There’s never really been a time in cinema history when viewers have collectively gone, “Yeah, we’re a bit burned out on the whole thriller genre.” People like movies that are suspenseful and exciting, much the same way that certain people have always liked movies that are genuinely frightening. Feeling anxious or scared in real life ain’t great, but feeling those things because of a movie can be.
So, with the huge number of thrillers out there, it’s kind of inevitable that a few have been lost to time, or were never really that popular to begin with. All the following ones are largely under the radar (or likely under most people’s respective radars), and they’re on the older side of things, released between 1940 and 1980. If you’ve already seen – and been thrilled by – the usual suspects, and haven’t heard of some of these, then they’re probably worth checking out.
10
‘Fourteen Hours’ (1951)
The one big thing that might keep Fourteen Hours entirely forgotten is the fact that it gave a bunch of actors early roles, some of them uncredited, including the likes of Richard Beymer, John Cassavetes, and Ossie Davis, all the while also being Grace Kelly’s screen debut. The film itself, though, is mostly focused on a despondent man (Richard Basehart) threatening to jump from a tall building, and a police officer (Paul Douglas) doing what he can to convince him not to.
For its time, this was a noble enough look at a mental health crisis, and admittedly more of a drama than a thriller, but there is always a high level of suspense and, owing to the premise, the stakes are indeed life or death. Fourteen Hours was also inspired by a real-life event that, as can be the case with real-life stories and movies inspired by them, ended more tragically than the film.
9
’36 Hours’ (1964)
Another movie with “Hours” in the title, 36 Hours is another somewhat underappreciated thriller, but this one’s set during World War II. Like with Fourteen Hours, it has a pretty great premise, since the basics here involve German forces capturing an American major, and then concocting an elaborate plan to convince him the war is over, all so he’ll be more willing to give up details about Allied plans to land in Europe.
Well, putting it that way, it sounds a little far-fetched, but if you can go along with it as best you can, 36 Hours is quite thrilling and engaging for a film of its age. It’s easy to recommend if you like mid-career Alfred Hitchcock movies (the sorts of spy thrillers he tackled throughout much of the 1940s), and Hitchcock also comes to mind, to some extent, because of the cast here (as Eva Marie Saint starred in North by Northwest, and Rod Taylor starred in The Birds).
8
‘Executive Action’ (1973)
It was one thing to tackle the John F. Kennedy assassination almost 50 years later, and with time travel involved (oh hi, 11/22/63), but Executive Action does something riskier, and did so much sooner than just about any comparable piece of film or literature. Clichéd as it might be now, to talk about there being a conspiracy behind the JFK assassination, Executive Action explored that just one decade on from the event, and in a pretty no-nonsense fashion, too.
As a lean procedural thriller that wants to explore something arguably as far-fetched as it is troubling, Executive Action proves surprisingly compelling.
People have gone a bit wild with conspiracy theories nowadays, to the point where the term “conspiracy theory” is a dirty word (well, two dirty words). And if that’s a deterrent for some, from watching a film like Executive Action, then fair enough. But as a lean procedural thriller that wants to explore something arguably as far-fetched as it is troubling, Executive Action proves surprisingly compelling, and easy to recommend if you’ve seen – and appreciated – Oliver Stone’s JFK.
7
‘The Stunt Man’ (1980)
Alongside The Stunt Man, there’s a movie from 1996 called The Stunt Woman that’s also kind of obscure, and even if that’s not a pattern, it does begin to suggest that movies about stunts need more attention. Or stunts in general need more attention and praise. Except for you, The Fall Guy. You can stay nice and forgotten.
Then again, The Stunt Man is about more than just going “Stunts are cool, right?”, since it’s about a criminal on the run who signs up to be a stunt man in a chaotic film production, seeing it as a way to go into hiding for a while. The set-up is very in line with the thriller genre, but The Stunt Man also functions as a piece of satire, a psychological drama, and something of a romance movie, too. It’s all quite weird and almost over-ambitious, but much of it works, and it’s always deserved a little more by way of attention than it’s actually received.
