitchcock school of forcing us to be voyeurs surrounded in innovative ways with anxiety and fear.

- Obsession (1976)

19761h 38mPG

6.7 (12K)Rate
59Metascore

A wealthy New Orleans businessman becomes obsessed with a young woman who resembles his wife.

Both De Palma and writer Paul Schrader have identified Vertigo as the chief muse for this sleeper hit melodrama's narrative and thematic interests.

- Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, and Richard Pryor in Silver Streak (1976)

19761h 54mPG

6.9 (22K)Rate
41Metascore

On a long-distance train trip, a man finds romance but also finds himself in danger of being killed, or at least pushed off the train.

As well as the notable first on-screen pairing of two great contemporary film comedians, it’s also a totally unspoiled little Hitchcock takeoff, with various nods to The Lady Vanishes, Strangers on a Train, and of course, North by Northwest.

- Foul Play (1978)

19781h 56mPG

6.8 (17K)Rate
45Metascore

A San Francisco librarian picks up a hitchhiker whose car has broken down, which leads to her being stalked and hunted by shady individuals. A cop she briefly met during a function eventually comes to her rescue.

Foul Play is a deference to Sir Alfred Hitchcock, more than a few of whose films are alluded to throughout the film. The basis of an innocent person becoming tangled in a snarl of conspiracy is at the hub of Hitchcock films such as The 39 Steps, Saboteur, North by Northwest and, most conspicuously in this case, The Man Who Knew Too Much, which encouraged Foul Play's opera house climax. When Goldie, the obligatory blonde, is assaulted in her home, she rummages inside her knitting basket and nearly settles on a pair of scissors to protect herself, a citation of Dial M for Murder. As well, the plot embraces a MacGuffin, in the shape of the celluloid roll hidden in the cigarette pack.

- Dressed to Kill (1980)

19801h 44mR

7.1 (50K)Rate
74Metascore

A mysterious blonde woman kills one of a psychiatrist's patients, and then goes after the high-class call girl who witnessed the murder.

Dressed To Kill is one of Brian De Palma's earlier thrillers, one of his heavily flawed but incredibly entertaining suspense films. It, like Body Double, pathologically mimics Hitchcock's classics. Its plot, if not practically a sexier, 1980s-style remake of Psycho, is at least cut from the exact same cloth. The way we're made to think we're watching a completely different kind of movie right up until the big turning point happens, the transsexual element, etc., are all in homage to Psycho. De Palma, even when immersed in Hitchcock's influence, can't help but keep his movie as distinctive as possible from your average suspense thriller. His style is completely his own.

- Meryl Streep and Roy Scheider in Still of the Night (1982)

19821h 33mPG

6.0 (6.1K)Rate
43Metascore

A Manhattan psychiatrist probes a patient's murder and falls for the victim's mysterious mistress.

Two average people fall into strange and dangerous situations, one being a platinum blonde in a Hitchcockian film so carefully measured, so understated that if the story of a scene can be told with no words, then we will hear no words. In this way, it’s pure cinema. It’s a flow of sequences that build a dark, quiet stairway of tension, yet they’re also thoroughly self-contained because they’re so finely and fully attuned to setting, atmosphere and the inside and outside of every character in these very moments.

- Deborah Shelton in Body Double (1984)

19841h 54mR

6.8 (40K)Rate
69Metascore

A young actor's obsession with spying on a beautiful woman who lives nearby leads to a baffling series of events with drastic consequences.

This chic cult hit is a gawdy homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, Rear Window, and Dial M for Murder. There’s the cool platinum blonde, there’s mistaken identity, characters are average people but they can’t be trusted, all that Hitchcockian noise.

- Harrison Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner in Frantic (1988)

19882hR

6.8 (59K)Rate
66Metascore

In a hotel room in Paris, a doctor comes out of the shower and finds that his wife has disappeared. He soon finds himself caught up in a world of intrigue, espionage, gangsters, drugs and murder.

