We know them as trailers, but they don't trail anything; they play before the movie, not after it. The name dates to their earliest incarnation, when they actually did follow the feature. The documentary "Coming Attractions" dates the very first trailer to a 1912 Edison serial entitled "What Happened to Mary?" After each installment, a black card with white text would appear to inform audiences "The next incident in the series of 'What Happened to Mary' will be shown a week from now." Not exactly "In a world..." but it did the trick back in 1912.
What happened to Mary wasn't nearly as important as what happened to trailers, which have grown into one of the most popular forms of advertising in the world. Some think they spoil the movies -- Gene Siskel famously hated them so much he wouldn't enter a theater while they were playing -- but for the rest of us, they're a treasured part of the moviegoing ritual, a delicious cinematic appetizer to prepare us for the main course.
There are many ways to measure a trailer's quality, from the persuasiveness of its salesmanship to the cleverness of its copywriting. Ultimately, we decided that the best trailers are those that most effectively combine art and commerce, and that sell and entertain with equal skill. Some of the previews on our list are for classic films, but many are for mediocrities. Some are for absolutely bombs. That speaks to the magic of the trailers. You could argue that these clips play to our basest instincts in order to convince us to see movies that aren't always good. But considered from another perspective, trailers provide a version of cinema that's essentially utopian, in which every film is perfect, if only for two and a half minutes.
Now, in an online world ruled by pop culture lists, comes one film website that would dare to do the impossible. Pursued by a ruthless cyborg programmed to destroy it, IFC.com is about to engage in a battle to decide the fate of the human race!
No, wait, I'm sorry. That's actually the copy from the "American Cyborg" trailer. This is IFC.com's list of the 50 Greatest Trailers of All Time. No ruthless cyborgs here, unless our choices so enrage you that you send one after us. Please don't.
50. Night of the Iguana (1964)
It’s only fitting that this list ends (or begins) with the trailer for John Huston’s 1964 adaptation of the Tennessee Williams drama starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr. In spite of those marquee names, it was the far lesser-known Andrew J. Kuehn that made the film a landmark in cinema history by introducing innovations in movie trailer-making that remain a staple today.
Hired by MGM after excelling at cutting trailers for foreign films in the early ‘60s, Kuehn took pre-film advertising to a whole new level when he employed a young James Earl Jones to do an omniscient voiceover, added a jazzy score and introduced quick-cut editing in a world where trailers were usually comprised of full scenes. Today, the “Night of the Iguana” trailer looks a bit like avant-garde filmmaking, but it proved the basis for the rest of Kuehn’s influential body of work, including trailers for “Taxi Driver,” “Alien” and “Jaws,” as well as the entire business of film marketing. --Stephen Saito
49. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Anatomy of a Trailer: we open in a nondescript courtroom, Anytown, U.S.A. But almost immediately, a sign of the unusual: the bailiff stands and announces "There is a new movie coming to this town. All those involved in this film will now be sworn in!" The oath is then delivered by "Anatomy of a Murder" director Otto Preminger. "Raise your right hand!" he barks. "Do you solemnly swear that you have done your job in this picture to the best of your ability... James Stewart?" Jimmy nods and says he does, followed in rapid succession by the rest of the cast. I'm not sure these statements are legally binding, but the enthusiasm is nice. Next Preminger has a conversation with "Anatomy" novelist John D. Voelker, who rightly observes that their courtroom scene is missing a jury. "Our jury is not just twelve men and women in a box!" Preminger chuckles. "Our judge and jury sits out there!" as he points into the camera, "millions and millions of people in the theaters!"
The entire judicial conceit is cheeky fun, obviously in keeping with the film's subject matter, and Preminger's salutation to the audience is an apt metaphor for the court of public opinion. Plus the overly excited pull quotes from newspaper reviews -- just what the hell is "Socko cinema!" anyway? -- shows that dubious blurbage in movie ads is not just a recent problem. --Matt Singer
48. The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)
Joel and Ethan Coen’s "The Man Who Wasn’t There" is more than just an homage to film noir -- it’s a dreamlike, semi-abstract distillation of the genre to its core elements. So, too, is its trailer, which highlights the film’s immaculate, highly manicured black-and-white cinematography throughout its montage of period haircuts (narrated with disenchanted deliberateness by Billy Bob Thornton’s smoking barber) and its archetypal noir visions of hands, suit-and-fedora silhouettes and clandestine rendezvous.
Wasting not a single gesture, the trailer is edited with hallucinatory beauty that belies the action’s encompassing mood of misery, treachery and tragedy. Despite being comprised of actual film clips, not a single plot point is overtly explicated. Simply through its combination of in-action dialogue (from Thornton and Tony Shalhoub) and evocative imagery, the Coens’ trailer expresses everything one might need to know about this haunting, self-consciously stylized, resolutely fatalistic neo-noir. --Nick Schager
47. Magnolia (1999)
Narrated by magician/actor Ricky Jay, himself a chronicler of oddities and bizarre occasions, this trailer wisely sets up “Magnolia”'s somewhat stretched premise: namely that crazy unbelievable shit really, truly happens. Paul Thomas Anderson’s story attempts to stand in a whirlwind of a plotline on the extra weight brought by these synchronous and sometimes wild occurrences. Whether they really impart meaning, or are just stories woven together with an Aimee Mann sing-along and a climactic precipitation of amphibians, is up in the air. Certainly, the performances carry weight and are the real treat with this ensemble cast, many of whom worked together on Anderson’s prior film “Boogie Nights.” Conscious of that, the trailer highlights the best part of the film, its actors. --Brandon Kim
46. Watchmen (2009)
Even if "Watchmen" couldn't live up to its hype as the most anticipated graphic-novel adaptation of all time, the trailer is at least the greatest Smashing Pumpkins music video of all time, as set to the apocalyptically suspenseful strains of their 2007 "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning." (Coincidentally, it's the gloomier B-side to their Grammy-winning "The End is the Beginning is the End," also from a soundtrack, that of fellow DC comic book property "Batman & Robin").
