"I remember the gatefold cover and I remember clearly the first time I heard it was summer and my parents opening up the doors and having friends round when I was younger. He was just the ultimate pop star and the music... it's weird when you heard something like 'Billie Jean' for the first time, that the combination of sounds - soul, electro, etc - then sounded so fresh. How he'd go from funk soul on one track, then into something really poppy. 'Thriller', the song, isn't actually my favourite. I prefer the rest of the album to it, funnily enough, but I think he made such a massive mark with this album. For me, that was his definitive statement."

"In a year filled with epochal films—Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve, the great In a Lonely Place—this 1950 noir may have secretly had the greatest impact. Every heist film or let’s-get-a-team-together caper of the last seventy years owes a huge debt to Huston’s twisting and intense thriller, whose delightful ensemble cast features a bright-eyed Marilyn Monroe (then just about to take over Hollywood) and a grizzled Sterling Hayden (who was already looking to leave the industry altogether). The final moment is a genuine heartbreaker—as is the documentary about Hayden on the Criterion edition, which finds the great actor living on a boat, seemingly set adrift from society."