A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES: THE SUSPENSEFUL WORLD OF THRILLERS will explore such topics as the origin of thrillers and development of stylistic conventions; the use of a wrongly accused everyman as a protagonist; the range of female roles, from damsel in distress to femme fatale; the creation of classic villains and the actors who relished playing them; the impact of World War II on the genre; the emergence of more violent thrillers in the 1960s; the rise of the paranoid thriller in the 1970s; and how the genre continues in popularity by latching onto the current zeitgeist.

The special will feature interviews with such figures as TCM host Robert Osborne; Ken Follett, author of Eye of the Needle; Bryan Singer, writer and director of The Usual Suspects and Valkyrie; Diablo Cody, writer and producer of the upcoming film Jennifer’s Body; Kenneth Branagh, director and star of Dead Again; Mel Brooks, writer, director and star of the Hitchcock spoof High Anxiety; David Koepp, writer-director of Stir of Echoes; Norman Lloyd, star of Hitchcock’s Saboteur and producer and director for the Alfred Hitchcock television series; Martin Landau, co-star of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest; Ileanna Douglas, co-star of Cape Fear and Stir of Echoes; Scott Frank, screenwriter of Minority Report and director of The Lookout; Heywood Gould, screenwriter of The Boys from Brazil; Paul Hirsch, editor of Brian De Palma’s Obsession and Blow Out; Hawk Koch, assistant director on Marathon Man and The Parallax View, and producer of Untraceable; Guy Hendrix Dyas, production designer for Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; and John McCarty, author of the books Thrillers and Bullets Over Hollywood.