Erotic thriller
The poster for the quintessential 1990s erotic thriller Night Eyes, a film that translated its $1 million budget into $30 million in direct-to-video sales.
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| Years active | mid 1980s – present |
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| Country | United States |
An Erotic thriller is a film genre defined by a thriller with a thematic basis in illicit romance or erotic fantasy. Most erotic thrillers contain scenes of softcore sex and nudity, but the frequency and explicitness of those scenes varies.
Though similar films appeared as early as the 1960s, erotic thrillers emerged as a distinct genre in the late 1980s, bolstered by the popular success of Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction in 1987 and a quickly expanding domestic and international market for softcore adult entertainment on cable television and home video. The genre had a classic period of growth and expansion in the 1990s, but by the early 2000s declined in production and popular appeal.
The potent combination of danger and romance, catering to both male and female audiences simultaneously, was the primary selling point for erotic thriller films during their classic period. The half-naked bodies displayed on posters, newspaper ads, and video box covers were accompanied by log lines that capture the unmistakable duality of the erotic thriller film:
If you think you can handle her, you're dead wrong.—Body Chemistry 3: Point of Seduction
He was hired to watch. Now he's tempted to touch.—Night Eyes
Twin sisters cross the line into a deadly erotic fantasy land.—Mirror Images
In all, over 300 erotic thriller films were produced in the 1990s, which is comparable to the number of thriller films made in the noir decade of the 1940s. The total number of films in the erotic thriller genre from 1985 to 2005 may number as high as over 500. Like film noir, the genre has evolved and modernized, and new films continue to be made that are influenced by the classic style.
The erotic thriller participates in several genres and film styles at once, taking narrative and stylistic elements from each. Its greatest debt is undoubtedly to the 1940s and '50s film noir, a thriller genre exemplified by stylish crime films and mysteries that explore the dark underworld of post-World War II America.
Thriller as a film genre, however, contains subgenres other than the noir crime film and murder mystery. Any of these might provide the dramatic framework for an erotic thriller. This includes the psychological thriller (Fatal Attraction, Body Chemistry, Object of Obsession), the revenge thriller (Scorned, Improper Conduct), and suspense stories of illicit romance and sexual obsession (Erotic Boundaries, Secret Games, The Adjuster). Like thrillers, romances can also be expressed in subgenres. These are as varied as the “bodice-ripping” romance novel, the soap opera, and works of gothic fantasy. Softcore sex films are often romances of some kind, and the genre has a long tradition, particularly in Europe. Directors such as Radley Metzger (Theresa and Isabelle 1968), Joseph Sarno (Inga 1968), and Just Jaecklin (Emmanuelle 1974) were influential pioneers of the softcore-romance film. Their "middlebrow sexploitation" movies put stories of female desire at the center, and helped pave the way for softcore's reemergence in the 1990s.
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