Jaws might have made the cut simply for its historical position as the first of what we consider to be contemporary blockbusters, but the trailer is actually pretty great, starting with John Williams’s music and Rodriguez’s ominous description of a shark: “It is as if God created the Devil, and gave him Jaws.” Ultimately the trailer veers into more of an overview of the plot, but those first moments are so fantastic that you don’t even need the rest. For a certain generation, his voice is synonymous with trailers, especially in the horror genre. Jaws (1975)īefore celebrated voice actor Don LaFontaine, there was Percy Rodriguez. But given the impact of the final film, this trailer established expectations that Friedkin undoubtedly lived up to, whether or not he wanted to terrify audiences even before they got into the theater. Even today, getting through even just a few seconds of the trailer is difficult (if you struggle with strobing effects, you might want to avoid it altogether). The Exorcist trailer is famous not only for being too intense for audiences, but also for featuring music that composer Lalo Schifrin recorded for the film that director William Friedkin eventually discarded completely (Schifrin claimed that he literally destroyed the tapes, but recordings of his tracks did show up on a 1998 CD release that’s now long out of print). What’s most amazing is the patience Hitchcock shows in winding through the house and each room before finally ending up in the bathroom where its most famous scene takes place, finally delivering a terrifying payoff after lulling viewers with his charm and personality. But the trailer for Psycho-which is long by contemporary standards-ranks among his best, as the filmmaker himself offers viewers a tour of the Bates Motel and the scene of its grisly murders. Psycho (1960)Īlfred Hitchcock was always a showman with his movies, and many of them had terrific trailers. With this perennial Best Movie Of All Time (at least until recently), Orson Welles created a fantastic trailer for his feature debut, playing first on his background in radio and stage, then introducing his Mercury Theatre troupe, a few details about the film, and some chorus girls-strictly for “ballyhoo,” he confessed. So here they are: 25 trailers from the annals of film history that set a precedent, were often duplicated, and/or otherwise reminded viewers about the artistic possibilities of the format, even when-or especially if-the film that followed didn’t live up to the hype the trailer generated.
Suffice it to say that the list skews heavily toward more contemporary films-not just because people tend to remember those trailers more vividly, but because from a technical standpoint, many of those trailers are more polished than their predecessors. In honor of this time-honored tradition, we decided to assemble a list of some of the best movie trailers of all time. Now there are even teasers for trailers, which are shortened to suit dwindling attention spans or to try and connect with ticket buyers on a variety of platforms. Today, movie trailers have become an industry unto themselves, refining their own formulas to maximize viewer appeal, and even recalling earlier trailers (rather than actual movies) by using the same borrowed music or the same techniques. The first ever movie trailer reportedly debuted back in 1913, for the musical The Pleasure Seekers.
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