Titles float through the gears of a timepiece: "In 2009, Everything We Know Will Change," at least for Billy Crudup's nerdy doctor, seemingly vaporized inside the Intrinsic Field Subtractor. The Nite Owl's air ship emerges from underwater, the Silk Spectre poses in a flaming hallway, the Comedian is thrown through a window to his death, and more iconic pop tableaux sync up in slowed speeds to Billy Corgan and crew's lethargic beats. Director Zack Snyder really shouldn't be credited onscreen as a visionary, but when Rorshach provocatively narrates "The world will look up and shout, 'Save us,' and I'll whisper... 'no,' " before the Pumpkins' tune brakes for the final image -- Dr. Manhattan's massive erection (no blue schlong jokes, please) of a crystal castle on Mars -- you can practically hear the fanboys frothing. --Aaron Hillis
45. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Aiming to force its viewers into the same paranoid state of mind as Frank Sinatra's addled lead, the trailer for John Frankenheimer's original "The Manchurian Candidate" urgently warns that if you arrive late to the cinema, YOU WON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT! As an audience stand-in, Sinatra then screams in terror. Missing the opening then, MIGHT JUST DRIVE YOU INSANE!
As a marketing tool, it fits quite squarely inside the film's manipulative universe. Pausing on the guilt trip for a second, and not wanting to give the film's ingenious game away, it opts for tantalizing glimpses: a political rally, repeated shots of the queen of hearts and a pensive, canted angled Laurence Harvey. These oblique images, scored to some swirling strings, elicit a kind of hypnotic disorientation, exactly what Harvey's character battles throughout the film itself. It's showing, not telling, instilling an anxiety in the viewer about the nature of this mysterious object. --R. Emmet Sweeney
44. The Big Sleep (1946)
At the Hollywood Public Library, Humphrey Bogart, decked out in gumshoe fedora and trench coat, looks for a good read, maybe a mystery along the lines of "The Maltese Falcon." Luckily, a librarian who looks and sounds an awful lot like Lauren Bacall is there to help with a handy suggestion '' how about Raymond Chandler’s latest bestseller, "The Big Sleep"? Intrigued, he cracks open the novel and begins reading aloud, his narration segueing into a deftly edited series of clips from the Howard Hawks-directed classic that convey not the plot (which would be next to impossible, given the film’s notoriously convoluted narrative) but an alluring, prototypical noir mood. Bogey breaking into a room via a window and finding a murdered body, Bacall crouched secretively, the two enjoying steamy kisses (“I like that. I’d like more”), and then gunfights, gambling and punch-outs -- all of it set to an escalating orchestral score that seems to promise a near-orgasmic climax of violence, suspense and passion. --Nick Schager
43. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Stanley Kubrick (who looms large in this list) hadn’t released a film in 12 years when “Eyes Wide Shut” premiered in 1999. He also died four days after completing it (although argument remains about how complete it is, since he wasn't alive to approve the final CGI edits of the mask-clad orgy scenes to gain a more desirable R rating). Given this, Kubrick’s legendary status, and the film's final on-screen uniting of power still-couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, the trailer for “Eyes Wide Shut” could have been nothing but a minute-long black title screen announcing its arrival and still had people spilling their popcorn.
Instead, they were given an ingeniously jazzy concoction set to Chris Isaak's "Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing," promising a world of high-end Manhattan misbehavior. The glimpses of a couple making out, the woman distracted, a young girl’s nymphish grin, a morgue, the flash of a surreal gothic underworld, all cut with the occasional sudden blinding frame of black horizontal bars, barely hint at the disquieting meditation on sex and love that was Kubrick’s last masterwork. --Brandon Kim
42. Little Children (2006)
The trailer for "Little Children," the adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name, is misleading not only in its horror film intensity but its total, badass excellence. Other than stars Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly and Patrick Wilson, this tense, tightly crafted not-quite-two-minutes doesn’t have much in common with the sloggish, portentous film it's advertising.
A study in sound design, the trailer begins with a distant train’s horn cooing through the sound of rustling leaves: the very soundtrack of idyllic, suburban tranquility. The sound is laid over a series of images of different configurations of the main characters; both the editing and the sound begin to accelerate as the configurations grow more fraught, beginning with Patrick Wilson’s pained, stolen look down Winslet’s body in a red one-piece. The image of a toy train collision aligns with a crescendo on the soundtrack -- that train is headed right for us! -- and then the trailer goes slightly bananas, pulling every dramatic image in the film, from sob shots to dangerous exhilaration, and arranging them in an ominous collage of the perils of suburban loneliness. --Michelle Orange
41. Maximum Overdrive (1986)
With apologies to Emilio Estevez, Pat Hingle and Yeardley Smith, the true star of the truckapocalypse known as "Maximum Overdrive" was Stephen King. The film was King's first (and, to date, last) time in the director's chair, and the author featured prominently in its print advertising (where he appeared ripping apart the side of a truck with his bare hands) and in its trailer, where he speaks directly to the camera and invites people to come see his directorial debut.
The movie has since accrued a reputation as a laughably bad camp classic. So "Maximum Overdrive" may not be very frightening, but holy shit, Stephen King sure is. His speech begins pleasantly enough. He introduces himself, explains that he's directed his first movie. But as the trailer progresses, King grows more and more agitated. With his coy, bucktoothed smile and unblinking eyes, he looks like the psychotic love child of Norman Bates and the Domino's Pizza Noid. By cutting effectively between "Overdrive" and King's own demonic rant, the trailer builds to a crescendo of creepiness where the writer, lit on one side by an ominous green light, points wide-eyed into the lens and announces "I'm gonna scare the hell out of you!" Mission accomplished, Steve. --Matt Singer
40. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999)
The late, great Don "Thunder Throat" LaFontaine, king of the voiceover, commands as this teaser begins (and as the camera slowly zooms into the screen of a fancy home computer, circa 1999): "As we near the millennium, the tools for visual effects and animation are evolving at an exponential rate..." A laser-guided, 3-D animatic is being rendered in close-up before our eyes, and we're told that Paramount has enlisted the help of the world's top animators, with a budget of over $630 million, to bring us "the most advanced animation ever seen by the human eye."
