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Review: The Best of Warner Bros. 20 Film Collection: Thrillers

They're throwing "Thriller" around a little loosely here, but we're not complaining.

WB 20 Thrillers One

This year Warner Bros. is celebrating 90 years of movies with box sets of 20 DVDs of varying genres, and the latest installment is The Best of Warner Bros. 20 Film Collection: Thrillers. It features some of the best (20 of them, in fact) Warner Bros. movies of the last 90 years, though we’re not sure they all count as thrillers.

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There’s no doubt the collection features great movies. Take a look at this impressive lineup:

The Public Enemy (1931)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
North by Northwest (1959)
Dirty Harry (1971)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Lethal Weapon: Director’s Cut (1987)
Batman (1989)
Goodfellas (1990)
The Fugitive (1993)
Natural Born Killers: The Director’s Cut (1994)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Seven (1995)
Heat (1995)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
American History X (1998)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Inception (2010)
The Town (2010)

The thriller genre relies heavily on suspense, anticipation, and tension as tools to carry a viewer through a story. We’re not sure Batman or Lethal Weapon count, but they’re both great so it’s not like we’re upset they’re in there. Besides, Strangers on a Train has enough tension for three movies easily, so it more than makes up the difference.

The set is divided into two chapters. The first is Thrills and Chases (1931-1980), and the second is Chills and Capers (1993-2010). This leaves BatmanLethal Weapon, and Goodfellas off on their own in the middle.

The films included in the set boast 12 Oscars between them, which works out to 0.6 Oscars per movie. That’s not a bad average. They also feature some of the biggest names in film like Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Pacino, Clint Eastwood, Cary Grant, and Humphrey Bogart.

As with all the Best of Warner Bros. sets, Thrillers comes with a 24-page booklet with photos and synopses of all the films in the set. The Thrillers box set hit stores on September 3rd and retails for $98.92. That’s less than $5 per movie, which is pretty solid, but there’s even better news.

Looking at the Warner Bros. site right now you can own it on DVD for just $64.69 and you still get Strangers on a Train which as we’ve mentioned is thrilling enough for several movies. Seriously, Strangers on a Train is really great.

Criss cross.

(via Warner Bros.)

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Author
Glen Tickle
Glen is a comedian, writer, husband, and father. He won his third-grade science fair and is a former preschool science teacher, which is a real job.

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