~~ Erotic Thrillers of the 80s and 90s ~~

The non-anglo film doesn't really go anywhere much for me in this list but it reads nice enough

https://www.vulture.com/article/best-erotic-thrillers-streaming-netflix-hbo-showtime.html

Rating Jade over the Last Seduction is kind of a challop

Loving this season of the Longworth podcast. The episode on Bo Derek is both enlightening (to someone who was an infant at the peak of her fame) and infuriating (to someone when knew John Derek was a piece of shit but maybe just not how much of a piece of shit). Longworth’s comment about 10 being all but forgotten today was curious; I had assumed it still held a reasonably “classic” status, but when I looked I couldn’t find it either on any of my streaming services or at my local library.

Thanks for thr alert.

yeah am enjoying the series so far, learning a lot.

re the poll, i had the deep misfortune of seeing Color of Night in the theatre. My roommate wanted to see it & he paid so i went along for the free movie. Bleuchhhhh no free movie is worth that

i would have voted Sea of Love. i think it’s underrated. it’s a great thriller & pacino & barkin have such great chemistry. i think Richard Price wrote it iirc?

Listening to the second episode of the podcast. It's interesting, but Longworth's delivery is weird; every other sentence, she'll pronounce an ordinary English word like she just learned it.

That’s canonical longworth

My theory is she over-pronounces to compensate for natural under-pronunciation

I don’t know what her pronunciation deal is, but I know there’s no excuse for it. You can’t mispronounce “Lovelace” 100x and expect us to take you seriously

Perhaps this podcast is not for you

That said, focusing on 10 is interesting, and something I wouldn’t have thought of, but it might make some kind of sense. I do remember when that film came out. It’s erotic but in no way a thriller. Yet it may have paved the way for the genre.

The delivery is … pretty unerotic, fwiw.

Karina Longworth treats Jagged Edge as a kind of forgotbuster, which actually makes sense--I'm old enough to remember my parents going to see it (I would catch it on cable some years later) and the still-hilarious controversy over the ending*, but from my Letterboxd feed, it looks like the film is now unknown to most people who were not alive and/or paying attention to film in 1985. The film's status rather perfectly reflects its quality, I think: a solid, enjoyable thriller (albeit one with a sloppy conclusion) that needed the hand of a Brian De Palma or even an Adrian Lyne to distinguish it, but instead got the guy who did Return of the Jedi. Oh, and Robert Loggia somehow got a Best Supporting Actor nomination out of the whole thing.

*on that ending, fast forward to the last segment of this (SPOILER-y!) Siskel & Ebert episode if you don't know but care about what I'm talking about: https://siskelebert.org/?p=3635

This was big news in my household, if only because my older sister and mum were majorly crushing on Jeff Bridges at the time

Bridges is definitely at his hottest in Jagged Edge.

This plus Fatal Attraction/Someone to Watch Over Me/Cape Fear all seem to merge into a single blob in my head even though they’re very different films

I remember my folks seeing Jagged Edge and catching the end with my mom once when it hit cable the following year, and it was legit huge indeed. But when Karina teased Glenn C would be featured in discussions of two movies in the series, I went "Well Fatal Attraction...wait, what's the other one?" and absolutely had no idea it would be Jagged Edge until the episode hit, and hadn't thought about it in DECADES, though the poster immediately came to mind after the mention. Truly a memory hole of a movie. (Marquand, said ROTJ director, really had a weird career in retrospect -- he followed up said Star Wars entry having gotten the job with Eye of the Needle with a romantic melodrama with Karen Allen, Until September, then Jagged Edge, then Dylan's Hearts of Fire! Then the poor bastard dies of a stroke.)

Poor guy!

Maybe it was different in a pan and scan vhs version but I don’t recall the last shot being very confusing?

Bridges is definitely at his hottest in Jagged Edge.

― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko),

And how!

My unofficial theory about the demise of the erotic thriller: Joe Eszterhas killed them.

For those who haven't heard the Longworth podcast, Eszterhas's current political (and religious) allegiances are pretty much what you'd expect.

*on that ending, fast forward to the last segment of this (SPOILER-y!) Siskel & Ebert episode if you don't know but care about what I'm talking about: https://siskelebert.org/?p=3635

― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Thursday, May 26, 2022 7:32 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

off topic but: oh man, i've been watching old siskel & ebert episodes all week so thank you for this resource

(they loved to spoil the best parts of movies and the show comes off like on cinema... more often than i even expected)

lol i watched jean claude van damme vehicle nowhere to run a couple of weeks ago -- not an erotic thriller unless you count JCvD perving on at rosanna arquette's butt thru a window bcz but it does have an eszterhas script (which is just pitiful garbage)

I’m pretty sure that NTR had a soft-cory sex scene as well, which makes perfect sense given Eszterhas

ill have to quiz my co-watchers, it was empirically unmemorable

It’s the only thing I remember!

oh man, i've been watching old siskel & ebert episodes all week so thank you for this resource

― flamenco drop (BradNelson),

Same! They keep popping up on YouTube.

