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Sign up to unlock our digital magazines and also receive the latest news, events, offers and partner promotions. Dirty cops, femme fatales, grinning killers and bone-deep paranoia: Welcome to our ranked list of classic thrillers.
A great thriller is something you experience as much as watch. When done right, a thriller provokes a physical response more than almost any other film genre. You feel it in your palms as they grow increasingly clammy and your teeth as you grind away the enamel.
Your heart starts pumping and your leg begins shaking uncontrollably. Not every thriller takes the same path in initiating those reactions, though. But no matter how they go about it, the best thrillers will always grab your attention, make you sweat and leave you breathless.
Here are the greatest thriller movies ever, ranked by our TimeOut editors. Been there, done that? Think again, my friend. Of course, making a movie this effortless is hard work. And the cast? 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. Berlin's most moneyed and celebrated director, Fritz Lang, was drawn to the subject, which would become the spine of his first sound film, in many ways the commercial birth of the modern psychothriller.
