The Big Picture - Top 10 Horny Quarantine Erotic Thrillers | The Big Picture

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

All across the country, millions of Americans are bunkered down in their homes. Some of those people are alone. Some are cocooned with their partners. Some are surrounded by their screaming children. And they all have one thing in common: These people are trapped and they … are … horny. So today we will provide, if not tender loving care, then the next best thing: Joined by our pal Wesley Morris from 'The New York Times,' we present the 10 best erotic thrillers. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Wesley Morris Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you. fighting on the front lines while keeping local restaurants in business as well. You can directly help the heroes in hospitals and clinics who are fighting for us, and you can keep your local restaurants alive. Go to theringer.com slash WCK to donate, please. We're trying to raise $250,000. If you have the means, it's an unbelievably great and useful cause that helps our hospital heroes, emergency workers, and local restaurants. Please give whatever you can. The money goes directly to World Central Kitchen, and it's a charitable donation.

Once again, that's theringer.com backslash WCK. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the burning sensations running deep in our loins. All across the country, millions of Americans are bunkered down in their homes. Some of those people are alone. Some are cocooned with their partners. Some are surrounded by their screaming children.

And they all have one thing in common. These people are trapped and they are horny. So today on The Big Picture, we will provide, if not tender loving care, then the next best thing. We will present the 10 best erotic thrillers and endangered species in the menagerie of 21st century movies. Here to join us is a fine, handsome fellow, the New York Times critic at large

and the co-host of Still Processing, Wesley Morris. Wesley, how are you? I great endangered species i think this shit is dead well we're gonna get there there's there there is something on the horizon in the erotic thriller zone that might be saving us but it's gonna be a while okay so let's let's just start amanda i want to start with you let's just talk about erotic thrillers. What do they mean to you? When did you become aware of them?

Is this a genre that you care about? It is. I realized doing the research for this show that this is what taught me about sex in a lot of ways. I'm of a generation where these movies were being made and I was seeing them. And I was seeing things that I had never seen before, never really heard of before. It wasn't a lot of conversation about the different types of eroticism at my Atlanta, Georgia dinner table, believe it or not. So I have a real nostalgic attachment to these. They take me to a time and place as much as they do to a specific physical or emotional reaction, though that can happen too. And it's really interesting to watch them as an adult because I definitely understood

some things when I watched them, but I didn't understand all of them. And it was both an educational process and a process of missing some things, I guess. Yeah. Wesley, can you just tell me, you know, you've been right, you know, writing film criticism for, for a long time now. And, and you also have a good sense of human sexuality at the cinema. Um, what, when did these movies kind of come onto your radar? Maybe you can give us a little bit of a pocket history of the, of the sub genre. Sean, you are saying so many things like the 12 year old boy in me who is that's about the age i was when i started watching these movies you just said you just said you said come you said i mean this is we're gonna we're gonna peewee's playhouse this one and anytime

somebody uses an uses some erotic erotic thriller term we all kind of have to go, ah! What? The first one that I ever saw in the movie theater in its entirety is probably Fatal Attraction. That movie came out when I was 11 years old, and I had the kind of parents

who just were like, as long as you don't get in trouble and you're not doing anything that's going to get you locked up, we trust you. And I was trusted to see Fatal Attraction pretty much every, I don't remember if I saw, you know, we did a rewatchables on Fatal Attraction and I don't remember if I saw, you know, we did, we did a rewatchables on fatal attraction and I don't remember if I confess or if I tallied the number of times I saw it when it was in theaters and I was 11. Um, but it was at least three times and it was, you know, back then it was an ordeal to get into a rated R movie as a person who was probably the same height I am now, if not smaller. And I've only ever been turned away from one movie in my entire life, and you're going

to die when I tell you what it is. What is it? Mermaids. Stop. Mermaids. Mermaids was rated, I it was rated pg-13 and the the the box office attendant who would become my boss at some point uh would not let me in and you're 13 you don't have id you can't you can't prove you're not 12 dean be Baquet the box office attendant? Ooh.

No, no, no. Oh, I see. No, no, no. His name was Chris, and he would become my boss at that movie theater. Anyway, Mermaids was the only movie I've ever been told I can't see. And I saw a lot of movies when I was like 11, 12, 13. But Mermaids was the one I was. And I still have never seen it in its entirety.

