While there are no people with Spellbound-themed tats (we think: those Dali eyes are pretty tattoo-ready), there are a bunch of folks who still go gaga over Alfred Hitchcock.

Spellbound is an interesting movie, but not many critics wake up in the middle of the night shrieking, "At last my amnesia has disappeared and I realize that Spellbound is the greatest movie ever made!" Usually, they instead wake up shrieking, "At last my amnesia has disappeared and I realize that Spellbound is okay, especially the goofy Salvador Dali bits."

The reason Spellbound is on a list of Films You Have to See isn't because it's an all-timiest kind of film, but because… it's Hitchcock.

Hitchcock is one of the most famous, most influential, most fill-in-the-adjective-here directors who's ever picked up a camera and scared folks with it. Hitchcock had already been making films for years by the time Spellbound came out—he was forty-six when it debuted, and his Rebecca (1940) had already won him a Best Picture Oscar. Still, most of the films that really made Hitchcock into Hitchcock were still to come: Notorious (1946), Rope (1948), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), and more.

Of course, compared to the Avengers or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hitchcock's fandom these days is relatively small and cozy. The director hasn't made movies in a good, long time, and old pop-culture fandoms tend to lose their pop over time.

But there's still enough oomph there to make the critics wake up in the middle of the night. (Or maybe that's due to the amnesiac standing over them with a straight razor. Hard to tell.)