The 20 Most Horny Erotic Thrillers Ever Made
What happened to the erotic thriller? There’s something of a bell curve in the spread of the sex programmer that rises with the loosening of the production code in the late 1960s, peaks in the 80s with prestigious fare like Fatal Attraction , and falls by the mid 2000s, and the dominance of the franchise culture. Today’s box office prizes big-budget four-sector blockbusters, making it almost impossible to market films about adult sexuality.
Streaming has opened a window for films that are reminiscent of the erotic thrillers of yore, but what they used to do – with lurid hooks and big stars – is still conspicuously missing from theaters. (Adrian Lyne’s return to direct Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas Hulu’s thriller Deep Waters, which was intended for theaters before the pandemic, was a welcome – if largely critical – return.)
Yes, there is something to criticize, even in the best examples of form. Sex is often more exciting than realistic; films were also almost always written and directed by men and emphasized a male point of view, and many of the women who starred in them did not take it well (recall Sharon Stone’s oft-repeated accusations that the iconic nude scene in the ” Basic instinct , director Paul Verhoeven did a little tricky).
And yet it remains curious how sex seems to have largely disappeared from mainstream movies released in theaters. So, without further prelude, let’s take a look at some of the best – or at least the most interesting – examples of films that are no longer being made.