Cue the punchline: the computer matrix system has formed the eye of a defiantly lo-fi Eric Cartman -- by that time as iconic an animated character as Bart Simpson -- goose-stepping on an empty black background. "I will do the German dance for you," he sings in his nasally whine, "it's fun and gay and tra-la-la." Irreverent as ever, the "South Park" boys pull another fast one on their audience, making us laugh by holding a mirror up to our own lemming mentality for bigger, faster, sleeker blockbuster bombast. --Aaron Hillis
39. Zabriskie Point (1970)
Italian auteur Michelangelo Antonioni’s first and only American film clearly presented a problem for MGM, who valiantly chose to market 1970’s "Zabriskie Point" in the most weirdly obfuscating (and an un-Antonioni obfuscation, at that!) way possible. “Where a boy... and a girl... meet... and touch... and blow their minds” goes the doleful voiceover, as a couple of drifters get naked and roll around in the desert. A psychedelic guitar grinds and a bunch of rapid-fire shots of some sort of Cops Vs. Hippies battle royale replace the wild desert bonking. "Zabriskie Point: How you get there depends on where you’re at." What! Hoping to sell the movie on the strength of salacious images and a tone that hopefully cashes in on the success of films like "Easy Rider," they seemed confident these were sufficient indicators of what the film was actually about. Given that it foreran one of the biggest disappointments of Antonioni’s career, the confusion of the trailer seems to have been matched by that of the audience it managed to attract. --Michelle Orange
38. Face/Off (1997)
The notion that anyone might confuse the broad John Travolta for the slender Nicolas Cage is totally laughable. Or rather, it was totally laughable before the utterly simple but ingeniously clever trailer for John Woo's "Face/Off." In it, John Travolta sits alone in a shadowy room. The camera begins in tight close-up on his face, then slowly tracks clockwise around him in one long take as he describes Cage's character, a man with "no conscience, no remorse." It passes behind his back as Travolta smooths his hair and explains that he's studied the man he's talking about so closely that he "knows every mannerism, facial tic, gesture."
Just as Travolta says he's finally figured out a way to trap his prey, the camera stops on the left side of his face. But when he turns to look at us, he's been magically replaced by Cage. It's one of those all-time "How did they do that?" movie moments, a bit of cinematic sleight of hand so perfectly executed it seems a shame to throw it away in a trailer. The switcheroo is bigger than its wow factor, though; with one seamless and invisible edit, the trailer proves the believability of the conceit, not to mention the viability of the entire production. John Travolta mistaken for Nicolas Cage? Yeah, I can see that. --Matt Singer
37. The Strangers (2008)
The deviously clever teaser for "The Strangers" poses an important question about real estate: how do psychopaths choose which homes to invade? The search is framed from the invaders' POV, as a creaky slide-show clicks through various banal McMansion-sized targets, while a caption slowly reveals their evil intentions. Scored to an artificially scratchy crooner (and with their use of outmoded technology) it's clear our killers have a taste for antiques. Perhaps they'd prefer to abuse a quaint country house? The song fades out into an ominous buzz, and a red "X" marks the spot over the unfortunate ranch-style abode. This creepy framing device fades into the set-up, as a young yuppie couple obliviously prepares for a lazy evening. Candles are lit and bras are unsnapped before their innocence is impinged upon by our rude house-hunters. Ax blows and smash cuts follow, and a barrage of ghoulish slides clack by, punctuated by an extended howl of anguish. --R. Emmet Sweeney
36. Spider-Man (2001)
In the wake of 9/11, cinematic images involving the World Trade Center were considered more or less verboten, which is why despite the excitement generated by the first teaser trailer for Sam Raimi’s blockbuster-in-waiting "Spider-Man," it was pulled from theaters shortly after the terrorist attack. Nonetheless, this first look at the web-slinger’s maiden big-screen outing is -- despite some footage that seems to have been helmed by a second-unit director rather than Raimi himself -- efficient and effective, concealing (in true superhero style) its identity until the climactic moments.
A group of armed bandits bursts into a bank, menaces customers while cleaning out the safe and then departs via helicopter, cackling with cocky glee along the way. Until, that is, the helicopter is suddenly halted mid-flight and then mysteriously pulled backwards until it once again stops, high above the city, and the camera zooms back to reveal that the vehicle is now snagged in a web spun between the Twin Towers. Cut to Spidey swinging with CG-ified acrobatics, and cue fanboy giddiness. --Nick Schager
35. The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)
The unquestionably epic teaser trailer announcing the entirety of Peter Jackson film trilogy sent fans of professor J. R. R. Tolkien’s beloved books into bouts of euphoria not seen in an age: Finally, after decades of failed attempts, their time had come. Even those unfamiliar with Tolkien’s works could rejoice, for what the trailer really heralded was a new era in the fantasy genre after so many years in the wilderness of bare-chested made-for-TV farces. Who but a slack-jawed cave troll could not sit in awe when the titles of the three films accompanied by their release years appeared -- the camera moving slowly in to reveal the fellowship for the first time, as one by one they ascend a precipice in the foothills of Caradhras!
34. The Minus Man (1999)
It’s hard to say whether this 1999 meta-trailer was a hopeful nod to the film’s edginess or a more ominous avoidance of showing us one frame of what turned out to be one of the less admired films in the Stiller/Wilson oeuvre. A couple are shown leaving a screening of "The Minus Man" at the Waverly theater in New York, already riffing on the film as they hit the sidewalk. They're shown still talking it over in a local bar -- Would you go to bed with him? What about the hair in the envelope? -- and the conversation continues into the night at a diner, on the sidewalk, under a bridge and on a park bench, the idea being that this is that best kind of date movie: the one you can’t stop talking about.
Eventually the man points in wonder at a giant sunrise -- they’ve been talking all night -- and the woman gasps in panic before booking it in the other direction. She runs through the street, through traffic and into a building, where she rapidly gets undressed in a locker room and heads out to a pool. In her lifeguard’s bathing suit she notices two of the gym’s patrons face down in the deep end, victims, as it were, of "The Minus Man"’s brilliance. --Michelle Orange
The voice work is the only real flaw, why they did not get Christopher Lee (who plays Saruman) to do it is clearly an oversight. Not only does he have the perfect voice for the ominous opening narration but, a hardcore fan, he claims to reread the books every single year and is also apparently fluent in the black speech of Mordor. --Brandon Kim
33. Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
You don't need to see the movie it's promoting to know when a trailer is great. Case in point: the gorgeous preview for Spike Jonze's long-awaited "Where the Wild Things Are." The film doesn't open for another four months, but the trailer has been repeatedly setting our mouths agape since it debuted in March. After the months and even years of reported battles between Jonze and Warner Bros. over the film, our first look at some of the finished product made it become instantly clear that whether or not you cared about Maurice Sendak's original book, the movie was going to be something to see.
The trailer not only gives us a good look at the Wild Things, but also the wilderness around them: Jonze told Entertainment Weekly he shot in real Australian locations to give the film a "naturalistic feel," and in even in fleeting glimpses there's something magical about the sight of these enormous, otherworldly creatures romping in an environment free of green screen chicanery. And whether Jonze's movie is good or bad, masterpiece or mess or something in between, the trailer is pretty much perfect: just over two minutes of beautiful visuals, quirky hand-lettered title cards and a soaring rendition of Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" that, according to MTV.com, was "re-recorded specifically for the film." No matter how well it fits into the movie, it couldn't be any better suited to the trailer. --Matt Singer
32. The Matrix (1999)
Never has Keanu Reeves let out a more appropriate “whoa” than the one he emits 14 seconds into the trailer for “The Matrix,” moments after a latex-clad character the world would later know as Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) bounds from the roof of one building to another from an overhead point of view. And that was before Reeves dodges a hail of bullets in slo-mo.
