'An erotic thriller'

Soft in the Middle: The Contemporary Softcore Feature in Its Contexts by David Andrews.

Soft in the Middle demonstrates that softcore's under-the-radar success and pervasive cultural devaluation may be understood in terms of the "postfeminist" strategies employed by successive generations of producers and distributors, each intent on overcoming obstacles to the mainstream distribution of pornographic material. Softcore and its American precursors became more "feminized" and "female friendly" as their distribution widened, a process hastened in the 1980s by the industry's transition to private, non-theatrical modes of distribution and exhibition (e.g., home-video outlets and premium-cable networks). One of the byproducts of this development is that contemporary softcore has frequently resorted to what are arguably anti-male or "misandristic" attitudes and depictions. Clearly, the genre challenges traditional assumptions about pornography, including those held by feminists on both sides of "the porn debates."

The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema by Linda Ruth Williams is another but I think it leans a bit more toward the mainstream side of the genre.

I recall one film with appalling hair metal style.

Expecting these films to be genuinely good (ie better than Double Indemnity!) is maybe not the best approach.

Xp

this is not the kind of genre that gets deluxe Criterion Edition reissues, let me tell you

― Οὖτις, Monday, 21 August 2017 21:37

https://www.eurekavideo.co.uk/classics/wild-orchid

Close enough.

My favourite is probably Disclosure, although that might be too big-budget/message-y to really count--it's at the Merchant-Ivory end of the spectrum.

Was the genre pretty much invented by Body Heat? I can't think of anything earlier than that.

I spent a week interning with the Manchester Evening News, and one day I went to a screening with their film critic. I don't remember what we saw, nothing very good, but I was impressed by the bonhomie of the small circle of local critics. It seemed like a pleasant little club. The guy I was interning with had seen Sea of Love and another critic asked him about it. "It's well done," he said. "It has Ellen Barkin bonking -- so, you know, that's always good."

So I have basically thought of erotic thrillers ever since as "Ellen Barkin bonking" movies.

"in the cut" is great! wayy more going on than the typical skerritt fodder and it includes mark ruffalo memorably saying about an ex that she "had no sense of cock"

Was the genre pretty much invented by Body Heat? I can't think of anything earlier than that.

Wld say that it stretches back at least as far as the Lana Turner Postman Always Rings Twice, in the 1940s (from a novel by James M Cain of course, also the author of Double Indemnity, the obvious inspiration for Body Heat). Also, the European Giallo of the 1970s definitely established the template/formula of violent murder and softcore sex/nudity.

the typical skerritt fodder

poor tom skerritt - you bone drew barrymore on the hood of a car in one movie and you're suddenly the male shannon tweed

my memory is hazy but i recall poison ivy being FAR from the skerr-bear's only adventure on the wrong side of the erotic tracks

huh, he was in wild orchid ii apparently - none of the other movies on his imdb page ring any 'late night on channel 5' bells for me but then they don't ring any other bells either

what a chequered career that guy's had

A Touch of Scandal (1984)
Katherine Gilvey is a comely councilwoman, whose campaign for Attorney General is being managed by her ambitious, but cold-hearted husband Benjamin, which takes a turn when photographs surface of her liasion with a male prostitute, who used to be a law client of hers, and has now turned up dead. Also is a note telling her to withdraw from the campaign or the photos will be made public. Investigating on her own, Katherine's suspects to the idenity of the blackmailer are: a shadowy power broker, a charismatic minister, an activist priest, or even her own husband.

Calendar Girl Murders (1984)
Millionaire Richard Trainor is celebrating the fact that his new calendar featuring twelve nude woman is a huge success. However the party is ruined when Miss January is pushed off a building and later on that night Miss February is knifed to death. Policeman Lieutenant Dan Stoner is assigned to the case and he immediately strikes a friendship with photographer Cassie Bascomb. While Dan investigates the case Cassie is attacked. What connection is she to the case and will the killer be caught before he/she reached Miss December?

hawt

The 1968 Pretty Poison w/ Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld is really great, but prob belongs to the Gun Crazy/Honeymoon Killers/Badlands fucked up crim couple genre rather than the bonking on a car bonnet genre.

