Thrillers

by Martin Rubin

Overview

The thriller is perhaps the most popular and widespread movie genre—and the most difficult to define. Thrillers can contain gangsters or ghosts, space helmets or fedoras. They charge our familiar world with a spirit of exotic, old-fashioned adventure. They give us pleasure by making us uncomfortable—on the edge of our seats. Thrillers provides a comprehensive treatment of this genre, from silent serials to stalker films, from Alfred Hitchcock to Quentin Tarantino, from The Great Train Robbery to L.A. Confidential. This accessible, wide-ranging volume is designed to appeal to students and general filmgoers alike, and shows how this visceral, double-faced film genre has aroused our intense sensations throughout decades of American cinema.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521581837
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/28/1999
Series:	Genres in American Cinema
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.87(d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Critical overview; 3. Historical/cultural overview; 4. The detective thriller; 5. The psychological crime thriller; 6. The spy thriller; 7. The police thriller.

Editorial Reviews

Thrillers, by Martin Rubin, takes up the question of the spectator's pleasure in unpleasure in a wide-ranging study of what he calls a "metagenre" that is spread among several acknowledged genres, such as spy, detective, or horror films. He explores what thrilleresque aspects make some genre works thrillers while, others are not.
—From The Times Literary Supplement.

Robert Sklar

"...a book that is both lucid and useful." Filmbill

"Martin Rubin's Thrillers is a vibrant inaugural entry in Cambridge University Press's "Genres in American Cinema" series...very fine writing and analysis...professors would do well to share it with their students as an example of clear and cogent writing on the cinema. One cannot account for taste, but Thrillers does account for Rubin's talent as a film historian." Film Quarterly

From the Publisher