I get the podcast is shifting talk on these films and category but c'mon Jagged Edge in no way fits

as an erotic thriller? Why not? Wouldn't you kill for Jeff Bridges?

Wouldn't we all

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/45/25/ef/4525ef29e3f09411e51d05227ce137e7.gif

THE HAIR

Longworth is trying to forge a thematic link to AIDS, which kind of works in the case of Jagged Edge, but might have been better served by a different film. 1985 alone had A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge, which would at least have allowed for a discussion of the kind of explicit(ish)ly queer text that Longworth claims that the 80s otherwise avoided.

The Erotic Adventures of Freddy

Red Blood Diaries

The 1987 episode of You Must Remember This is probably the best yet (of this season; I haven't heard previous ones). Positioning Fatal Attraction and Dirty Dancing as conservative vs liberal box-office mirrors of each other is a creative read, but it totally works; her identification of Patrick Swayze's Johnny Castle as the antidote to Reagan-era toxic masculinity (encapsulated, here, by Michael Douglas in FA) almost makes me want to take a look at the film--hell, both films--with fresh eyes.

I think I've told this story on the board before, but when I was 10 and really wanted to see FA, my mom finally agreed (I was persistent verging on harrassing when it came to movies I wanted to see) on the condition that we "talk about" the film afterwards. I agreed, thus leading to a discussion of the sex scenes ("that is not the way that people have sex") which I think may have constituted my "sex talk" with my parents. When I tell this story, people are always divided between this being my mom's genuinely earnest attempt at a 'teachable moment" or her zinging me for insisting on such inappropriate viewing material.

i love how Longworth often gets me to reconsider movies I thought I had made up my mind about. I dunno if i will rewatch Fatal Attraction but I am definitely thinking about it in new ways thanks to her.

I met Sherry Lansing 10 years ago at a work function & had dinner with her but knew zero about her history at the time so mostly exchanged smalltalk & pleasantries. Kicking myself tbh.

Anyway. Enjoying this season immensely.

actually more like 20 years ago re Lansing - time flies when yr old lmao

True story: in 1983, I was in 8th grade Unitarian Sunday school. We got to vote on what movie to go see as an end-of-year treat.

The final tally was: 9 votes for "Risky Business" and 1 vote for "Terms of Endearment."

So I first saw Rebecca de Mornay's breasts with my church youth group.

I still don't know who voted for "Terms of Endearment."

Enjoying this season immensely.

Yup, very good. I don't really have much of a desire to reconsider histories from times I've lived through -- it mostly frustrates me thinking about idiotic things that happened within living memory, if you get my drift -- but this has been a good way to reframe many things.

The 1987 episode of You Must Remember This is probably the best yet (of this season; I haven't heard previous ones). Positioning Fatal Attraction and Dirty Dancing as conservative vs liberal box-office mirrors of each other is a creative read, but it totally works; her identification of Patrick Swayze's Johnny Castle as the antidote to Reagan-era toxic masculinity (encapsulated, here, by Michael Douglas in FA) almost makes me want to take a look at the film--hell, both films--with fresh eyes.

You really should. Dirty Dancing is sharper and more erotic than its reputation suggests -- and, of course, as men we condescend to stuff young girls like. But Jennifer Grey, in a charming performance, is sexually alert, and the film respects her sexual maturation: it's rare in an '80s picture -- any American picture! -- in which the male star consents to be the object of desire.

And, of course, Cynthia Rhodes gets an abortion and there's no -- not a one -- consequence or regret.

A couple weeks ago I finished Michael Koresky's Films of Endearment, about re-watching with his mom some of those '80s films starring the decade's essential actresses (Lange, Weaver, Pfeiffer, Cher, etc.).

True story: in 1983, I was in 8th grade Unitarian Sunday school. We got to vote on what movie to go see as an end-of-year treat.

The final tally was: 9 votes for "Risky Business" and 1 vote for "Terms of Endearment."

So I first saw Rebecca de Mornay's breasts with my church youth group.

I still don't know who voted for "Terms of Endearment."

― Nutellanor Roosevelt (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, June 8, 2022 7:01 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Lol, I saw "Trading Places" with my church youth group.

xp a really great read

My 11th grade French teacher took our class to see Betty Blue, the most serious of erotic thrillers.

lol sure

I watched that last year, that is a p wild choice!

This is in the neighborhood: Trapped, with Charlize Theron, Kevin Bacon, and Courtney Love. 2002, so not '90s; not remotely erotic, though it tries a couple of times; and tense for a while, not at all after that.

First hour, it's an okay diversion. The last 20 minutes, though, has to rank with the most ludicrous resolution of a thriller I've ever seen.

The upcoming You Must Remember This pod season is covering '90s Erotic Thrillers/Neo Noir etc.