griggs's - Alfred Hitchcock Ranked List

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After he saves her from drowning in the bay, Scottie's (James Stewart) interest shifts from business to fascination with the icy, alluring blonde. When tragedy strikes and Madeleine (Kim Novak) dies, Scottie is devastated.

But when he finds another woman remarkably like his lost love, the now obsessed detective must unravel the secrets of the past to find the key to his future.

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Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is not a spy. And he's certainly no murderer. Nevertheless, Thornhill's a wanted man: enemy agents want him dead, the police want him arrested, and a cool, mysterious blonde (Eva Marie Saint) just plain wants him.

A victim of mistaken identity, Thornhill can't afford to make any mistakes of his own - so he embarks on a death-defying run for his life. Relentlessly pursued by plane, train and automobile, Thornhill's cross-country chase finally ends atop Mt. Rushmore where, if he doesn't watch his step, he could be in for a terrible fall.

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An innocent man on the run. A beautiful icy blonde. A fast-moving cross-country pursuit. A chaotic world where no one is ever what they seem. 'The 39 Steps' set the template for Hitchcock's classic suspense thrillers.

John Buchan's very loosely adapted story begins when Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) picks up the exotic 'Annabella Smith' at a music hall. The next morning he discovers she's been killed and finds himself in the frame for her murder. Way ahead of its time in terms of its pace, black comedy and the sexual chemistry between the charismatic leads (particularly when Carroll removes her stockings while handcuffed to Donat), 'The 39 Steps' is among Hitch's finest and has been voted into the BFI's Top Five Favorite British Films.

Jefferies (James Stewart), a photographer with a broken leg, takes up the fine art of spying on his Greenwich Village neighbours during a summer heat wave. But things really hot up when he suspects one neighbour (Raymond Burr) of murdering his invalid wife and burying the body in a flower garden.

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Alfred Hitchcock's landmark masterpiece of the macabre stars Anthony Perkins as the troubled Norman Bates, whose old dark house and adjoining motel are not the place to spend a quiet evening.

No one knows that better than Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), the ill-fated traveller whose journey ends in the notorious "shower scene". First a private detective, then Marion's sister (Vera Miles) searches for her, the horror and the suspense mount to a terrifying climax where the mysterious killer is finally revealed.

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Former tennis pro Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) hatches a cunning plot to get rid of his socialite wife, Margot (Grace Kelly), when he discovers that she has been having an affair with author Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings).

Wendice blackmails a corrupt former schoolmate into murdering her, but the man bungles the job, and Margot, having killed her would-be assailant in self-defence, then finds herself under suspicion of premeditated murder...

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Whilst on holiday, young timid ladies companion (Joan Fontaine) meets handsome and wealthy widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) whose wife Rebecca has recently died in a boating accident. The two fall in love and marry.

However, her joy is short lived when she returns to the de Winter estate and soon discovers that Rebecca still has a strange, unearthly hold over everyone there.

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Tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) half-jokingly muses about killing his wife with a stranger he meets on a train, unhinged playboy Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), who'd prefer his father be deceased. In theory, each could murder the other's victim. Crisscross. No motive. No clues. No problem...

except: Bruno takes the idea seriously, with deadly consequences.

Intrigue and espionage abound when a young woman travelling aboard a transcontinental express train strikes up an acquaintance with a charming elderly English governess, who then disappears without a trace. Is the young woman hallucinating, or is something altogether more sinister afoot...?

In modern-day London, a sex criminal known as 'The Necktie Murderer' has the police on alert, and in typical Hitchcok fashion, the trail is leading to an innocent man, who must know now elude the law and prove his innocence by finding the real murderer.

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Alice White (Anny Ondra) is frustrated with her police officer boyfriend Frank (John Longden) as he neglects her in favour of his work. To spite him, she arranges to meet another man. When he tries to rape her, she ends up killing him in defence.

The case gets assigned to Frank who realises that Alice is the murderer, but it seems someone else knows too as Alice begins to receive threats of blackmail from an anonymous source.

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As beautiful blonde Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) rolls into Bodega Bay in pursuit of eligible bachelor Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), she is inexplicably attacked by a seagull.

Suddenly thousands of birds are flocking into town, preying on school-children and residents in a terrifying series of attacks. Soon Mitch and Melanie are fighting for their lives against a deadly force that can't be explained and can't be stopped in one of Hollywood's most horrific films of nature gone berserk.

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Alfred Hitchcock's exciting 1942 wartime thriller starring Robert Cummings as a Los Angeles aircraft factory worker who witnesses his plant's firebombing by a Nazi agent. During the deadly explosion, Cumming's best friend is killed and he, himself, is wrongly accused of sabotage.

To clear his name, Cummings begins a relentless cross-country chase that takes him from Boulder Dam to New York's Radio City Music Hall, and finally to a harrowing confrontation a top the Statue of Liberty.

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The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock creates a spellbinding portrait of a disturbed woman, and the man who tries to save her, in this unrelenting psychological thriller.

'Tippi' Hedren is Marnie, a compulsive thief and liar who goes to work for Mark Rutland (Sean Connery), then attempts to rob him. Mark impulsively marries the troubled beauty and attempts to discover the reasons for her obsessive behaviour. When a terrible accident pushes his wife to the edge, Mark forces Marnie to confront her terrors and her past in a shattering, inescapable conclusion.

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When Uncle Charlie comes to visit his relatives in the sleepy town of Santa Rosa, the foundation is laid for one of his most engaging and suspenseful excursions.

Joseph Cotten stars as the charming Uncle Charlie, a beguiling killer who travels from Philadelphia to California just one step ahead of the law. But soon his unknowing niece and namesake, "Young Charlie" (Teresa Wright), begins to suspect her uncle of being the Merry Widow murderer, and a deadly game of cat-and-mouse begins. As his niece draws closer to the truth, the psychopathic killer has no choice but to plot the death of his favourite relative in one of Hitchcock's most riveting psychological thrillers.