Several real-life child murderers, cannibals and serial killers – their nicknames are grisly enough: the Butcher of Hanover, the Vampire of Düsseldorf – terrorised Germany in the 1920s. The killer moment: It has to be the crop-duster sequence, which begins like a Western standoff and ends with the suavest man in cinema face down in the dirt. But it’s Grant’s movie: a Hollywood A-lister happy to be the punchline when the scene calls for it. And the cast? Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau and Jessie Royce Landis – heroes, villains and worried mothers, they’re all having a ball. It’s all a tribute to Hitch and his ensemble of behind-the-camera talents, including screenwriter Ernest Lehman, Saul Bass (designer of the iconic title sequence) and Bernard Herrmann, whose score lends menace and levity in equal measure. Of course, making a movie this effortless is hard work.

The greatest joy in Alfred Hitchcock’s spy caper is how effortless it all feels: a gliding magic-carpet ride from New York to Mount Rushmore, via Chicago and a Midwestern bus stop, as Cary Grant’s ad man suffers a potentially fatal outbreak of Wrong Man-itis. If there’s a thriller out there more exhilarating, sexier or packed with iconic moments than this one, we’ve yet to see it. Written by A bbey Bender, Joshua Rothkopf, Phil de Semlyen, Tom Huddleston, Andy Kryza & Tomris Laffly

But after much interrogation under a naked light bulb, we did it. All that makes choosing the 100 best thrillers of all time a difficult task. Indeed, every decade gets the thrillers it deserves, from post- World War II film noir and Nixon-era conspiracies to the tawdry (but loveable) ’80s erotic thrillers. From Taxi Driver to Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese also knows his way around a thriller, and there have been numerous James Bond movies that have left pulses racing. David Fincher has an excellent grip on the genre, films like Seven, Zodiac and Gone Girl all imbued with an almost tangible sense of uneasiness. But the master left fertile ground for his sucessors to turn the screws. Of course, Alfred Hitchcock is the master of the thriller, unmatched even today. And there are generally some recurrent themes such as murder, political intruige, espionge, conspiracy, criminal activity or psychological manipulation (and sometimes they include all of the above, give or take an Ashley Judd).

Suspense and a sense of tension is key, of course.

While film genres like science fiction, horror films and romance are relatively easy to pigeonhole, there are no hard or fast rules with regards to what constitutes a thriller.

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