Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with thriller

Seeking air tight caper flicks or thrillers

IndigoJones — Mon, 25 May 2009 08:33:22 -0800

Seeking first rate caper flicks or thrillers. (Books also acceptable) AIR TIGHT PLOT ESSENTIAL! Stylish is nice, but I hate, hate, a cheat. Cheats include long cons requiring highly unlikely coincidence (I’m talking to you, David Mamet), or incriminating documents that no thought to burn years earlier (Little Dorrit, of all things, seems to have started this). Or the vital search warrant that no judge on earth would grant. Crap like that. I want the hinges to be silent, the joinery to be tight, the gears to mesh precisely, the ending to be truly surprising and solution to be satisfying and capable of withstanding close scrutiny.

Looking for the name of a thriller/horror movie from the late 1970's or early 1980's.

orehek — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:01:43 -0800

Looking for the name of a thriller/horror movie from the late 1970's or early 1980's. Takes place in a very large spooky mansion. Several young adults come to visit the mansion and they encounter very abnormal occurrences. Please help. I only remember a few scenes since I only saw it once when it originally came out.
1) One girl meets her fate when taking a swim in the beautiful indoor pool within the mansion. Suddenly by way of supernatural means, a clear enclosure covers the surface of the pool and she drowns.
2) Several of the adults attempt to escape and drive off in their car far away from the mansion later in the film. They drive and drive through the countryside only to soon realize that the road has taken them right back to the mansion's driveway.
3) The last scene I only vaguely remember. I believe I recall a sinister figure sitting in a majestic armchair. He is obscured by a thin silky curtain and I think he was wearing some kind of special ring.

That is all I got. I hope someone out there knows this flick. Thanks

Thriller Centerfold Tiger

Stylus Happenstance — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:41:25 -0800

I'm looking for the picture from the centerfold of the Thriller LP. It's the one where MJ has a baby tiger on his leg, not the one where he's hugging the tiger. I'm amazed that I haven't been able to find this, especially since I recently easily found a picture of a skeleton holding a condom and a picture of Cookie Monster holding a gun, but I feel like I've tried every combination of michael jackson thriller tiger LP centerfold jacket sleeve fold cover and art. I found this on ebay, but while I don't need anything high-res, I'd like something better than that.

Help me remember this movie...

smoothvirus — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:45:54 -0800

I'm trying to remember what the title of this movie was. I think it was made in the 1960's or 1970's in the U.S. I remember watching it on TV on the Sunday Matinee show in the 1980's. The plot involved this millionaire who wanted to attack the Soviet Union, he had a small force which was to attack Russia by driving trucks across the polar ice cap. All I can remember was that in the end of the film his plan is thwarted by the Soviets, who send planes to bomb the ice, and the trucks sink to the bottom of the ocean. Any ideas?

Childhood movie memory

I, Credulous — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:38:43 -0800

A childhood memory of two science fiction films has been nagging me lately. I have just a little to go on... Movie One: is in colour, probably mid-sixties. The plot involves a "mirror image" of the Earth, orbiting 180 degrees from us, so on the other side of the Sun. Some astronauts from Earth discover it and land there. Everything's the same as our (future) world, but flipped left-to-right (they shot on the same sets and simply printed the film "flipped"). The "other Earth" may have been called Nemesis.

Movie Two: is in B&W, probably early sixties or very late fifties. There's something of a thriller aspect to this one. I recall a man sneaking into and office look at some files. Later, he goes into a darkroom in his apartment (office?) and removes one of his eye balls: it's a camera, concealed in a glass eye. He develops the pictures of the documents that he's snapped with his fancy eye.

Both are probably American productions.

I saw them on television, of course.

I will continue to function as an adult and a human being if I don't find out what these films are, but I'd really like to scratch this mental itch.

What are the classics of genre fiction?

TheophileEscargot — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:42:15 -0800

What are the classics of genre fiction? What are the best thrillers, mysteries, westerns, horror, romances, etc? I just finished "True Grit" by Charles Portis and loved it, looking for more good books outside the mainstream. I've read a lot of SF and Fantasy already, so don't really need suggestions for those.

Is there a Thriller tribute/concept album?

AloneOssifer — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:47:38 -0800

Michael Jackson is re-re-releasing Thriller for its 25th Anniversary soon. But somebody recorded some album that's supposed to be a "re-vision-ing" of the songs on Thriller. I read an article, which I failed to bookmark, mentioning that the newly configured songs still used riffs and lyrics akin to the originals, but they were titled, arranged, and sung differently.

Anyone heard of this?

Cold War chills in the warm sun

gentle — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 13:42:33 -0800

Give me the Cold War chills, please. I'm going on vacation soon and I would like to settle down on the beach with a really juicy espionage novel, preferably something about the Cold War, something suitably dense, complex, panoramic and violent. What should I read? I don't know my Le Carré from my Ludlum (though I have read The Constant Gardener and found it interesting though poorly written).

However, I'm terribly sensitive to bad writing; please don't recommend any Tom Clancies or Clive Cusslers or any of those authors whose name take up half the cover in embossed capitals.

Conversely, though they're brilliant novelists, I would also like to preemptively rule out Graham Greene and Norman Mailer, both of whom I find a bit too dry for this excursion.

So who's the Rohinton Mistry or Patrick O'Brian or James Ellroy of espionage thrillers?

Phone phreak 70s thriller?

skywhite — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 09:37:10 -0800

Bookfilter: 70's thriller featuring phone phreaking? I've been trying to locate a book I remember reading in the late 70s or early 80s, which featured a pretty accurate description of blue boxing and used it in the plot.

I think the title of the book was "Fair Game" but apparently so are a zilion other books.

Weird Boy in the Bathroom Movie

MaxVonCretin — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 14:28:57 -0800

Please help me identify a freaky 1970's (maybe 1960's) movie! Plot inside. Plot in a nutshell: "Weird" teenaged boy who is frequently bullied lives alone with mother. One day while walking home from high school, he accidentally murders a girl who is taunting him. When he tells his mother, she hides him from the police by walling over a small bathroom in the center of their house. Soon after, the mother leaves for several days to get an operation, but DIES. The house is sold, and a new family moves in, unaware of the crazy boy still living in the hidden bathroom, who spends his time painting psycho posters and spying on them through holes in the walls.

As a kid, I saw this TWICE on TV in the late 70's, and it FREAKED ME OUT. I'm not sure if it was a made-for-TV flick or not. I suspect it might have had the word "Weird" in the title, and I think the main character's name was Harold. In fact, I suspect it was called "Weird Harold," but can't find anything about it - and I have searched far and wide many times. Any help would be hugely appreciated - it's been driving me nuts!

Bring me to the edge of my seat, and then push me over!

grumblebee — Thu, 25 May 2006 14:41:34 -0800

What's the most exciting novel you've ever read? I mean this in the simplest sense: an exciting plot. I'm looking for page-turners. Novels that keep you on the edge of your seat and refuse to let you sleep until you finish them. I'm looking for genre novels -- but I don't care what genres: Mystery, thriller, sci-fi, etc. (though sci-fi/fantasy has been done-to-death here, so I'm really more interested in other genres.) Oh, I care about words. So no matter how exciting, I'll quit reading if the prose is crappy. I know that any type of novel can be exciting, but I'm looking for purity. For instance, if it's a novel of ideas that happens to also be exciting, go ahead and list it, but that's not really what I'm looking for. I'm looking for BEACH READING. I'm looking for the "24" of novels.