Show Notes Free Palestine One of the greatest casts of all time and an unflinching look at racism and the failures of the judicial system in the US and particularly in Mississippi. Joel Schumacher directs the adaptation of a John Grisham novel that tells the story of a white lawyer representing a black man and all of the machinations that go on aro…

Show Notes Free Palestine David Fincher, Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt – what could go wrong. Other than all the murders, of course. We watched Se7en this week and discuss murder, body horror effects, sin, and the merits of harming yourself for or during the filming of a movie, how much a film should fill in the gaps as to “how” something happens and w…

Show Notes Free Palestine Buckle in for a possibly uncomfortable flashback as we discuss Outbreak from 1995. Viruses, helicopter chases, sweaty Patrick Dempsey, intense Dustin Hoffman, scared Cuba Gooding, Jr., cocky Kevin Spacey, tough Renee Russo, and a monkey who doesn’t know its own power make for a tense against the clock thriller. Recommendat…

Show Notes Free Palestine It’s time for Sandra Bullock to take on an early tech billionaire 1995’s The Net. Horny floppy haired assassins, men who are patently terrible at their jobs, pixelated and pixelating computer viruses and vindictive over-inclusive police records all come together to make Angela Bennett’s life hell. Recommendations: Stopmoti…

Show Notes Episode 6.5 19 The Killer (1989) #19 of 50Thrill makers: Gun Fu! Free Palestine John Woo takes us on a hell of a ride in The Killer from 1989. Guns, beautiful women, churches with good vibes and homo-romantic overtones this week as we watch a tale of an assassin with a golden heart, his best friend and the cop who comes to love him. It’s…

Show Notes Free Palestine Mamet and DePalma bring us into a slick but dangerous 1930s Chicago in 1987’s The Untouchables. Fancy dress, guns, Ennio Morricone music, and snappy dialogue bring us into the fictional non-fiction world of Elliot Ness and Al Capone. Powerhouse cast, powerhouse script, quotable from begin to end, and introducing Patricia C…

Show Notes Free Palestine We’ve got some OG anti-AI media this week with WarGames from 1983. Matthew Broderick just wants to play the latest video game, but Dabney Coleman has put his opponent in charge of the entire American military complex – it’s not a great combination. Recommendations: Ennio (Hulu) Next up: The Untouchables (1987) (Showtime) E…

Show Notes Free Palestine One of the most unspoiled movies of all time, we watched When a Stranger Calls from 1979. If you have heard of this movie but haven’t seen it, it’s likely that you are only privy to the first 20 minutes of the film. It’s tense, but it gets wild after we leave the house from which the call is coming. Carol Kane shows off he…

Show Notes Free Palestine This week we give all our co-workers side eye as we follow Dr. Wheeler on her quest for info in Coma from 1978. She’s noticing things none of her fellow doctors are noticing, or want her to notice. Once again, the smart woman knows what’s up and her boyfriend is willingly blind to the truth. Oh, and capitalism is definitel…

Show Notes Free Palestine This week we follow Michael York’s D’artanan into Paris to meet The Three Musketeers! Four silly men vs. Captain Hook, or rather Rochforte and a Cardinal with more interest in the court than the pulpit. A world of excess, adultery and swordfights awaits. Recommendations: Watch some Roger Corman movies in remembrance. Here’…

Show Notes Free Palestine This week we talk about The Naked Prey from 1965 (though you’d be hard pressed to know when it was made just by watching it). Filmed in Africa and staring mostly native Africans, with only a 9 page screenplay, it’s a tense chase with life on the line. Cornel Wilde, 53 years old and suffering dysentery, runs mostly naked th…

Show Notes Free Palestine This week, we have to warn you that once night comes, you will be alone and no one will hear your distress as you watch The Haunting from 1963. Dutch angles, rococo design, claustrophobic sets, lens distortions, and four distinct and powerful performances lend to deep unsettlement and a slow burn thrill. Recommendations: R…

Show Notes Free Palestine This week extraordinary women do bad things in the name of their mediocre husbands in Burn, Witch, Burn from 1962. A movie with many names, none of which is as good as the story it is based on, finds Tansy just trying to surreptitiously help her husband, who is positive his success is definitely because of his own talent, …

Show Notes Free Palestine This week we wax a bit poetic about Kim Stanley as we discuss the 1964 film Séance on a Wet Afternoon. How far will a woman go to be recognized for her gifts? Pretty damn far as it turns out. Two spectacular performances and three seances bring the thrills this week. Recommendations: Visit a landmark Next up: Night of the …

Show Notes Free Palestine This week, the French take on Patricia Highsmith in Purple Noon – the first film adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley. See one of the most beautiful men you have ever laid eyes on be the luckiest psychopath in cinema history. Will he pull off his schemes? Will we root for him? Does he go to far in the end? Listen to find …

Show Notes Free Palestine We travel to Japan this week with Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress. One undercover samurai, one hidden princess and two morons travel behind enemy lines to get themselves, and a whole bunch of gold, to safety. Recommendations: Other Kurosawa films: Rashoman, Seven Samurai, Ikuru; DO THE THING Next up: Purple Noon (1960…