Millionaire Richard Trainor is celebrating the fact that his new calendar featuring twelve nude woman is a huge success.

same

"a comely councilwoman" *sets TIVO*

Lieutenant Dan Stoner

same

Pretty Poison is an amazing film

I wouldn't expect any movie to be better than Double Indemnity, but Body Heat is at least designed to bounce ideas off of that template - but it has no ideas. I like Kasdan, though, so I suppose I was surprised how just as a movie it wasn't that great. Very much akin to Cat People. Smart, talented guy remaking a '40s classic as, well, an erotic thriller, except not very thrilling, and often boring, though I guess mildly erotic, in the late night cable "boobs!" sense. Body Heat felt less like a "modern" take on stuff like Double Indemnity and more that the template for something like "Basic Instinct," with which it shares a lot in common.

Interesting idea that giallo et al. set the stage for this. I'd argue that those movies put the emphasis on the thriller stuff; the kills are the sex scenes, which is why they have more in common with typical tawdry slashers. But take someone like DePalma, a clearer giallo descendent - is Dressed to Kill an erotic thriller? Is Body Double? Did Hitchcock invent the erotic thriller? Was Psycho an erotic thriller? Vertigo? Frenzy? Is Eyes Wide Shut? Was Blue Velvet? Can a movie class itself out of being an 'erotic thriller?' Does it require a certain Cinemax/beat up VHS box cover trashiness?

xpost Sea of Love, though, I recall that making a splash. Def. rescued two major careers.

Vadim's Pretty Maids All in a Row - that kind of sets the template a little, doesn't it? Or is it still too weird, too much killer on the loose stuff?

love to be thrilled by eyes wide shut

body heat had a weird cred with certain film cognoscenti in the 90s iirc

Know I mentioned this before on ILX - and look away now, mark s - but Fredric Jameson in his 'Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism' identified Body Heat as a key postmodern text (pastichey, unmoored from signification etc etc) along with Blade Runner, so I think that's why maybe certain film cognoscenti picked up on it.

is Dressed to Kill an erotic thriller?

That's the other one I thought of as a launch point. It was 1980, Body Heat was the next year. Both of them flash their influences (along with other things), but I think they're where the Hollywood erotic thriller template really emerges. It is a very '80s genre, best watched on VHS.

I guess there are still plenty of people writing books like these?

The big used book store near me has an entire shelf devoted to them. "50 Shades of Gray" rejuvenated the genre if it needed rejuvenating.

lol just the mention of jameson has put me in a bad mood

It's not the same thing, but there were a couple of tawdry, glossy mid-'70s films--The Eyes of Laura Mars and Lipstick--that seem connected to the straight-to-video erotic thrillers that were churned out in the '90s. (I've only seen the first, but I think they're similar.)

Did Hitchcock invent the erotic thriller?

Now I'm picturing The Lodger and Blackmail as proto-ETs. I suppose Nosferatu, and probably other expressionist silents, put violence or other danger conspicuously close to sex.

Speaking of "Body Heat," I'd always (for obviously reasons) associated that one with "Body Double," which I'd seen before and not liked. But I put it on again, anyway, and wow, how shitty is this movie. But it did lead me to Ebert's review, which is full of all sorts of not OTM stuff, starting with the 3 1/2 stars and continuing with stuff like:

But the movie is not just an exercise in style. It is also a genuinely terrifying thriller

Yes it is, no it's not.

Although his "Scarface" was more of a serious social commentary

No it fucking wasn't.

The burial sequence next to the Hollywood reservoir, for example, or the photography in the tunnel during one of Jake's attacks of claustrophobia, are so uninhibited that they skirt the dangerous edge of being ridiculous.

Skirt?

Craig Wasson is such a nonentity in that movie. De Palma should've waited a few years until James Spader was right for the role.

Or Bill Maher, if he just had to have a Craig Wasson lookalike.

"a comely councilwoman" *sets TIVO*

― mark s, Friday, August 25, 2017 10:30 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No need, ILX has you covered: Local councillors

Calendar Girl Murders (1984)

I've seen this! for some reason. it's terrible.

Body Double is incredible, it transcends Wasson's leaden performance

and yes it is ridiculous BUT - in the classic DePalma way - I think it is legit good, it goes so hard on the camp and exploitation that it achieves a weird fever-dream tone that is fantastic and genuinely disturbing.