6
‘The Narrow Margin’ (1952)
The Narrow Margin doesn’t mess around or waste time, since it’s just 72 minutes long and keeps the narrative side of things simple. Much of it takes place on a train, with the main character being a detective who has to protect the widow of a gangster set to testify in court, with various shady characters very much not wanting her to do so, in turn trying to kill her on board the train.
It’s not a Western, but it scratches the same itch as movies like High Noon and the original 3:10 to Yuma, all the while really focusing on a train even more than those films did. And the train thing also helps The Narrow Margin feel like it’s always going somewhere and moving forward, because hey, that’s what the characters are doing, quite literally.
5
‘They Drive by Night’ (1940)
The first Humphrey Bogart movie worth mentioning for present purposes, They Drive by Night has him playing one of a pair of brothers (the other’s played by George Raft), both of them truck drivers who have a small business together. Turns out, the truck-driving world is pretty cut-throat and dangerous, though some of that has to do with the fact that they’ve also got on the wrong side of a loan shark.
They Drive by Night does what it needs to, as a classic film noir movie, and probably only gets a little buried in time because there were so many consistently good films of this kind pumped out during the 1940s. Also, there are more noteworthy movies starring Bogart, who himself became a bigger star post-They Drive by Night, mainly thanks to The Maltese Falcon the following year. He was also prolific, though, so he’s got other somewhat underrated films, like…
4
‘All Through the Night’ (1942)
… All Through the Night, released two years on from They Drive by Night, and with a kind of similar title, which can lead to them getting a bit mixed up. They’re both thrillers, but All Through the Night is quite different tonally, being a comedic thriller that also functions as a war movie, in a way, since it has a plot that involves a group of gamblers finding out about Nazi plans to destroy an American submarine.
The fact that All Through the Night plays this sort of thing for laughs while also working as a thriller makes it odd, but also quite engaging and different for a movie of its era. There are more famous movies made during World War II that were also about World War II (Bogart was definitely in one the same year as All Through the Night: the all-timer that is Casablanca), but not many take an approach to the whole conflict comparable to this one’s.
3
‘X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes’ (1963)
To take a break from film noir for a bit, here’s a sci-fi/horror movie that also functions as a thriller: X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. It’s about just what you’d expect it to be about, since it really does follow what happens to a guy who gains the ability to see through anything. Benefits of such an ability soon give way to consequences, though, and that’s where the sense of horror and unease comes in.
“Realistic” might be a stretch, but there is something weirdly grounded and honest about the way X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes explores the psychological impact that would likely come with having X-ray vision. There are so very many Roger Corman-produced movies, and he directed quite a few as well, but very few of them hold up as well as this one does (it’s on par with the following year’s The Masque of the Red Death, as far as the best films both produced and directed by Corman are concerned).
2
‘The Desperate Hours’ (1955)
Fast-forwarding a bit to the end of Bogart’s career now, The Desperate Hours ended up being his penultimate film, and maybe one of his better ones, too, even if it’s not super popular. It is one of the best showcases of Bogart’s ability to play truly villainous characters, though, since here, he stars as the leader of a trio of escaped criminals, all of whom break into a house and hold the family there hostage.
It does work quite well for a movie with a confined location, and milks about all the suspense you could get, at the time, from a movie with such a premise. Also, you can’t knock the hustle done by the film’s writer, Joseph Hayes. He originally wrote The Desperate Hours as a novel, and then adapted his novel to the stage, and then adapted the same story into a film, all in 1954 and 1955.
1
‘Black Sunday’ (1977)
Black Sunday is one of the most paranoid movies of the 1970s, which was a decade with its fair share of paranoia-heavy movies. It’s about a plot to carry out a terrorist attack at the Super Bowl, and the tactics used by counter-terrorist forces to prevent such an attack from happening. It’s less important what it’s about, as what’s more engaging here is how it goes about being, um, about that.
It’s all in the style, really, and the way suspense is built throughout a film that ends up being quite long, for an action/thriller (at 143 minutes). Also, Black Sunday isn’t exactly blockbuster entertainment, maybe being a little too grim and gritty to have mass appeal, but if you like thrillers made in the 1970s, particularly the ones that feel downbeat and intense, then this is worth seeking out (and not forgetting about).