It’s easy to forget now that Reeves himself had dodged a bullet in his career before the Wachowski brothers came along with a film that was on few people’s radars prior to glimpsing Neo’s moves for the first time on the big screen and the small -- the trailer was truncated into a 30-second spot during the 1999 Super Bowl that ended the same one-two punch of bullet time and Lawrence Fishburne intoning, “Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is -- you have to see it for yourself.” By the time it’s over, you’re willing to spend $10 and then some to find out. --Stephen Saito
31. Corruption (1968)
For pure B-movie hysteria, few trailers match that of "Corruption," a 1968 thriller starring Peter Cushing as a surgeon in swinging London who, in order to put his scarred girlfriend back together again, hunts and kills women so he can steal their pituitary glands. A crazy premise like that deserves a crazy trailer like this, which splices together scenes of women screaming, running and being attacked in close-up by Cushing (looking like he’s lost his mind) with outrageously feverish speed. “No woman will dare go home along after seeing CORRUPTION!” it guarantees. One can almost buy such a ridiculous tagline, what with the manic whirlwind of lunatic eyes and thrusting bodies on display here, not to mention the in-pieces baby dolls lying on a whore’s bed, which any horror aficionado knows is a clear marker of a scary movie’s excellence. It’s the deep-voiced narration (“Run. Run. RUN!”) and extreme text graphics, however, that push this trailer into the realm of hilarious greatness, with the latter used to such
excessive extent that, at one point, the screen actually becomes engulfed by the word “Therefore.” (Edgar Wright offers his own uproarious commentary on this promo at Trailers From Hell.) --Nick Schager
30. Femme Fatale (2002)
If you hadn't seen this inventive trailer until now, you might think Brian De Palma's Euro-trashy 2002 neo-noir had been leaked in full on YouTube. The actual opening credits begin over a TV playing "Double Indemnity," the screen reflecting a topless Rebecca Romijn (then with an extra -Stamos) as she watches from a hotel bed. Then someone hits the fast-forward button, and "Femme Fatale" zooms forward, only stopping fleetingly for tantalizing moments out of context: Romijn's lesbian encounter-turned-heist with a model wearing a barely-there bikini made of gold (in a Cannes Film Festival bathroom, no less!); a woman in camouflage shorts, boots and bag, seen only from the waist down, running from two more pairs of legs in slo-mo; the introduction of paparazzo Antonio Banderas, who has apparently gotten twisted up with Romijn's titular temptress. A striptease, an interrogation, a shooting -- what's going on here? The closing credits race up the screen, and one final title teases: "You've just watched Brian De Palma's new film. You didn't get it? Try again..." A clever gimmick, but you had us at lesbian encounter-turned-heist! --Aaron Hillis
29. Point Blank (1967)
"Walker is an emotional and primitive man." Breaking into a woman's house, tossing her to the floor, and pumping lead into her bed is what leads gravelly voiced narrators to such drastic conclusions. John Boorman's masterful revenge thriller "Point Blank" is the benefactor of this suitably terse and violent trailer. The title is literally blasted onto the frame by Walker's gunshots, a canny reflection of the movie's brutal rhythms. Lee Marvin's footfalls echo through malevolent modernist buildings, his Walker a single-minded perpetual motion machine out to get what he's due.
Stripped of his sense of self by a faceless corporatized mob (later embodied in the eternally oily John Vernon), Walker's vengeance is an expression of character, his ugly individuality better than acquiescence. Pistol-whipping his way through the nightclubs, bungalows, and banal offices of L.A., his footsteps tap all the way, haunting the mob's yes men. Carroll O'Connor's middle-manager calls Walker "a very bad man", but at least he's an active one. --R. Emmet Sweeney
28. The Bishop's Wife (1947)
In 1947, it was perfectly believable that Cary Grant, David Niven and Loretta Young would just happen to be strolling through the Samuel Goldwyn lot when they suddenly remembered they had yet to make a trailer for their latest film, though as this teaser immediately announces, “It Couldn’t Happen Anywhere... But in Hollywood!” Yet the trio of stars apparently aren’t famous enough for one Goldwyn security guard, who holds them up at the gate and prompts them to introduce themselves, and wonders aloud what a trailer is and what their film is about. Eager to please, Niven and Young introduce their characters, though Grant is hushed when he starts to describe his character, leading Niven to realize that they shouldn’t make a trailer if it’s going to spoil the film. As Grant concurs, “Why take all the wonderful surprises out of it before people see it?” If only the people who made the majority of trailers since would’ve taken note. --Stephen Saito
27. A Night at the Opera (1935)
From the immediate mockery of the MGM lion -- the beast’s head replaced with the roaring faces of Groucho, Chico and Harpo, and the surrounding seal re-written to say “Marx Gratia Marxes" (an opening shot for but never used in the film) -- to its choice Groucho one-liners, this re-release trailer for "A Night at the Opera" captures the rollicking spirit and warm, witty charm of this superlative Marx Brothers effort. More amusing, however, are the lengths to which MGM extols the comedic classic, presenting imagery of howling-with-hilarity faces (“The world is rocking, swaying, and shaking with laughter”) before describing it as “not only the funniest but the most important comedy ever made.” It’s the type of tongue-in-cheek exaggeration that one would expect out of a Marx Brothers film, though such salesmanship doesn’t seem quite so over-the-top once Groucho’s wise-ass quips begin to fly, highlighted by a snippet of a magnificent dinner sequence in which, in a matter of seconds, he doles out two rapid-fire put-downs as well as a trademark eye-roll. --Nick Schager
26. Speed (1994)
Pop quiz, hot shot. How do you establish your action-hero LAPD officer (Keanu Reeves), the partner who admires his maverick insanity (Jeff Daniels), the villainous bomber they face (Dennis Hopper) and the pretty hostage who will obviously be a source of romantic tension (Sandra Bullock) in two-and-a-half minutes, yet still focus on the stunts that plant asses in seats? A skillfully thrilling lesson in economical editing, the "Speed" trailer depicts Reeves' devil-may-care heroism in a one-liner ("Shoot the hostage"), and sets up a Pavlovian visual association between Hopper's barking persona and the endangerment of innocents. (Though it doesn't hurt when Don "The Voice of God" LaFontaine introduces you in voiceover: Hopper "can strike anywhere... at any time," and Reeves "is the only solution.")