Through a leisurely exposition between a happily married doctor and wife on a business trip in Paris, Polanski's camera at some stage begins to tell us things through ominous zoom-ins and steadicams. We see him thinking, wondering when he should start worrying. We are comfortably in the same perspective as Harrison Ford's protagonist. The hero's essential obstacle being that he's a fish out of water, an American businessman in Paris who speaks no French and thus can hardly navigate his way through the city, much less a trail to his wife in which time is of the essence. Not to mention, Polanski echoes Hitchcock’s famously strong visual use of famous landmarks.

- Shoot to Kill (1988)

19881h 50mR

6.8 (15K)Rate
56Metascore

An F.B.I. Agent teams up with a tracker to pursue a murderer after he vanishes into the mountains and infiltrates a hiking group.

Flashes of lightheartedness are smoothly intermingled with the film's more nail-biting sections, like a sequence about traversing a very steep canyon on a very tiny handcar, sustained by very unpredictable-looking rigging.

- Melanie Griffith, Michael Keaton, and Matthew Modine in Pacific Heights (1990)

19901h 42mR

6.4 (23K)Rate
55Metascore

A couple work hard to renovate their dream house and become landlords to pay for it. Unfortunately, one of their tenants has plans of his own.

There's a categorically Hitchcock texture to this “yuppie horror film,” recognized not only in the eye-catching use of location but by the casting of The Birds heroine Tippi Hedren in a cameo role, and a crafty director’s cameo from Schlesinger himself.

- Dead Again (1991)

19911h 47mR

6.8 (31K)Rate
66Metascore

A woman who has lost her memory is taken in by a Los Angeles orphanage, and a private eye is enlisted to track down her identity, but he soon finds that he might have a past life connection to her that endangers their lives.

This star-studded psychological thriller encompasses customary Hitchcockian themes and style while keeping its own integrity and distinctiveness.

- Tom Berenger, Greta Scacchi, and Bob Hoskins in Shattered (1991)

19911h 38mR

6.5 (12K)Rate

After a horrific car wreck leaves him an amnesiac, a man slowly begins to unravel his shocking past.

A Hitchcockian thriller in spades if for no other reason the classic kind of twist ending that causes a division among the responses given by critics. Some think the surprise too ludicrous to tolerate, while some think it imaginative and crafty.

- Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (1992)

19922h 7mR

7.1 (223K)Rate
43Metascore

A violent police detective investigates a brutal murder that might involve a manipulative and seductive novelist.

A cat-and-mouse game if there ever was one, a cool blonde singing the screen while the obsessed male lead follows various Macguffins at a time.

- Rebecca De Mornay and Don Johnson in Guilty as Sin (1993)

19931h 47mR

5.7 (5.9K)Rate

A female lawyer takes an accused wife-murderer as a client, but finds herself morally compelled to betray him one way or another.

An involved chess game between Rebecca DeMornay and Don Johnson as they maneuver events, other people, and one another to find out the guilt or innocence of Johnson’s playboy widower.

- The Vanishing (1993)

19931h 49mR

6.3 (28K)Rate
49Metascore

The boyfriend of an abducted woman never gives up the search as the abductor looks on.

A thoroughly involving thriller that boasts a number of genuinely tense sequences, not to mention an American remake of the same director’s earlier work, the most notable of that small genus being Hitchcock’s two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

- Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley in Death and the Maiden (1994)

19941h 43mR

7.2 (27K)Rate
72Metascore

A political activist is convinced that her guest is a man who once tortured her for the government.

A central motif of this masterpiece of claustrophobia is Schubert's string quartet in D minor, much like The Merry Widow Waltz in Hitchcock’s seminal Shadow of a Doubt.

- Johnny Depp in Nick of Time (1995)

19951h 30mR

6.3 (46K)Rate

An unimpressive, everyday man is forced into a situation where he is told to kill a politician to save his kidnapped daughter.

Much like The 39 Steps, Young and Innocent, Saboteur and North by Northwest, this early Depp vehicle zeroes in on an everyman who suddenly finds himself stuck in a situation in which he will be framed for murder if he doesn’t figure something out. Somewhat like Rope, the action in Nick of Time occurs in real time, as the recurrent shots of clocks and watches bear out.