Show Notes Free Palestine An infamous performance by Christopher Lee – only onscreen for seven minutes and with a mere 16 lines – leaves an indelible and unmatched stamp on the character of Dracula in Hammar Films’ classic Horror of Dracula. Peter Cushing has to kill his best friend while several actors kind of stand around and watch, often disinte…

Episode Notes Free Palestine Turns out you can’t mansplain your way around a demon, as Dana Andrews finds out in 1957’s Night of the Demon (Curse of the Demon if you’re outside of the US – I think?). A skeptic and self-proclaimed paranormal psychologist who walks under ladders just to see what happens f-s around with the wrong cultist and is about …

Free Palestine We’re here to see a man about a horse in Stanley Kubrick’s racetrack heist film The Killing. Asymmetric storytelling and a world before cell phones lead to a tense will they/won’t they between a group of thieves and the heist they have planned to a T. It’s a tough break when you succeed in a heist and then can’t make it to the end of…

Show Notes Free Palestine Spencer Tracy gets off the train and walks into immediate danger in Bad Day at Black Rock from 1955. Looking for his savior’s father, he finds murderous racists instead. Anne Francis is more bloodthirsty than you’ve seen her and, along with Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin, is worshipping at the shrine of Robert Ryan. Last w…

Free Palestine This week, the film Lemuel has been referencing for two years is finally here Wages of Fear from 1953. It couldn’t go on the AFI list because of the A, but for thrills, it’s certainly packed. Four men, including a Mario AND a Luigi, several tons of nitroglycerin, 40s era trucks and 300 miles of unforgiving terrain. What could possibl…

Free Palestine This week, the fix is in, or it would be if only someone told the fighter – it’s 1949’s The Set-Up directed by Robert Wise. In near real-time, we watch the rise and fall of over-the-hill boxer Stoker Thompson whose dreams of a big payday are dashed by his managers dreams of a medium payday. But is the real villain a woman? Maybe… Rec…

Notes Free Palestine We are starting off strong (and brief) with the first iteration of The Most Dangerous Game from 1932 – spoiler alert: it’s people, just like Soylent Green (spoiler #2). Faye Wray and Robert Armstrong stuck around and filmed another film on the King Kong set while postproduction was building a gorilla and some dinosaurs. It’s sh…

Show Notes It's time to make our own list of the thrilling movies that the AFI overlooked. We have films from the US, Hong Kong, Japan, and France - and that's just the first half. This week, we discuss the beginning of our list - those films that overlap the time period that the AFI covered, the first one hundred years of film from 1900 to 2000. H…

Show Notes Free Palestine We’ve reached the top, the pinnacle, the film that the AFI has lionized as the MOST THRILLING FILM of all time – from 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Etched deep in the public consciousness and the cultural zeitgeist, no one over 30 doesn’t know the twist reveal, but watching Gen Z reactions, they still get pulled into th…

Show Notes Free Palestine This week, we watched the first summer blockbuster: Jaws from 1975. Early Spielberg, unfortunate practical effects, and some excellent performances all lead to a thrill ride that won silver in the AFI thrills list. A conscientious police chief who loves his family teams up with a rich, egghead thrillseeker and a salty dog …

Show Notes Free Palestine Lemuel has been dreading this week since the beginning of our countdown and we are finally here - #3 on the list, 1973’s The Exorcist. And he liked it! Kinda…We discuss the need or lack thereof for old age makeup, who the title is referring to, how Karen’s have existed forever, and what’s the point of the prologue? We have…

Show Notes Free Palestine This week Amity gets frustrated with the self-inflicted trials that Cary Grant goes through in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. Never has someone tried so hard to get themselves in trouble and never has someone had so little care for their own life without being actively seeking death. We have an excellent villain an…

Show Notes Free Palestine We watched one of our collective favorite movies this week with Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs. There’s new things to notice, even when you’ve seen it a dozen times. Parallels between statues and body positioning? Check. Book titles specific to the moment? Check. Lecter never blinking, except when deliberate? Check.…

Show Notes Free Palestine Once again, a group of people in space don’t follow a quarantine procedure and all hell breaks loose in Ridley Scott’s Alien. A smart woman not listened to – the beginning of so many horror stories. Does the cat live? Does anyone else? Why is there so much imagery that looks like sexual organs? And why is everything wet? L…

Show Notes Free Palestine It’s a trip to the coast this week as we watch Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedrin fight our fine feathered friends in Hitchcock’s classic: The Birds. Since there is more character development than actual bird attacks, we get to really care if these people get their eyed pecked out of their skulls. Do the effects still hold up? Ki…

Show Notes Free Palestine Get ready for some terrible policing this week as we discuss 1971’s The French Connection, directed by William Friedkin and starring a sweaty Gene Hackman whose character definitely smelled like gin in every frame of this film. These cops may not be dirty but they aren’t clean. We visit a time when cops weren’t assigned ca…

Show Notes It’s our 300th episode and we’re talk babies – how they’re made, how they’re gestated, and how they’re raised – especially when dad’s the devil with Rosemary’s Baby from 1968. The casual spousal rape, the not so casual demonic rape, Mia Farrow is asked to go through so much in this film and may not get enough credit for any of it. Also, …