25. Real Life (1979)
If you’re going to sell a comedy without showing any actual footage from said film, the promo material you do use better be downright uproarious. If done right, it’s a gamble worth taking, as evidenced by Albert Brooks' trailer for 1979’s "Real Life," which tells you next to nothing about the film itself but thoroughly convinces you of Brooks’ sardonic gifts.
The trailer opens to the star/director sitting at a fancy office desk typing on a calculator -- as if some routine accounting were being interrupted by our appearance -- and he proceeds to explain to viewers how "Real Life" will be in 3-D (which is a lie), and so too will the forthcoming trailer (which is also sort of a lie). After instructing audience members to don their nonexistent 3-D glasses -- or borrow some red and blue cellophane from the theatergoer sitting beside them -- Brooks, now shot in out-of-focus 3-D, proceeds to repeatedly stick his finger, as well as throw a drink, at the screen in typical 3-D-gimmicky fashion. Finally, in the most self-consciously absurd moment in a trailer filled with them, he brings out world champion paddle-ball player Randy Brown for an extended bit in which he hits balls right at the screen while Brooks puts on glasses and goofily exclaims “Randy, it looks like you’re actually here!” --Nick Schager
24. Schindler's List (1993)
There are only two lines of dialogue in the entire trailer for Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List." (They are "Goodbye, Jews!" and "The list is life.") There's just one enigmatic title card (a quotation from that Talmud that reads "Whoever saves one life... saves the world entire"). There's no voiceover. The preview makes no attempt whatsoever to explicate its story further, or to establish who Oskar Schindler was or what he did. It doesn't even make entirely clear who plays him in the film. Instead, the trailer's one hundred and forty seconds are devoted primarily to showcasing the film's haunting, documentary-like black and white imagery: men and women being crowded onto trains, Nazis hunting down people with flashlights, a child watching with cruel pleasure as Jews are shipped off to their deaths, workers slaving away in a prison camp, and the horrific path to a gas chamber. The footage suggests that whatever else "Schindler's List" is about, Spielberg's ultimate and most important subject is the Holocaust itself, a time and place he clearly captured with astonishing care and accuracy. No amount of ad copy could explain that story, but in this case it doesn't need to. Images this powerful speak for themselves. --Matt Singer
Unlike too many action-packed trailers of today, the order and significance of events (the bomb-strapped bus that will blow up if the speed dips below 50 mph, the precariously rigged elevator of death, etc.) is remixed with purposeful ambiguity, offering a little mystery to how this game of good-versus-evil will play out. What do you do? WHAT do you do? --Aaron Hillis
23. Red Eye (2005)
No one knew quite what to make of a Wes Craven movie starring up-and-coming actress Rachel McAdams and Irish thespian Cillian Murphy, and the opening of the trailer for "Red Eye" doesn’t clear much up. With its shots of the jumble and bustle of airport hassles and a meet cute between the two leads, it could be setting up any number of romantic comedy plotlines. The couple are waiting out the delay for their overnight flight to Miami, and flirt over Tex Mex in an airport restaurant before realizing they're seated together on the flight. “You’re not stalking me, are you?” Murphy asks, in the low, gurgly American accent he adopted for the role. Then a look is exchanged between the couple, with the shot of Cillian Murphy’s crazy blue peepers irising into a single eye, which suddenly glows a rather Satanic red. “Sometimes bad things happen to good people,” we hear him say, and with that it seems clear that Craven has gone for chills over conventional horror: the tone of his excellent psychological thriller is set, and so were the calendars of millions of moviegoers. --Michelle Orange
22. Sin City (2005)
“Goldie's dead,” Mickey Rourke whispers with a load of gravel large enough to fill the bed of an 18-wheeler. In the real world, tough guys in long black leather car coats are douche bags. But in Frank Miller’s graphic novel realm they’re the defenders of whatever morality remains in the hooker-filled streets of “Sin City.” What your eyes may grow accustomed to in a full-length feature they are mystified by in the trailer. How much of that was prosthetic, how much animated, how much prosthetic cartoon? The stark black-and-white style leaves most wide shots a blur with greater focus on whichever sexed up, ultra-violent figure takes center. A glimpse of a red bed, a blonde’s curls, a sociopathic rapist dyed vomit yellow No. 5... just the kinds of things Miller’s drawn to. --Brandon Kim
21. Strange Days (1995)
Salesmanship is a large but unspoken part of all trailers. The teaser to Kathryn Bigelow's "Strange Days" addresses that notion by structuring itself as a simple but forceful pitch: star Ralph Fiennes, in a variety of close-ups, selling you on the idea of virtual reality. At first, little of what Fiennes is selling makes sense ("Have you ever jacked in? Have you ever wire tripped?"). But slowly he draws us in with that movie star charm, playing to our curiosity by promising VR will deliver escapism, vicarious thrills, and an immersive sensory experience; by absolutely no coincidence whatsoever, exactly the same things any great movie offers as well.
As Fiennes speaks, suggestive text flies about the screen, underlining his points, vowing to deliver "forbidden fruit" of "textures" and "colors." The whole thing operates on two levels: as a clever deconstruction of movie advertising, and as a tantalizing commercial for the mysterious product it's selling, which is technically virtual reality, but is really just the movie "Strange Days." Fiennes' performance as this self-described "magic man" is seductive and alluring, no small feat when you're forced to do it while spouting technobabble. In a career that's already garnered two Academy Award nominations, Fiennes' work in this teaser is one of his best performances to date. --Matt Singer
20. She's Gotta Have It (1986)
When pitching his low-budget black-and-white directorial debut, Spike Lee knew his biggest selling point was himself. So with a camera in tow, the then-unknown writer/director took to the streets -- the sidewalk of East 7th Street off of 2nd Avenue in New York, in fact -- and played off of his days of selling tube socks by taking a break from hustling Hanes to introduce scenes from his new comedy. Besides getting some much-needed production value from a bright Keith Haring mural in the background, Lee distanced himself and his film from any trailers that played alongside "She's Gotta Have It" by talking directly to the audience, as passerbys -- including African-American author (and "She's Gotta Have It" financier) Nelson George and veteran indie producer Laurie Parker -- fend off Lee's advances. However, as Lee explains how his supplementary income affords him to put "food on my table and butter on my whole wheat bread," the 29-year-old New Yorker proved to be a smooth salesman and subsequently, a natural choice to be paired with Michael Jordan in those ubiquitous Nike commercials of the '90s. --Stephen Saito
19. Unbreakable (2000)
Compared to the breakneck pace of most modern trailers, the teaser for M. Night Shyamalan's "Unbreakable" feels deliberately deliberate; heavy on atmosphere, light on edits. Instead of providing little bits from many scenes, it gives us a lot of just one, in which Bruce Willis learns that he's the only survivor of a horrific train crash. It's like a nightmare in miniature: disturbingly high pitched noises echoing through the soundtrack, repeated fade outs to black, characters speaking in hushed tones, the frequent image of a spinning fragment of broken glass. The cutting rhythm is unsettling and unusual. We spend uncomfortably lengthy stretches on some shots and near-subliminal ones on others. In a very short amount of time, this trailer convinces us this is one creepy friggin' movie.
