The Big Picture · Discussion · Roundtable
April 17, 2020/ 115 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins · Wesley Morris
Stuck inside, Sean and Amanda bring in Wesley Morris to rank the American erotic thriller: Joe Eszterhas, Adrian Lyne, Michael Douglas's ten-title résumé, and the AIDS-era paranoia underneath all that saxophone and Vaseline-lensed cinematography.
12 films across 4 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
What makes an erotic thrillerSean, Amanda, and Wesley on the genre's rules, its Joe Eszterhas/Adrian Lyne lineage, and why it died out
The Top 10 Horny Quarantine Erotic Thrillers each host picked three, chronological order, Fatal Attraction was the one unanimous pick
Lawrence Kasdan's directing debut, and a Double Indemnity remake with all the sex that movie only implied. William Hurt and Kathleen Turner have believable, overheated chemistry; the plot, Amanda says, goes off a cliff the moment they get together, and that's fine.
Brian De Palma's Hitchcock-fixated, extremely strange thriller about an actor drawn into watching a woman across the canyon. Melanie Griffith's contract-negotiation scene as porn star Holly Body is, per Wesley, one of the great unheralded moments of the genre.
Glenn Close as a defense attorney who sleeps with her murder-suspect client, played by a very young, very persuasive Jeff Bridges. Wesley's test case for the genre's core mechanic: someone has to pay for the sex.
The one all three agreed had to be on the list without discussion. Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, previously covered on The Rewatchables, so they don't relitigate it here.
Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin, written by Richard Price. The most New York entry on the list, and Sean's pick partly because it's really a movie about male friendship with a woman dropped into the middle of it.
Joe Eszterhas writing the genre's own rulebook and then blowing past it. Wesley calls it the high-water mark, and reads its ice-pick sexuality as a distorted echo of AIDS-era gay panic.
Barbet Schroeder's roommate-from-hell thriller. Amanda and Wesley agree it's thin on the actual erotic-thriller mechanics, but Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance carries it anyway.
Madonna on trial for using sex as a murder weapon, with Willem Dafoe. Wesley's pick for pure commitment to absurdity, coming right after Basic Instinct blew the genre's ceiling off.
Kevin Bacon, Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, and Matt Dillon in a movie Sean calls a self-aware postmortem on the genre: trashy for 45 minutes, then, per Roger Ebert's review that Sean quotes, revealed to be smarter than it looked.
Adrian Lyne again, with Diane Lane and Richard Gere. Amanda's pick and the one she says affected her most as a teenager, for the train-flashback scene edited by Anne Coates.
The one that doesn't quite countCher and Dennis Quaid in Suspect (1987)
Wesley's litmus test in reverse: no sex actually happens between Cher's public defender and Dennis Quaid's juror, so by his own rule it isn't really an erotic thriller, even though it's the show's most-referenced film of the episode.
Looking aheadthe genre's possible comeback
Adrian Lyne's return to directing after over a decade off, with Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, scripted in part by Sam Levinson. One of Sean and Amanda's most anticipated films of the year, if it makes it to theaters.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Genre forerunners Double IndemnityThe Postman Always Rings TwiceLooking for Mr. GoodbarEyes of Laura MarsCruisingFlashdance
More Joe Eszterhas scripts Nine 1/2 WeeksSliverJadeShowgirls
Also in the genre MermaidsJerry MaguireCruel IntentionsThe LoverColor of NightFinal AnalysisShining ThroughBoogie NightsTruth or Dare
Ran out of time for Indecent ProposalAmerican GigoloDressed to KillNo Way OutThe CrushEyes Wide ShutIn the Cut
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The OutsiderEuphoriaThe Wire
Ads World Central KitchenSpotify