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.

"...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