The incredible success of "The Sixth Sense" made Shyamalan the unlikeliest of household names, and with this follow-up it was imperative that he prove he wasn't simply a flash in the pan. Because of "The Sixth Sense"'s popularity, there was already huge interest in his next project, so the "Unbreakable" teaser didn't have to excite the audience so much as reassure them. Ironically, the spot's unorthodox and intensely moody aesthetic did just that. --Matt Singer
18. Sleeper (1973)
Woody Allen goes the unreliable narrator route in his trailer for "Sleeper." Showing off the control he had over his work at this early point in his career, he crafts an ironic short film where he lies his head off about what he's ostensibly promoting. Starting by parodying the "director at work" shot, he hunches over a flatbed as an off-screen narrator asks if he's working on his latest film. Allen deadpans, "No", and the dissembling takes off from there. He goes on to describe the film's cerebral, didactic nature as his bumbling pratfalls whiz by on-screen. There hasn't been such a disjunct in voice-over and image since Buñuel's "Land Without Bread."
Riffing with evident glee, Allen describes Diane Keaton's grace as she Tarzan swings into a tree. Sound and image join briefly when he mentions her "animal intelligence," but it's short lived. He winds up with an apt non sequitur: incoherent people will be let in to the movie for half-price. In the face of such anarchy, the fake narrator vainly tries to pack in the plot description in the last five seconds. Few are allowed such playfulness in today's marketing dictatorship, so enjoy it. --R. Emmet Sweeney
17. Charade (1963)
If a half-dozen close ups of Audrey Hepburn’s gorgeous eyes aren't enough, there’s Paris, a Givenchy wardrobe and Cary Grant to swoon over. “But her life wasn’t always that gay,” we’re told. Lo and behold, there’s also James Coburn, a hook-armed George Kennedy and Walter Matthau sporting a droll mustache. Most charmingly, the trailer for Stanley Donen's offers up the film's elements as a cocktail -- equal parts suspense, comedy and romance are shown filling a blender, which swirls the whole thing into what you'd presume is a delicious cinematic daiquiri.
Imagine how gruesome the bloody dead man thrown from the train was for the time. Less so was the vast age difference between Grant and Hepburn, although it’s said that Grant did initially turn down the part until the script was revised. The romance remained, of course, but the more aggressive lines were given to Hepburn’s character to make her more the flirty pursuer. Henry Mancini’s score is the jam, and the main title theme “Charade” expertly blends everything together, even if the lyrics are a bit dreary. --Brandon Kim
16. GoldenEye (1995)
By the time "GoldenEye" rolled around in 1995, the James Bond franchise was so sickly one could practically hear the rhythmic chug of its respirator. Which, in turn, is why the film’s trailer was such a blast. As the opening strains of the classic theme music become audible, on-screen text highlights the word “new” before Pierce Brosnan waltzes out in typical black-on-white profile, shoots up the letters to reveal “007” (for added value, count the number of shots this takes) and then walks forward to reveal his face. “You were expecting someone else?” he playfully taunts.
It’s a virtual come-hither line that thrusts the trailer into a blistering montage of machine-gun fire, explosions, ugly villain profiles (Gottfried John’s face was made for such espionage endeavors) and Famke Janssen tossing her head back with devilish eroticism, all of it only interrupted so Brosnan can dish out a trademark bon-mot (shirtless and gun-outstretched: “No more foreplay”) and his obligatory intro, which like the trailer -- and the film itself -- hits a perfect suave-and-cheeky Bond note. --Nick Schager
15. Pulp Fiction (1994)
That surf guitar! The Mariachi hoots! Even now, the opening seconds of the "Pulp Fiction" trailer have a nose-opening charge: something new is happening here. It’s not like Tarantino was breaking terribly original ground -- the first shots of the trailer are of guns, cash and a kiss in quick succession -- but something about the arrangement, or rearrangement, was completely compelling, and this sneak preview managed to capture that quality.
It’s actually a remarkably compact primer on not just the film’s story but its cool, kitschy tone: an AWOL John Travolta surfaces, Samuel L. Jackson in Jheri curl and Uma Thurman barefoot and frugging. The intertitles -- LOYALTY, BETRAYAL, CRIME: YOU WON”T KNOW THE FACTS UNTIL YOU SEE THE FICTION -- are the only cheesy (and not meta-cheesy) elements. Some truly prescient trailer editor managed to pull out what would become almost all of the film’s visually iconic moments and present them in a pure adrenaline rush. By the time the insane list of supporting players is being listed off, any respectable filmgoer was almost apoplectic with popcorn lust: Give. Me. That. Movie.
14. Garden State (2005)
"Garden State" never managed the darkness and gravity that could have made it as memorable as “The Graduate,” a film with which writer/director/star Zach Braff would no doubt like his to be associated. But the Frou Frou-scored teaser encapsulates all of that wonderful promise of generation-summing angst, and without a word of dialog. The airplane scene intro, the funeral, the daisy chain of children crossing the street -- the moody, wistful collage of images and the crowded nightmare of the modern medicated world are a jumble around Braff’s Andrew Largeman, who’s too numbed to notice. The secret to the teaser's hypnotic quality is that it's cut particularly well to the song's beats, with gestures and edits aligning with rhythms and Imogen Heap's drawn-out note before the chorus perfectly paired with that primal scream pullback over the rainy quarry.
13. Mr. Sardonicus (1961)
William Castle didn’t cut the same silhouette as Alfred Hitchcock, but he shared the same pride in cutting a trailer. Backlit with a cigar dangling from his lip as he perches in a director’s chair, Castle sits silently as the words “from the screen’s No. 1 shock expert” blaze across the screen. Of course, audiences had seen Castle turn around from his chair before -- just two years earlier in 1959, he could be seen touting “Percepto,” a device that gave random audience members a buzz in their seats as they watched “The Tingler.” But “Mr. Sardonicus” encouraged further audience participation with Castle unveiling the “Punishment Poll,” an opportunity for viewers to choose the ending of the film at the close of the second act.