I might agree if he were not so consistently lurid and OTT. It might work better were the acting and writing not so shitty, unless they were both shitty on purpose, which I am not sure makes things much better. Bad on Purpose is a really tricky thing to pull off, let alone as a feature.

Like, it's already a borderline tongue-in-cheek riff on Hitchcock, which of course De Palma has made a career of, but then you factor in in terrible casting and acting and I'm just not sure what he is going for.

See, I think y'all are lumping together what I think of as two distinct kinds of movies. Both, I guess, could loosely be described as erotic thrillers.

But I would say that there's a Category 1 ET: reasonably well-known director, big studio, theatrical release, recognizable Hollywood names. Sliver, Body Heat, Wild Orchid, Wild Things, Wild at Heart, Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, 9.5 Weeks, Color of Night. These are basically just moody or noir-ish movies that have three or six decently steamy sex scenes.

Your dad could have them in with the rest of the VHS tapes, filed between the Beverly Hills Cops and the Indiana Joneses. They're certainly racy, but they have too much plot and cinematography to be porn. If they had been porn, your dad would have hid them in a box under the 1988 tax return.

One might have watched these through only once, and thenceforward relied on skillful FFing and REWing to get you to the good parts. But you had to watch it through once, because before the Internet that was the only way to find the good parts.

Red Shoe Diaries and the softcore stuff that is currently on Cinemax in the "After Dark" category? Not even direct to video, but direct to cable. You have not heard of the actors, the director, or the studio in any non-erotic context. Those are Category 2 ETs. Current listing on Max Go includes "Bedroom Eyes," "The Deadly Pick Up," "High Heel Homicide," "Illicit Desires," on and on.

Last time I, um, checked, their ratio of exposition to sex scene (while nowhere near that of hardcore) is more regular. So if you were going to use it as wankage fodder, you would need to do far less work with the remote control to get to the steamy parts. It's probably about every 9-11 minutes. Which is, coincidentally, the average amount of time that a pay-per-view erotic movie is watched in hotel rooms.

The plots are of course ridic, and the stagey non-penetrative non-genital-showing sex just looks goofy. So they're pretty useless as porn (because it's so easy to get real porn), and they're also useless as movies (because they're so full of stupid).

CAVEAT: Some franchises - notably Poison Ivy - started out as Cat 1 and moved to Cat 2 over the course of the sequels. Maybe they're in a Cat 1 1/2.

I'm primarily concerned w Cat 1 tbh

thread is about cat ii iirc

brb about to post "a neurotic thriller" in the "rejected parody threads" thread

thread is about cat ii iirc

based on the original post, undoubtedly - however I will forcibly re-appropriate this thread for my own means cuz what am I gonna do, create another thread called Category 1 Erotic Thrillers?

body of evidence hasn't been mentioned itt! a real stinker of a film. a basic instinct copy where the relationship is between murder suspect and her defense lawyer, rather than murder suspect and cop.

madonna dropping hot wax on willem dafoe's genitalia is a real treat though

Ye Mad Puffin- Wild Orchid is by Zalman King, Who created Red Shoe Diaries and his work seems to go between the two categories you set (and there's probably a lot of stuff inbetween that space). Red Shoe Diaries had David Duchovny, Matt LeBlanc and Sheryl Lee.

Perhaps King gradually slid more firmly into the second category like Borowczyk did, but his stuff is very different.

Category I and II are actually a bit more mixed. Zalman King got a few auteur-like write-ups, and Some Call it Loving had some attention too.

There is a whole intersection where a handful of 70s auteur cinema with a lot of kink and sex is made: In the Realm of the Senses, W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, Sweet Movie, Salo, The Night Porter, obv Last Tango...and then sorta gets...left, no one makes that anymore - and I reckon Cat II then kicks off a bit to almost fill that void in a strange way. I haven't fully mapped it out but I quite like someone to do a really wacky retro of both of these things - with maybe some Hollywood late 80s/early 90s to pad it out. xxp

Salo

idk if the intention of this movie was actually to be erotic, quite the opposite imo

Country where they're made probably quite an important factor.

"King gradually slid more firmly into..." - well, at least, simulated firm sliding