10 Terrifying Scenes In Psychological Thrillers

The Parallax View joined the list of conspiracy thrillers made in the 1970s, at a time when America was at its most culturally depressed - the Vietnam war had been a disaster, Richard Nixon had been exposed as a crook and the hippies had grown up and straightened out, leaving something of a bleak outlook for the future.

Cinema was quick to pick up on the zeitgeist and audiences were lapping up downbeat, gritty political thrillers and paranoia drenched anti-heroes.

The Parallax View was just such a film - box office heavyweight Warren Beatty plays Joe Frady, a journalist who is approached by his ex-girlfriend Lee Carter, three years after the murder of a presidential candidate, who is now convinced it was part of a larger conspiracy.

At first he is sceptical, but when she ends up dead in a suspected overdose/DUI incident, he uncovers a shady company know as The Parallax Corporation, purveyors of political assassinations.

As Frady manages to access the Parallax recruiting stage, he is submitted to a visual psyche evaluation consisting of a series of words (FATHER, MOTHER, HOME) cut into disturbing images depicting American political propaganda mixed with images of war, death and political enemies.

It's a strange, disturbing sequence, perfectly reflecting the feeling of the time - a total mistrust of political institutions and the existence of nefarious organisations, bent on recruiting everyday Joes for the purposes of global dominance. There is no happy ending here - Frady is assassinated himself and used to perpetuate the lie.