'An erotic thriller'

jackpot!

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

― Οὖτις, Friday, August 25, 2017 3:30 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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.

― Οὖτις, Friday, August 25, 2017 3:32 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. De Palma at his most unhinged, absurd and overblown in a totally compelling and entertaining way. Love it.

When the plot, acting, etc. are pointless, then what's the point? It looks like shit, too, just super bright sitcom lighting. What is there to actually enjoy in it? I mean, once the "Relax" video hits it sort of picks up, but it's practically over. As an exercise in style, maybe I could get behind it, but Ebert (and I assume others) took it seriously. And certainly Dressed to Kill took itself more seriously with similarly lurid themes, so why would he goof on himself? If your whole gist is hyper blown ott absurdity, then it's kind of lame to riff on yourself, though DePalma is nothing if not self-reflexive.

I do like, in theory, the idea of this one and Body Heat explicitly transgressing (relatively speaking) in the ways their direct inspirations could not but clearly wanted to. Nudity, language, blood. Don't know if that makes it better, but I have no doubt Hitchcock would have reveled in stuff so sleazy. On that other thread back when I think I made the same point about Basic Instinct.

Thief of Hearts! Wow, that takes me back to borrowing dad's Blockbuster card fer shurr.

I think the only thing I agree w you is that Wasson's acting is not great. But he's serviceable, and everything else going on around him is very rich imo.

xp

I don't know, I think it's actually not rich. Very shallow, very artificial, and very one person speaks one stilted line at a time. Had it better pulled off the Rear Window meets Vertigo mash-up I'd be more enthused.

I mean, many of the same problems I have with Basic Instinct so many years later, but at least BI undoubtedly looks awesome. It's well crafted.

https://d2ydh70d4b5xgv.cloudfront.net/images/4/9/michael-jackson-vinyl-lp-thriller-gatefold-original-picture-lyric-sleeve-46af1541e719b6e750644b478316ad5d.jpg
Erotic Thriller?

The whole panty-sniffing mall/beach chase scene in Body Double, and Wasson staying up late and seeing Holly Body on TV, and so on, felt so disconnected when I saw it again a few years ago, like hearing someone tell you a story about getting laid in a way that makes you cringe instead of relate.

Agree that somewhere in the second half it loses itself plotwise but that only adds to what Shakey said about the fever dream feel of it. Falls down this rabbit hole of unreality. It is (largely) an exercise in style, and that's not unsubstantial, particularly if we're talking about this genre and this director. Seeing BDP basically turn his movie riffing on his own oeuvre is total gleeful fun. It's way more interesting and less straight up than what you normally get with this genre.

Steven Bauer is hot as fuuuuk on THIEF OF HEARTS

OK, back to Body Double. I somehow completely forgot the ending, not just the climax, but the ending. So in general there is all sorts of wtf-ery going on in this movie. Why does the killer use a giant drill? Is the Relax video real or fantasy? Why when he meets Holly after their scene together minutes earlier is he suddenly pretending to be a slick producer? What was the killer's plan, anyway? Steal diamonds? Anyway, none of that matters, the movie is dumb, though we can debate if it's smart-dumb (though I would counter that Femme Fatale covers similar meta smart-dumb ground much, much better).

Anyway, the end. So Holly - not dead - is about to be buried alive (apparently running distance from an active police scene). The Indian dumps her in the hole, guy comes to rescue her, fights with the Indian, deus ex white dog, Indian goes into the reservoir, guy says he's here to help Holly and then ... cut to guy back to his job (which he wasn't fired from?) as a cheesy vampire, then over the credits he's made to freeze while they sub in the body double for the woman on the shower, and the rest of the credits roll over her exposed breasts. Like, wtf?

