The phrase ‘erotic thriller’ immediately conjures up all manner of evocative thoughts and images. Two-word titles emblazoned in a vaguely threatening red font. Michael Douglas being Michael Douglas-y. R ratings in the US, a 15 certificate (or 18 if things get really spicy) in the UK. The work of Adrian Lyne. Yuppies. A massive, preposterous third act twist. Cocaine. Boiled bunnies. Sharon Stone. Excruciating viewing experiences on the sofa with your parents.
Emerging in the early 80s with American Gigolo and Body Heat before reaching its imperial phase towards the end of the decade when Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal and Basic Instinct were straddling the box office, the genre’s lurid smooshing together of sex and violence proved impossibly seductive for audiences. Of course, it couldn’t last and, as the 90s gave way to the new millennium, the erotic thriller slowly became a direct-to-video punchline, hoovering up Razzies instead of box office receipts. Now, bar the odd valiant but doomed attempt to revive it, the genre seems to be all but dead.
Dead – but not entirely forgotten. In recent weeks, coinciding with the release of one of those doomed, valiant revivals – the Lyne-directed, Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas-starring Deep Water – as well as the 30th anniversary of Basic Instinct, therehas been a flurry of interest in the erotic thriller. Exhibit A – discovered alongside a silk blindfold and a pair of bloodstained handcuffs – is the latest season of Karina Longworth’s terrific Hollywood history podcast You Must Remember This. Titled Erotic 80s, it covers the broader sweep of adult films that emerged in that decade, though Longworth’s introduction makes it clear that at the centre of this eruption of steaminess is the erotic thriller. As ever, she smartly contextualises the moviemaking within the wider cultural and political headwinds of the era: sexual liberation, second-wave feminism, consumerism, the Moral Majority. A follow-up season, Erotic 90s, will follow later this year.
You Must Remember This is not the only place where the erotic thriller has been re-examined of late. Over at Vulture, they recently published an exhaustive season of erotic thriller coverage, featuring everything from ‘state of the genre’ essays to interviews with genre’s great and not so good (Swimfan, anyone?). So why the sudden fascination? The answer you suspect can be found in the state of modern cinema, ruled over by family friendly franchises, squeezing out the mid-budget movie (of which the erotic thriller once was a key component) in the process. (Streaming, less beholden to self-censorship, has shown some eagerness to reboot the erotic thriller, but faces its own challenges with the genre.) As a result, Longworth notes, “sex has all but disappeared from mainstream American movies, most of which would pass the sexual standard set by the strict censorship of the Production Code of the 1930s.” In this climate, perhaps it’s understandable that some audiences are seeking something a little more … adult.
Still, this isn’t to unnecessarily lionise the erotic thriller which, as well as quite often being just plain daft, had some elements that, in the age of #MeToo, look pretty unsavoury: the unswervingly male gaze; the portrayals of virtually any sexually liberated woman as a maneater; the frequent ‘gay panic’ undertones; the absence of anyone who wasn’t white (though there would at least be some correction in later years with a rise of black erotic thrillers). And that’s not to overlook some of the troubling stuff on set too: Stone, for example, has said that her ‘crossed legs’ scene from Basic Instinct, perhaps the most famous moment in any erotic thriller, was filmed without her consent.
But that doesn’t mean Hollywood can’t build a better erotic thriller today, one that chimes with the times. It just needs to get over its inbuilt prudishness. As ever, TV seems to be leading the way in that regard, with a thoroughly progressive attitude to sex (one that, in contrast to the 80s and 90s, means that we’re as likely to show male nudity as female) in shows like Euphoria and Normal People. It’s even got perhaps the most obvious descendant of the genre in the form of Netflix smash hit You. Still, it’s on the big screen – in full eye-popping Technicolor – that the erotic thriller truly belongs. Come on cinema, you know you want to.
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