Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 horror classic Psycho has topped the American Film Institute's latest best-of list, "100 Years...100 Thrills," a scattered compilation of the most heart-pounding flicks ever made.
Psycho, starring Anthony Perkins as oedipal headcase Norman Bates and Janet Leigh as his showering prey, beat out such edge-of-your-seat fare as Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster Jaws--which landed in second place--and William Friedkin's 1973 head-spinner The Exorcist, which took third.
But it's only fitting that the Master of Suspense ruled. With 16 movies nominated for the list, five Hitchcock films landed in AFI's top 20--including North by Northwest (fourth place), The Birds (seventh), Rear Window (14th) and Vertigo (18th)--and the influential director had nine of his films on the list overall. Incidentally, Hitchcock also was the most visible presence on the list, having made cameos in eight of the movies.
Otherwise, AFI's list runs the gamut from horror classics (Halloween and Invasion of the Body Snatchers) to head-scratchers (Casablanca and Titanic?). AFI also made room for sci-fi tales (Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey), Westerns (Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid) and, not to be forgotten, Keanu Reeves (Speed, The Matrix).
And while it might seem a tad difficult to compare, say, The Silence of the Lambs (fifth) with The Wizard of Oz (43rd), AFI insists it's not the genre that's important. Just the thrill factor.
"It was so diverse, and I think what people are enthralled with is the juxtaposition of these, and how far and wide the range is for films that hit us the same way," said AFI director Jean Picker Firstenberg. For example, she said, "A lot of people have questioned 12 Angry Men (88th), and I think it's one the most intense dramas of all time. But people don't always think of it that way. It's truly heart-pounding in terms of what occurs in that singular room."
After Hitchcock, Spielberg was the second-most celebrated director on AFI's list, boasting six films including Raiders of the Lost Ark (10th), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (31st), Jurassic Park (35th), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (44th) and Saving Private Ryan (45th). (That tally, however, doesn't include 84th place finisher Poltergeist, which Spielberg was widely reported to have finished after the departure of director Tobe Hooper.)
Also featured prominently on the list was Stanley Kubrick, who directed five films on the list: A Clockwork Orange (21st), The Shining (29th), 2001: A Space Odyssey (40th), Spartacus (62nd) and Full Metal Jacket (95th).
Looking at how the list breaks down by decade, two films came from the '20s, five from the '30s, 10 from the '40s, 15 from the '50s, 21 from the '60s, 22 from the '70s, 14 from the '80s and 12 from the '90s.
AFI's list was unveiled Tuesday in a CBS special hosted by Harrison Ford--who tied with Claude Rains as the actor with the most movies in the top 100, boasting four apiece. Ford appeared in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars (27th), The Fugitive (33rd) and Blade Runner (74th), while Raines appeared in Lawrence of Arabia (23rd), Casablanca (37th), Notorious (38th) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (100th).
The thriller list marked AFI's fourth best-of installment. The institute already picked the all-time greatest with "100 Years...100 Movies" in 1998, as well as "100 Years...100 Stars" in 1999 and "100 Years...100 Laughs" last year. As if that weren't enough, AFI this year also presented its inaugural year-end best-of list--part of an initiative to pay tribute to American cinema.
For its thriller compilation, AFI mailed out a ballot of 400 nominated films to a jury of 1,800 people, including directors, screenwriters, actors and historians.
complete list of AFI's greatest thrillers