The Suspense Thriller: Films in the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock by Charles Derry
Published 1988 · 360 pages · 80,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Suspense Thriller: Films in the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock to read?
The Suspense Thriller: Films in the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock scores 54 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 65 out of 100
- Academic film studies vocabulary, with genre theory terms explained through extensive illustration.
- Sentence structure: 60 out of 100
- Abstraction: 72 out of 100
- Genre taxonomy involves abstract definitional work before descending to film-by-film analysis.
- Information density: 76 out of 100
- Dense with film references, plot summaries, and structural analyses across a large corpus.
- Narrative indirection: 14 out of 100
- Taxonomic purpose demands direct argument and clear category definitions.
- Symbolic density: 20 out of 100
- Paranoia and institutional power are read as symbolic dimensions of the thriller's recurring concerns.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Scholarly tone is earnest and taxonomic with little ironic register.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Categories are defined and defended with academic clarity.
- Structural complexity: 38 out of 100
- Three-part taxonomic structure is clearly signalled but requires sustained engagement with the definitional framework.
How The Suspense Thriller: Films in the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock is regarded
The Suspense Thriller: Films in the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock holds a literary regard score of 72 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.