Erotic thriller
[1] Though exact definitions of the erotic thriller can vary, it is generally agreed "bodily danger and pleasure must remain in close proximity and equally important to the plot.
Studio films of this "classic period", such as Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct, were box office successes, helmed by big-name directors, and starred high-profile actors.
[7] By the end of the 1990s, market saturation, audience fatigue, cultural changes and the rise of the Internet led to the decline of the genre's popular appeal and production volume.
[7][8] According to British film studies professor Linda Ruth Williams, "Erotic thrillers are noirish stories of sexual intrigue incorporating some form of criminality or duplicity, often as the flimsy framework for onscreen softcore sex".
[13] From "Sharon Stone's icy Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct or Linda Fiorentino's brusque Bridget in The Last Seduction…[these archetypes] tend to be cheerfully promiscuous…These women actively reject domesticity in all its forms, sniping about 'hating rugrats' and holding intimidatingly high-powered careers as stockbrokers and novelists".
[14] The femme fatale of erotic thrillers took shape against "the backdrop of what German sexologist/sociologist Volkmar Sigusch deemed the 'neosexual revolution,' 'a tremendous cultural and social transformation of sexuality during the 1980s and 1990s'".
[19] "Body Heat star Kathleen Turner argued it was precisely because [cast and crew] were working in an old-Hollywood framework that they were able to get away with the sexual explicitness that would set the tone for the ensuing decade: 'Film noir has a formality and shape to it.
[22] William Friedkin's Cruising and the aforementioned Dressed to Kill and Body Heat arguably ushered in the Golden Age of the erotic thriller at the beginning of the 1980s.
[24] Hoping to repeat the film's success, Hollywood studios released a spate of erotic thriller films[25] over the next several years, including The Hot Spot (1990), Presumed Innocent (1990), Shattered (1991), Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), A Kiss Before Dying (1991), Consenting Adults (1992), Single White Female (1992), Love Crimes (1992), Unlawful Entry (1992), Poison Ivy (1992), Final Analysis (1992), Malice (1993), The Crush (1993), Indecent Proposal (1993), The Last Seduction (1994), and Color of Night (1994).
[35] Since Blockbuster did not stock unrated films as part of its family-friendly image,[36] DTV titles were able to meet demand for content that was geared towards adults but did not stray into outright pornography.
[38] Fearing the negative publicity associated with traditional sexploitation[39] these late-night, premium cable channels actively sought and developed adult programming that could be, in the words of one HBO programmer, "spicy but not obscene".
In sheer size alone, the DTV erotic thriller surely demands consideration as one of the largest, specifically American film movements of the 20th century.
[48] In 1994 the Chicago Tribune reported that erotic thrillers—a term which, Leonard Maltin said, "didn't even exist 15 years ago"—and action films were the two most successful direct-to-video genres.
[2] 1995 is seen as the hypothetical endpoint for the classic period of erotic thrillers, as that year saw the major box office flops of two anticipated big-budget features, Showgirls and Jade, both written by Eszterhas.
[2][19] Though Showgirls does not readily qualify as an erotic thriller, it was a heavily hyped re-teaming of Eszterhas with Basic Instinct director Verhoeven, whose reputations as pioneers in the genre preceded the film.
[2] Jade, directed by William Friedkin and starring Linda Fiorentino in the femme fatale role, earned only $9,851,610 at the North American domestic box office.
Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan's The Adjuster, Exotica, and Chloe all trade on the audience's perception of what an erotic thriller should be with their complexity and depth in plot.
[55] David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers and Crash propel the genre into the near future, where sex, obsession, and erotic desire are played out in hypermodern settings mediated by potentially destructive technologies.
[13] Other films that were commended for their subversion of common erotic thriller tropes were Gus Van Sant's media satire To Die For (1995) and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001).
[58] 1999's Eyes Wide Shut was another high-profile film of the late 1990s due to its famed director Stanley Kubrick and its stars (then couple Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise).
Though it contained elements of the erotic thriller genre, some critics found its self-serious tone and arguably conservative message were a departure from the thrills and entertainment of films of the classic period.
A glut of cheaply produced "T&A films" which offered sexual spectacle and copious nudity, but little else, began to saturate the market, watering down lucrative pre-sales deals with foreign distributors[66] and causing budgets for erotic thrillers to shrink to nearly a third or less of what they were in the early 1990s.
Of the cultural factors that helped lead to the genre's demise, writer Rich Juzwiak detailed, In some ways, the erotic thriller was no longer needed because it ceased speaking to the fears and interests of the viewing public.
[19][71] With few mainstream erotic thrillers being made in the United States or the UK today, many films of the genre have been relegated to the European and Asian art-house cinema.
[7] Lifetime, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, and Passionflix produce a torrent of sexy thrillers that push female protagonists into shadowy borderlands of dangerous desire, such as Dating to Kill (2019), Psycho Escort (2020), Deadly Seduction (2021), Fatal Memory (2022), etc.
Continuing through the present day, the Bollywood erotic thrillers include Jism (2003), Aitraaz (2004), Hawas, the Murder trilogy (2004–2013), the Hate Story tetralogy (2012–2018), and Wajah Tum Ho (2016).
"[64] As television has flourished as an art form, many have argued the graphic sex scenes that were previously limited to the erotic thriller have migrated to TV shows on premium cable channels and streaming services.
[64] Of the former, Paramount producer Nicole Clemens said the TV reboot will give "a 360-degree view, dimensionalizing the characters of [Alex, Dan, and Beth], really getting underneath their skin and examining the psychology.
