10 Terrifying Scenes In Psychological Thrillers

Psychological thrillers wear many masks - horror, political, period, drama, noir, surrealist and countless other sub-genres. One thing they all have in common is the terror. To really get under our skin, writers and directors have been manipulating our deepest fears for decades and we just keep coming back for more.

'Thrillers' are designed to do just that - thrill. There are so many examples of these exquisite sequences in films, the ones that have had us squirming, cringing, crying, screaming or changing the channel, that a list of one hundred would still not be long enough.

The world can be a scary place and film makers can take our most trusted institutions and faithful companions, and twist them into the stuff of nightmares. Motels become morgues, politicians sanction murders and lovers plot your deaths, it's no wonder that people find clowns scary... we've been shown what they really are.

Ghosts, murderers, psychos, demons and vengeful criminals all feature here, and let's be truthful - it's fun to be thrilled. From the minds of David Fincher, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and a rare appearance from William Peter Blatty, here are ten of the best scenes - the scenes that terrify us to the bone.

The Conversation is a 1974 paranoia-thriller classic starring Gene Hackman and directed by cinema legend Francis Ford Coppola.

It's just one of a cornucopia of conspiracy themed movies that were being widely produced mid 1970s as a reaction to the Watergate scandal - though Coppola later stated that his inspiration for the film was actually a 1966 movie Blowup, and that the script had been completed several months before the Watergate scandal had even broken in the press.

Hackman plays Harry Caul, a private surveillance expert who, when hired by a client to record a conversation between a couple walking through Union Square in San Francisco. When the recording is cleaned up and filtered, the purpose of the job becomes all too clear - "He'd kill us if he got the chance... " Caul's paranoia builds quickly and he soon regrets ever becoming involved.

In a sequence where Caul's assignment takes him to a hotel room to trace the couple in question, Coppola gives us a cracking jump scare and one that is genuinely unexpected. As Caul recoils in guilt over his bugging antics, he makes his way on to the hotel balcony for air, to be suddenly faced with a murder happening behind a glass panel, right before his eyes.

Bloody hands and bodies are pressed against the glass as a scream cuts through the soundtrack. It's a shocking moment for Hackman and the audience, as Caul realises he is in over his head and way too deep.