Learned this from wiki, though: "Slavitza Jovan, who appeared as Gozer the Gozerian in Ghostbusters the same year, 1984, briefly appears as a saleslady."

if anything the movies you're talking about (cat 1 if you will) were an attempt to prestige-ify and supersize them for a bigger audience

otm, I think a lot of it was mainstreaming stuff from '70s pulp and peepsploitation. So the Category II movies are kind of just returning the material to its cheap knockoff roots. In Category I, I love how many marquee names of the '80s made at least one erotic thriller. It's like all the aging rock stars making at least one New Wave album.

i think the two shifts totally go hand in hand: i absolutely associate the 80s new wavification of rock with the mainstreaming of the erotic thriller -- not least bcz the texture of music videos permeated the early 80s films in this vein (and vice versa)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWz9VN40nCA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaPTELylZ1s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Z6MAK58gs

Excellent point but you have inexplicably omitted Sheena Easton's "Sugar Walls."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Alq8rJIbo

"Self Control" definitely. All that exciting danger a liberated woman encounters.

Definitely why Dressed to Kill fits.

Also, random notes:

Jonathan Rosenbaum on Basic Instinct: https://m.chicagoreader.com/chicago/how-to-write-a-3-million-script/Content?oid=879416

Fatal Attraction is the all-time hit of this genre, isn't it?

And given how long it took Kubrick to make Eyes WideShut, he must've started in on it around that time.

So why did "In the Cut" end Meg Ryan's career? It's not great but she is not particularly terrible, nor is it by any means embarrassing. It's just a creepy little movie.

It didn't, iirc. I want to say the nail in the coffin - beyond just her entering upper middle age and getting written out of roles like Renee Russo on down - was a few years earlier, with "Proof of Life," when her affair with Russel Crowe (right?) got her branded the proverbial other woman and she became tabloid fodder. I suppose it's more accurate to say "In the Cut" killed Campion's Hollywood hopes.

It's well-made and directed imo

It was fine, iirc. But maybe, especially a few years post Piano, so anonymously 'erotic thriller" that no one cared. That's why I don't think it's Meg that it killed, any more than, say, Sliver killed Sharon Stone's career. Which, of course, it didn't, if you include "Casino," but that was an outlier. It feels that Sliver (like Jade did for Linda Fiorentino) really reduced her to a joke, even if Joe Eszterhas was ultimately to blame for both. And those plus Showgirls killed his career as much as it did theirs.

That is, all those movies took down their respective auteurs and while not necessarily their leads, they seemed to go down with them.

https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/From-Basic-Instinct-to-Showgirls-the-15865290.php

Adrian Lyne and Ben Affleck are bringing it back, baby

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Water_(2021_film)

Further to which

Crazy gossip from work I can’t not share: at least one of the big streamers wants to bring back erotic thrillers. (Can’t wait for a new Adrian Lyne movie)

— Aaron Stewart-Ahn (@somebadideas) May 8, 2021

let's goooooooo

"I hear you're a...big streamer..."

from peppe the piss pig, a watersports-themed erotic thriller

straight to streaming erotic thrillers sounds like a goldmine

this is definitely Prime if it's true

hope all erotic thriller fans are aware of the delightful and odd podcast NIGHT TIME FOR ONE
http://nighttimeforone.com/

I love Prime it's such a weird chaotic mess, there are some crazy weird 70s movies down in the Prime basement

the voyeurs which has just popped up on amazon prime def looks like it’s got this vibe

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-xndtrXsAAc2VH.jpg

C5 have been repeating Red Shoe Diaries, just in case you missed David Duchovny reading steamy letters to a dog.

read Michael Mohan as Michael Chabon at first

https://deadline.com/2021/12/ben-affleck-ana-de-armas-movie-deep-water-heading-to-streaming-1234890214/

Here we go:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/you-must-remember-this-new-season-erotic-movies-1235107060/

Some films discussed in the season will be American Gigolo, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Fatal Attraction, as well as works from Steven Soderbergh and Brian De Palma, among others. Each episode will focus on one year, discussing movies and stars, with the season culminating in the year 1999, focusing on Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

hmm

no skerritt no credibility

I was actually just thinking about Jade the other day and Linda Fiorentino, surely one of the undisputed queens of the genre

Fast Times seems somewhat out of place there

Well the net seems to be cast a bit broadly, no bad thing.

last american virgin seems to fit the bill, as well