History of Thrillers - Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock is one of the first and most famous psychological thriller/horror writers of all time. His first film was produced 1925 but his first thriller was in 1927, 'The Lodger'. The Lodger follows the story of a serise of murders of blonde women and a detectives jelousy of a suspicious, new lodger flirting with his blonde fiancee, and so, accuses the new lodger of being the murderer.

His second thriller was 'Blackmail' (1929), in which a woman kills a ma who attempted to rape her, then finds herself caught between her detective boyfriend and a blackmailer. Skipping ahead, one of his most famous films was 'The Birds' (1963) turned harmless creatures like birds into something to be feared, to try challenge the norm of an innocent everyday creature in a dangerous predator. It seems that the best type of thriller is one based around relatively normal event that take a wrong turn or have horrific consequences. It allows you to sympathise or even believe it could happen to you.