Show Notes Free Palestine We watched the last adventure movie of the thrills list and the first of an enduring franchise – Raiders of the Lost Ark starring Han Solo himself, Harrison Ford, and directed by Stephen Spielberg. A desert shoot in 130 degree temperatures and an epidemic of amoebic dysentery along with just the barest bones of a script st…

Show Notes Free PalestineWe stand with SAG-AFTRA It’s our last revisit of the series – we talk about the inclusion of and placement in the AFI thrills list of The Godfather. Is it thrilling? Listen to see what we think and then listen to one of our very early episodes – can you believe we’ve been doing this for 5 years? Us either. Take a listen as …

Show Notes Free PalestineWe stand with SAG-AFTRA Once upon a time there was a big ape who just wanted to be alone on his island to fight with dinosaurs. But people came and built a big wall. It was okay because they gave him delicious women. But one day a new type of people came and their woman was a curious new kind. As he is trying to understand …

Show Notes Free PalestineWe stand with SAG-AFTRA Modern gangsters Bonnie and Clyde are brought to life (and death) by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway this week in the eponymous Bonnie and Clyde from 1967. Not Amity’s favorite – thanks to the French New Wave influence and a dislike for Faye Dunaway generally – we dig into the hows and whys of the mak…

Show Notes We stand with SAG-AFTRA Let’s go a peeping – we watched 1954’s Rear Window directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Jimmy Stewart is redeemed – moving from deeply creepy to mildly and situationally creepy, but also clearly a good man as Grace Kelly loves him. We meet the cast of characters – even more than our protagonists ever do, discuss Edith He…

Show Notes Sadly still applicable: We stand with SAG-AFTRA Content warning: Sexual Assault We revisit our episode on Deliverance from 1972 – a prime example of 70’s grit, when the men were tough but the movies were tougher. Buckle into your canoes because we’re going where no one wants us – right into a men’s getaway from hell. But we’ll make it fu…

Show Notes Sadly still applicable: We stand with SAG-AFTRA Content warning: We do speak about the Polanski of it all. We have indicated with time stamps when that occurs. There is also incestual sexual assault referred to in this film so if you want to skip this one, we get it and we’ll see you next week. This week we’re discussing a masterpiece of…

Show Notes Sadly still applicable: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA This week, we get to Lemuel’s favorite (if we go by number of times he has mentioned it this series), 1962 John Frankenheimer mind-freak The Manchurian Candidate. We try to make it make sense without getting too lost in the twists and turns. We talk about the surprising performa…

Show Notes Sadly still applicable: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA Hold on to something because we’ve got Vertigo – Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1958 thriller. We have seen a number of Hitchcock films up to this point and have quite a few left, but this feels like a pivot point. Amity comes to this fresh with a sixty year head start and really ha…

Show Notes Sadly still applicable: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA It’s a war movie AND a prison break movie – what’s not to love – we watched The Great Escape from 1963. We get our third and final Steve McQueen film and he doesn’t disappoint from his baseball to his motorcycle riding. We also have one of the largest and most talented casts we …

Show Notes Sadly still applicable: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA It’s a whole different vibe this week as we move from a film with no heroes to a film with one of the prototypical heroes of Hollywood with Gary Cooper starring in 1952’s High Noon. Unable to walk away for multiple reasons and surrounded by surprising and remarkably well-drawn w…

Show Notes Still Applicable: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA We watched the movie that traumatized Amity when she was absolutely too young to have anything to do with it, A Clockwork Orange directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1971. We discuss the role of women, the torture that Kubrick puts his actors under, use of language, and how something can be…

Show Notes Still Applicable: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA We go back in time to revisit Taxi Driver – definitely a more thrilling Scorsese film than Raging Bull. We chatted about this film five years ago, so here it is again, with an addendum re: how thrilling it is (spoiler: pretty damn thrilling). “Amity and Lemuel find out the difference …

Show Notes Still Applicable: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA Buckle in, it’s an epic that lives up to its name: the 210 minute Lawrence of Arabia directed by David Lean. We discuss how a man can be an enigma even when his story is based on his own autobiography and how four hours can leave us with no real idea of the protagonist’s motivation. W…

Show Notes Still Applicable: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA Up this week is an insurance fraud movie hidden within a murder story – Double Indemnity directed by Billy Wilder early in his career. We’ve got it all – comedian in a dramatic role, half nude femme fatale, a concerned daughter who never comes on to the main character, an insurance fr…

Show Notes First and foremost: We stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA This week we watched modern classic, James Cameron’s first most expensive film ever made: 1997’s Titanic. We talk who’s real and who isn’t, chemistry, the vileness of Billy Zane, a lack of humility and humanity among explorers generally, both in fiction and outside of it, and whethe…

Show Notes It’s time for another noir with a prototypical McGuffin – 1941’s Maltese Falcon featuring the crackling dialog of Dashiell Hammett. Bogart, Greenstreet and Lorre make their first film all together, pitted against each other in the search for the titular bejeweled bird. Complete with a disarming dame, easily disarmed villains and so many …