Gleefully co-opting stock footage of Roman gladiators and the French Revolution dramas to describe how the “thumbs up, thumbs down” system of voting was going to work, Castle goes on to blur Mr. Sardonicus’ face from the subsequent scenes of the film, not wanting to taint the voting process. As director Stuart Gordon recounts over at Trailers From Hell, the whole thing was a con, but only a showman like Castle could pull it off.
12. Independence Day (1996)
Watching the "Independence Day" teaser today, it’s impossible not to note its influence on subsequent summer blockbusters, its every facet now a bedrock cliché of the season’s cinematic entertainment. In quick, minimalistic bursts, the trailer provides the only information one requires. On July 2nd -- cut to shots of enormous, ominous shadows covering beloved national monuments like the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial -- "They Arrive." Then, there are multiple shots of diverse citizens turning their eyes upward to stare in horrified awe at the sky, images that stoke the central mystery while simultaneously presenting a state of affairs the audience can naturally project themselves into.
On July 3rd, "They Attack," a message that leads directly into the unforgettable sight of the White House being obliterated by a UFO laser blast. Still need more enticement to see the film? July 4th is “The Day We Fight Back”! Portentous tease + cataclysmic payoff + promise of all-out retribution: Roland Emmerich’s trailer laid out, for a generation of filmmakers to come, the surefire recipe for marketing a big-budget sci-fi spectacle
11. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Artisan ran one of the most successful marketing campaigns of the '90s in promoting "The Blair Witch Project," otherwise known as the little indie that ruined it for everyone, even its stars: when the film got into Cannes, none of the actors were allowed to attend and soak up the glory, so devoted was the distributor to maintaining the idea that the film just might possibly be real, meaning that its subjects were dead.
The first teaser for the film weighed in at only 37 seconds, and for 35 of those seconds the screen is black. In white text, a couple of sentences set up the scenario: three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods of Maryland while shooting a documentary; only their footage was recovered. We hear a choked, heaving female voice uttering what seem to be her last words, apologizing to the families of her friends. A strange tension builds throughout the short clip that culminates with an absolutely terrifying shot of two teary, frightened eyes lit by a flashlight: “I am so... scared.” Jesus God, so am I!
10. The Shining (1980)
Stanley Kubrick had already made Stephen King's terrifying best-seller his own, as the novel never featured the ghostly vision of twin little girls, or "Heeeeere's Johnny!" or the equally iconic Overlook Hotel elevator hallway that the trailer centers on. For nearly the first minute, this image of those menacing doors remains static as credits roll up, announcing all the major players of this collaboration: Kubrick, Nicholson, Duvall, King. A synth-heavy drone with tinkling notes soon builds into a swarm of ominous noise (one almost expects the Tycho Monolith to appear), and then in slow motion, gallons of blood pour out from the doors, splash up the walls and onto the camera, a tidal wave so thick that the furniture starts floating. (The combination of unsettling soundtrack and visuals was recently borrowed for the somewhat larger-scale teaser to Roland Emmerich's upcoming apocalyptic disaster flick "2012.")
Kubrick was a compulsive perfectionist, so while it only took three takes to nail this moment on a miniature set (each time spending nine days to reset the shot), it took about a year before he was happy with how the blood itself looked. This is especially ironic, since Kubrick still convinced the MPAA -- who, at the time, would not allow trailers to feature blood if they were to be approved for all audiences -- that the blood was merely rusty water.
9. Mission: Impossible (1996)
A synthetic blend of boomer nostalgia and things that go boom, the "Mission Impossible" trailer was finely tuned for box-office glory. A cadaverous Jon Voight listens to the honeyed tenor offering up the, "mission, should you choose to accept it" routine, as the supporting players look sufficiently pensive in shades and stubble, waiting for the star's arrival. I'm not speaking about Tom Cruise's ceiling drop, dramatic as it is, but Lalo Schifrin's propulsively kinetic theme song. The band fires up along with a match, as the wick is lit and the martial beat starts to slither it's away around your brain pan. With this tune pulsing on the soundtrack, they could have had Jean Reno performing calisthenics and still sold a truckload of tickets. But they decided to include tuxedos, exploding fish tanks, speeding trains, exploding helicopters, a nervous Emilio Estevez, and to top it all off, an exploding title card instead. I think I just wet myself.
8. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Most horror film trailers play coy with details. They know what audiences go to horror movies to see, and they don't give that sort of stuff away for free. Not so for the trailer to the original "Texas Chain Saw Massacre." Where others hint, it wallows, shoving the viewer's face into its gruesome imagery with almost sadistic pleasure, as if Leatherface himself edited the spot.
There's no discernible logic to the way shots are strung together and connected with recurring images of flashbulb and viscera, which only serves to underscore the senseless and incomprehensible nature of the titular crime. The terror comes in flashes: meat hooks, mallets, bones, decomposing corpses and, of course, chainsaws, all punctuated by the frequent and all-too-convincing shrieks of the female cast members. The blood-drenched visuals contrast with a measured voiceover stating simply but insistently that "what happened was true," a far cry from the more declamatory aural stylings from Don LaFontaine and his imitators. He promises that the film is "just as real, just as close, just as terrifying as being there." It's true of the trailer as well; when it's all over after one hundred frenzied seconds, the audience has gone through nearly as much of an ordeal as the onscreen participants
7. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Stanley Kubrick was taken by the work of a young avant garde animator named Pablo Ferro, and had him edit this winning trailer for “Dr. Strangelove.” Ferro’s frenzied quick-cutting weaves glimpses of the film and audio bits with copious amounts of text (all accompanied by what sound like mallet hits to a xylophone) into a stroboscopic barrage of Cold War tension and hilarity, mein Führer. The pacing is insane and brilliant, if a tad too revealing, but only in retrospect. Strangely, images of a young Kubrick flash hypnotically in the beginning when the title screen of the director’s name comes up -- they're nearly impossible to notice on first viewing, and certainly wouldn't have been identifiable in a time before YouTube. Later, a still frame of Kubrick studiously drawing upon a cigar appears. It remains for five seconds, precisely in the middle of the piece. Kubrick apparently liked the trailer so much he kept Ferro on to design the opening titles to the film, which are all hand-drawn.
