AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills
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40 free AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
In June 2001 the American Film Institute set out to rank the hundred most thrilling American movies ever made. A jury of 1,800 leaders from the film community worked through a ballot of 400 nominees, and the result, AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, puts horror beside westerns, war films, courtroom dramas and space operas. The only test was whether a film gets the pulse going. This quiz covers the list itself and the films on it. You will be asked what finished first and last, which director dominates the ranking and who presented it on television, then tested on the movies: Jaws, The Exorcist, Alien, Star Wars, Die Hard, The Matrix and dozens more, from the silent era to the end of the 1990s. Expect famous scenes, casting near-misses and the stories behind the productions. It is written for anyone working through the list as a watchlist, and for movie-night hosts who want questions a mixed table can enjoy. The quiz opens with the best-known films, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01Which shocker tops AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills at number one, ahead of Jaws and The Exorcist?
Psycho
Psycho came out on top after 1,800 film-industry jurors were sent a ballot of 400 nominated titles and asked which thrilled them most.
Q 02Which director has the most films on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, with nine of the hundred?
Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock is also the list's most-seen face: his walk-on cameos put him on screen in eight of the nine films, and in a photograph on a wall in the other.
Q 03Which Star Trek actor's face was the basis for the mask Michael Myers wears in Halloween?
William Shatner
William Shatner's face reached the screen through a Captain Kirk mask bought for under two dollars, its eye holes widened and its skin sprayed a bluish white.
Q 04What nickname did the Jaws film crew give their mechanical sharks, after Steven Spielberg's lawyer?
Bruce
Bruce broke down so often in salt water that the director chose mostly to suggest the shark with music rather than show it.
Q 05Which actor was cast as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark until his Magnum, P.I. contract intervened?
Tom Selleck
Tom Selleck had to drop out only weeks before filming, when the network ordered his detective show as a full series.
Q 06Which actor, a star of four films on the list, hosted the 2001 CBS special that unveiled AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills?
Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford shares the record for most films on the list he presented: he is in Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blade Runner and The Fugitive.
Q 07Titanic's eleven Oscars tied a record set by which 1959 epic, also on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills?
Ben-Hur
Ben-Hur collected Best Picture, Best Director for William Wyler and Best Actor for Charlton Heston among its eleven wins.
Q 08Which thriller on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills won Ingrid Bergman her first Best Actress Oscar?
Gaslight
Gaslight won Ingrid Bergman the Oscar and gave English the word gaslighting: a husband persuades his wife she is going insane while the lamps in their house dim for no apparent reason.
Q 09Which star leads three films on the list: The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre?
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart plays a private eye, a nightclub owner and a prospector undone by gold fever across the three films.
Q 10Which Star Wars villain was played in costume by David Prowse and voiced by James Earl Jones?
Darth Vader
Darth Vader's voice was dubbed in afterwards because George Lucas felt Prowse's West Country accent was wrong for the character.
Q 11Which New York skyscraper does the giant ape climb with Ann Darrow in the 1933 film King Kong?
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building was the world's tallest at the time, and four biplanes shoot Kong from its top while he swats at them.
Q 12Which James Bond adventure, featuring the hat-throwing henchman Oddjob, ranks 71st on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills?
Goldfinger
Goldfinger is the one 007 film among the hundred, with Sean Connery strapped to a table under an industrial laser.
Q 13Which Errol Flynn swashbuckler takes 100th place, the final spot on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills?
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Q 21Which actor won an Oscar as the hard-driving detective Popeye Doyle in The French Connection?
Gene Hackman
Gene Hackman was far from the first choice: the director almost settled for Rod Taylor before giving him the part.
Q 22Which actor spends much of Chinatown with a slashed nose as private eye J.J. Gittes?
Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson's nose is slit by a thug played by the film's own director, Roman Polanski, wielding a special trick knife.
Q 23Which playing card triggers the brainwashed Raymond Shaw during games of solitaire in The Manchurian Candidate?
Queen of diamonds
Queen of diamonds works so reliably that Shaw is set off by accident when a party guest turns up wearing the card as a fancy-dress costume.
The Adventures of Robin Hood went to Flynn only after James Cagney, first cast as the outlaw, walked out on his studio contract.
Q 14Which silent comedy, with Harold Lloyd dangling from a clock, is the oldest film on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills?
Safety Last!
Safety Last! dates from 1923, three-quarters of a century before the newest films on the list, The Matrix and The Sixth Sense.
Q 15In which neighborhood of the U.S. capital is The Exorcist set, around a steep flight of stone stairs?
Georgetown
Georgetown supplied many of the real locations, and its stairs were padded with half an inch of rubber for the priest's fatal fall.
Q 16On which American landmark do the hero and heroine of North by Northwest flee from spies in the climax?
Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore was where the whole film began: its director said he had always wanted to stage a chase across the monument.
Q 17Which actress won an Oscar as FBI trainee Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs?
Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster got the part only after the director's first choice, Michelle Pfeiffer, and then Meg Ryan turned it down over the gruesome subject.
Q 18What is the name of the commercial space tug whose crew is hunted one by one in Alien?
Nostromo
Nostromo is hauling its seven-member crew home in stasis when a distress signal diverts it, and the Sulaco only arrives in the sequel.
Q 19Which animal's severed head does film producer Jack Woltz wake up beside in The Godfather?
A horse
A horse's head really was used for the scene: it came from a dog-food company, from an animal that was to be killed anyway.
Q 20Which bluegrass instrumental became a hit single after a backwoods boy played it in Deliverance?
Dueling Banjos
Dueling Banjos climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and won a Grammy, even though one of the duelling instruments on screen is a guitar.
Q 24Which actor's character makes a motorcycle dash for the Swiss border in The Great Escape?
Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen asked for the chase to show off his riding, but insurers barred him from the famous fence leap, which his friend Bud Ekins performed.
Q 25Which composer's Ninth Symphony becomes unbearable to Alex after his aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange?
Beethoven
Beethoven is Alex's favourite, and the cure spoils the music only because it happens to accompany the violent films he is forced to watch.
Q 26Which family pet does the obsessed Alex Forrest boil on the stove in Fatal Attraction?
A rabbit
A rabbit, and the scene gave English the phrase bunny boiler for an obsessive, spurned lover.
Q 27What is the name of the snowbound Colorado hotel where the Torrance family spend the winter in The Shining?
The Overlook
The Overlook is fictional: an Oregon ski lodge supplied its exterior and studio sets in England its interiors, while the Colorado hotel that inspired the story was passed over.
Q 28Which rock formation is the secret landing site for the visitors in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?
Devils Tower
Devils Tower is cleared by the Army with a false story about a train wreck spilling nerve gas, so the landing can be kept secret.
Q 29Which real New York apartment building plays the sinister Bramford in Rosemary's Baby?
The Dakota
The Dakota's exteriors stood in for the fictional address; in 1980 John Lennon, who lived there, was shot dead outside it.
Q 30Through which hilly city does the celebrated ten-minute car chase in Bullitt race?
San Francisco
San Francisco's hills were so punishing that the heavy sedans first lent for the scene could not take the jumps and had to be swapped out.