Erotic thriller
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The erotic thriller is a film genre which consists of erotica and thriller, it became popular in the 1980s with the rise of home video. The genre includes such films as Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, Looking for Mr. Goodbar and In the Cut. They feature two female stereotypes: femme fatales and damsels in distress. The "erotic thriller" subgenre owes so much to James M. Cain. Roeg's Full Body Massage (1995) has been described as the thinking man's straight-to-video "erotic thriller."
More recent examples include Body Heat, Fear, Wild Things, Bound, In the Cut, "Lust, Caution", Poison Ivy, Crash, Color of Night, Eyes Wide Shut and The Crush.
Related: stalking, erotic films, psychological thriller
More films: Peeping Tom (1960) - Klute - (1971) - Body Double (1984) - In the Cut (2003)
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Notable erotic thrillers
1980s
- Dressed to Kill (1980)
- Body Heat (1981)
- Cat People (1982)
- Crimes of Passion (1984)
- Body Double (1984)
- Blue Velvet (1986)
- Angel Heart (1987)
- Fatal Attraction (1987)
- Sea of Love (1989)
1990s
- Internal Affairs (1990)
- Sleeping with the Enemy (1991)
- Basic Instinct (1992)
- Blown Away (1992)
- Poison Ivy (1992)
- Single White Female (1992)
- Body of Evidence (1993)
- Boxing Helena (1993)
- The Crush (1993)
- Sliver (1993)
- Color of Night (1994)
- The Last Seduction (1994)
- Devil In a Blue Dress (1995)
- Jade (1995)
- Bound (1996)
- Crash (1996) - A husband is in an open marriage. One day he is involved in a car accident in which the passenger in the other car is killed. While seeing the exposed breast of the surviving driver, they both get aroused and subsequently begin an affair, but one which involves recreating their experience in the smashed car.
- Wild Things (1998) - A high school guidance counselor is accused of rape by two female students. It turns out that the three had been working and sleeping together, and planned to split the settlement money. A detective enters the plot to tell them that the male conspirator had already transferred the money to an off-shore account and one girl panics. The girls have sex, but nevertheless the other girl decides with the male conspirator to eliminate her. The detective kills the other female conspirator; and later it is revealed that the detective was working with the male conspirator.
- Eyes Wide Shut (1999; although partly marketed as such, this film's status as an "erotic thriller" has been challenged. See Eyes Wide Shut genre and marketing)
2000s
- Quills (2000)
- Unfaithful (2002)
- In the Cut (2003)
- Killing Me Softly (2003)
- Swimming Pool (2003)
- Murder (2004)
- Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
- Lust, Caution (2007)
- Chloe (2009; theatrically released by Sony Pictures Classics on March 26, 2010)
2010s
- The Housemaid (2010)
- American Horror Story (2011–present)
- Passion (2012)
- Jism 2 (2012)
- The Canyons (2013)
- Plush (2013)
- Enemy (2013)
- In Secret (2014)
- Ragini MMS 2 (2014)
See also
Bibliography