London-born director Alfred Hitchcock was credited as the master of suspense in the film world. Hitchcock's ability to manipulate the viewer through the actions of the actors on the screen was brilliant and near-unprecedented in film in his time.

Hitchcock had an uncanny way of taking an ordinary object and making it an ominous. He most often did this with staircases. Found in many of his movies, a set of stairs usually represented a hidden danger, an unseen twist, or an intense situation for the characters in the film. A good example of this is Cary Grant's ascent up the stairs of his home in "Suspicion" (1941). Lina (Joan Fontaine), suspects her husband Johnnie (Grant) of wanting to murder her, and as she lies sick in her bed, Johnnie walks slowly and menacingly up the long stair case of their house with a glass of milk that may or may not have some kind of poison in it.

Another prime example of Hitchcock's use of stairs is in the 1958 thriller, "Vertigo." John Ferguson (James Stewart) is chasing his love, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak), up a long and winding staircase in a San Fransisco mission. Ferguson, because of his vertigo, is unable to get all the way to the top, and Elster throws herself off the top to her death. The scene at the staircase in the mission is repeated at the end of the movie with twice the suspense because of the complication of Judy Barton (Novak) being the Madeleine that Ferguson had fallen in love with.

Hitchcock was fascinated with the concept of murder, and, more specifically, the perfect murder. This concept was discussed or touched upon in "Suspicion," (1941) "Shadow of a Doubt," (1943) "Notorious," (1946), "Rope," (1948) "Strangers on a Train," (1951) "Dial M for Murder," (1954) and "Rear Window" (1954) among others. Frequently brought up was the possibilty of the perfect murder, although it usually ended in that perfect murder being impossible because one could never anticipate what could go wrong in their plot.

Hitchcock also was notorious for his inclusion of sexual innuendos in his movies. Powerfully subtle, alot of them are not noticed at first glance, but it seemed that Hitchcock had some minor preoccupation with sex as well as homosexuality. Some instances of this are the butch woman in the suit in "Suspicion," the effeminate accomplice of Vandamm in "North by Northwest," (1959) or the ending scene of the train driving into the tunnel at the end of the same movie.

Hitchcock was keyed in to how to make his viewers get into the scene and how to make a scene suspenseful. Even today, more than a quarter century after his death, he is still making viewers jump, for, as he said, "There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."