- The Swindle (1997)

19971h 41mNot Rated

6.5 (3.1K)Rate

Betty and Victor are a pair of scam artists. One day Betty brings in Maurice, a treasurer of a multinational company. Maurice is due to transfer 5 millions francs out of Switzerland, and Betty is convinced he plans to steal that money.

Michael Serrault is the film's great highlight. He is tremendously likable and infectiously dry, and his occasional physical timing or subtly crisp one-liner holds the film's smiling side at bay amidst some token moments of comic relief, namely the presence of the gaudy widow whom Serrault constantly must try to hide from.

- Nicolas Cage in Snake Eyes (1998)

19981h 38mR

6.1 (88K)Rate
52Metascore

Corrupt Atlantic City police officer Rick Santoro and Navy Commander Kevin Dunn join forces to investigate both the assassination of Secretary of Defense Charles Kirkland and the disappearance of a beautiful stranger.

As De Palma keeps on refining his luminous visual style within the most unashamedly synthetic plot scenarios, this set piece-driven exercise in voyeurism never loses its posture as it lingers between outlandish obsession and a Billy Wilder-like ethical parable about a severely faulty hero who finds the limit of corruptibility beyond which he can’t go.

- What Lies Beneath (2000)

20002h 10mPG-13

6.6 (137K)Rate
51Metascore

The wife of a university research scientist believes that her lakeside Vermont home is haunted by a ghost - or that she is losing her mind.

Pfeiffer's blonde lead is suggestive of past Hitchcock blondes Grace Kelly, Kim Novak and Tippi Hedren, while Ford's two-faced character evokes Joseph Cotten in Shadow of a Doubt and Claude Rains in Notorious. Characters, plot developments and several stylistic elements honor Rear Window, Vertigo, Spellbound, Rebecca and Psycho.

- Antonio Banderas and Rebecca Romijn in Femme Fatale (2002)

20021h 54mR

6.2 (38K)Rate
60Metascore

A woman tries to straighten out her life, even as her past as a con-woman comes back to haunt her.

A genuinely surprising exploration of the title persona, complete with full erotic charge, inspired formalist madness and a return to form for its obsessively voyeuristic director.

- Jodie Foster in Panic Room (2002)

20021h 52mR

6.8 (301K)Rate
65Metascore

A divorced woman and her diabetic daughter take refuge in their newly-purchased house's safe room when three men break-in, searching for a missing fortune.

Cherishing logic over violence, Fincher's claustrophobic trip also pushes the elevated realism of keeping mum over the slasher-era buzz of a brassy thriller. In the tradition of Hitchcock, it’s a work of technique, not gimmick.

- The Truth About Charlie (2002)

20021h 44mPG-13

4.7 (11K)Rate
55Metascore

A woman returns from holiday to find her husband has been murdered, and several groups of people are pressuring her to unravel the mystery of his true identity and activities during his final days.

An ultra-modern reimagining of the 1963 Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn film Charade. It’s also an tribute to Francois Truffaut's 1960 film Shoot the Piano Player, and we know who his idol was, that son of a green grocer named Alfred.

- Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen in Derailed (2005)

20051h 48mR

6.6 (77K)Rate
40Metascore

When two married business executives having an affair are blackmailed by a violent criminal, the two must turn the tables on him to save their families.

Derailed is sincerely a fishing line of a movie. You are engrossed, then hooked, then quite taken aback. There are steps this film takes in carefully making you realize the film will go in certain directions that it clearly doesn't. In order to prevent you from expecting certain things for the film to do, I will stop there.

### More to explore

### Recently viewed

You have no recently viewed pages

Sign in for more accessSign in for more access

Follow IMDb on social

Get the IMDb app

For Android and iOS

Get the IMDb app

IMDb, an Amazon company

© 1990-2024 by IMDb.com, Inc.

Back to top
Hitchcockian Thrillers - IMDb