6. Citizen Kane (1941)
When you have arguably the greatest film of all time on your hands, it shouldn’t be hard to cut an appealing trailer, but Orson Welles doesn’t show a frame of the actual film, nor does he show himself playing the titular newspaperman Charles Foster Kane once -- in fact, Kane is nowhere to be seen. Instead, Welles used only his stentorian voice to introduce the players of the Mercury Theatre like Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead in a playful tour of the RKO Studios soundstage, before admitting about his own character: “I don’t know how to tell you about him. There’s so many things to say.” So he defers to a montage of “he said, she said” scenes from the film about his controversial protagonist, resulting in the best kind of tease, even with a little sex appeal, courtesy of some chorus girls Welles throws in for “ballyhoo.” As Joe Dante, director of "Gremlins" and creator of the invaluable site Trailers From Hell, who offered us his own favorite picks to take into consideration for this list, pointed out, "Just as he challenged the bromides of Hollywood filmmaking, Orson Welles created one of the most iconoclastic trailers ever, over which the RKO marketing department must have torn their hair out. It captures the brash tone of the entire rule-breaking enterprise perfectly."
5. Comedian (2002)
Plenty of trailers on this list advertise movies without showing any clips from them. But even spots comprised of entirely new footage made specifically for the trailer usually include the stars or creators of the film being advertising and at least some mention of what the movie's about. Until a title card ten seconds before the end of the teaser that reads "A Film About Comedy With Jerry Seinfeld," there's literally no indication of what "Comedian" is about (or, for that matter, an appearance by Jerry Seinfeld). The 90-second teaser features one of those gravel-throated voiceover guys (the legendary Hal Douglas, second only to the late Don LaFontaine in recognizability) throwing out trailerese chestnuts like "In a world!" or "One man!" until he's fired by his exasperated producer.
It's an atypical approach for a trailer, but a fairly typical representation of Seinfeld's approach to advertising, as evidenced in his many American Express commercials where he pokes fun at the accepted-but-bizarre tropes of marketing (Christian Charles, Seinfeld's collaborator on his AmEx campaign, directed and co-wrote the "Comedian" teaser). Even without its star, the trailer works because it's so totally infused with his didja-ever-notice-that comedic worldview; you can almost hear Seinfeld in the editing room going, "What's the deal with that guy who does the voices in trailers? 'When your life is no longer your own?' What the hell does that mean?" And consider this: since this "Comedian" trailer premiered, how often have you heard the phrase "In a world..." in a trailer?
4. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Quite a clever gambit -- especially for 1947 -- the trailer for "Miracle on 34th Street" is more like a five-minute short film that for the most part takes place outside of the world of the movie it's advertising. It opens as a conventional trailer with keywords splashed onto the screen: Hilarious! Romantic! Delightful! Charming! Tender! Exciting! A voice calls out to stop the tape, and we cut to a screening room, where an ostensible studio head begins crabbing about the lack of focus in the trailer -- the film can’t be all of those things, can it?
He sends his men back to the drawing table before heading out to the backlot. There he runs into various actors, including Ann Baxter, who all give him varied but extremely positive kudos for "Miracle," with a young girl declaring it to be “simply groovy!” The studio honcho, who hasn’t bothered to see the film, returns to the screening room, and we get a number of shots of him sitting through the film: laughing, crying, being moved and delighted. When the lights come up he tells the men he’s got just the angle for the trailer, and proceeds to repeat their ideas right back to them. It’s a uniquely transparent approach to the dilemma the studio faced with the movie, which they wanted to market as all things to all moviegoers, and in making the studio head look like a bit of a putz, gains a little charm of it’s own. And who knew they said “groovy” in 1947? Or that they spelled it “groovey”?
3. Cloverfield (2008)
Surprise is key to the "Cloverfield" teaser, which -- without any marketable stars to pivot its sales pitch around -- instead expertly plays up its film’s reality-caught-on-tape conceit. Opening with home movie footage of a Manhattan loft party in which revelers wish their friend Rob a fond farewell, the trailer immediately intrigues by positing a familiar scene of merry 20-somethings that could just as easily be the set-up for an indie rom-com or a serial killer thriller.
Couching its action in the sweetly ordinary is the trailer’s (as well as the film’s) grand stroke of inspiration, creating such relatable, everyday circumstances that the sudden mysterious roar that interrupts the festivities -- and the subsequent, fiery explosion spied from the building’s rooftop -- proves fantastically chilling. From there, one is jump-cut-plunged into an unexpected scene of chaotic monster mash terror that, taking a page from "Independence Day"’s monuments-loving playbook, culminates with one of the most chilling money shots -- Wait, did something just throw that into the street? -- in trailer history. There's nary a mention of a title, in part because one wasn't finalized yet, but also because the creators seemed perfectly confident that a release date was all that was necessary.
2. Psycho (1960)
Sure, Alfred Hitchock was the master of suspense, but he was also a master of the mordantly funny trailer. Any one of his bone dry performances could have made this list (his passive-aggressive avian torture in "The Birds" promo, for instance), but his "Psycho" tour-guide routine tops them all.
In the long-form preview, he turns on the obsequious charm, leading the audience towards each crime scene with the tittering unease of an anal-retentive coroner, his hands a bundle of nervous energy. Waddling in front of the Bates’ staircase, he describes the broken, twisted back of a victim with a twirl of his eager paws -- before hypocritically embracing discretion. Tip-toeing in front of the motel, his glee at entering the murder site is expressed in a nervous finger fidget, tapping all ten together at the horrors he’s about to unleash. He’s playing this audience-titillating game for laughs, until he reaches for that shower curtain...
1. Alien (1979)
By IFC on 06/25/2009
Masterfully cut and artful to boot, the first glimpse of Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-horror classic features not a single word of dialogue and begins in abstract: a ride through a star field, a hover above some sort of moon rock, blocky shapes that slowly materialize into the letters of the title, craggy landscape traversed with a macro lens before pulling back to clarify what lies on that cratered surface -- the egg of an alien life form. It cracks open, releasing an ill-omened white light and the high-pitched alarm (an animalistic squeal?) that unnerves throughout the rest of the trailer.
Astronauts tiptoe into an extraterrestrial ship, crosscut with Sigourney Weaver inexplicably running through corridors, with confounding/enticing images flashing almost subliminally in between (a space crew awakening from hyper-sleep, Harry Dean Stanton's bewildered close-up) before all hell breaks loose (an obscured Ian Holm spurting milky blood, a cat hissing, a never-before-seen "face hugger" in a frenzy). From above the planet, an onscreen title ultimately seals the deal, seeming all the more foreboding for the vaccuum of diegetic sound that came before it: "In space, no one can hear you scream." It's one of the most famous taglines of all time, though I'm quite partial to the far less effective "Alien3" slogan that ambiguously referenced either a breeding alien or Weaver's Lt. Ripley, believe it or not ("In case you haven't noticed, the bitch is back").