I've never seen it. I was so bitter that the best I was ever going to do is the share video that came out of it anyway. So fatal attraction was the first one. And it wasn't like you had to do a lot of work to find erotic thrillers. They, it was just part of your movie going diet in the 1980s 1980s and early 1990s, early to mid-1990s. And it's funny, Amanda. I don't remember the kind of sex I saw. I mean, I know the fatal attraction, sex on the sink. I was much more caught up, even in with, even with the bad ones in the, like the stakes of the sex.

And I was always aware that of how the genre was working without my being aware that I was participating in watching a genre, which we can talk about later. But I mean, that was the first one I saw. And that was the first one. I mean, it's,

it's the paradigmatic one, um, for, for, for that genre and for what we can talk about. We're going to have to talk about later, given what's on our list, uh, the, um, blank from hell genre. Cause you know, I'm right. I'm in the middle of writing this piece. I'm writing it like, like, uh, I don't know if it's going to be an enormous piece. It can only be, but so big, but I'm, I've been working on this thing for like a year. And right when you emailed me, you guys, I was this, I was like, this is, I might finish it this week. I haven't finished it yet, but I'll finish it next week. But yeah, I've been working on this thing for a long time. And, um, it's my, it might be my favorite, favorite movie genre so i'm glad you invited me to come on

you guys didn't know this but it's my favorite it's my favorite kind of movie if i had to pick one it'd be this one let's just say that uh i had a very strong sense that you would be interested in having this conversation um and and you too amanda although i think if this were just amanda and i'd be a slightly different podcast so i'm glad that it's the three of us. I feel like let's talk about some of the things that we know have to be there when you're watching an erotic thriller. What are the kind of signature aspects of these kinds of movies? I was trying, I jotted down a few thoughts about this. I feel like there are some cliches that are also essential. This like a certain type of score, very saxophone heavy,

a certain amount of grunting, and a certain amount of physical endurance. I think you can expect from your actors. I think especially the look of these movies going back through these 80s and 90s movies in particular. It all kind of seems like most of them have Vaseline on the lens. It seems like there's

a lot of steam. I like that you're saying it's Vaseline, Sean. yet again just well you know there was a lot of you're bringing some g-rated stuff to this to this like nc-17 show i'm trying to just keep it as catholic as i can you know i'm doing my very best there's a there's a lot of confusion inside of me right now um but like for you guys what are what are the hallmarks what are the signatures of this of this genre amanda well for me it's the sex and you know i wesley's gonna bring all of the actual the film criticism uh as well as the the jokes which is why we love wesley but i do find that the first thing that i think about in these movies is like, what is the specific sex scene that I remember?

And that's how I identify them. And there is a quality to the sex scene that is very specific. It's very 80s, 90s. It has that soft core feel. And it just goes on like a little longer than maybe it has to for the for the nest the needs of the movie there's a real and and i think that actually this is true to an extent of this genre which is you finally make it to the 70s and really the 80s and you're allowed to show sex in movies and so it's a whole group of people being like oh wow we can now just show sex and we're going to show the sex.

And the sex scenes have that feeling of we're doing this because we're allowed to show you some sex. And that had an effect on me, a lasting effect on me. But what is it? What is the lasting effect? I guess, I mean, I don't know how deep we're going to go into this. I do kind of think it's how I learned what sex is because like, what else was I learning? I mean, you know, I went to school in Atlanta, Georgia. Let me tell you that the sex ed classes are not exactly about here is the possibility of experience that is waiting for you kids.

It's like you're going to die eight different ways if you have sex, just so you know. And God love my parents, but they were not really of the will take you to see anything situation. A very scarring early movie experience for me was seeing Jerry Maguire sitting next to my mother. And you will recall the very early scene between Tom Cruise and the great Kelly Preston. Yes, Kelly Preston. Yes, Kelly Preston. And she screams, never stop fucking me against the bookshelf, which I clearly have imprinted that I wanted to die. So this was a little bit how I was learning things.

And chronologically was also interesting. I probably started watching them mid 90s. I think wild things and cruel intentions are really when I age-wise had the access and the interest and kind of the understanding of what was going on. And so that's a very specific, self-conscious, almost meta type of a winking sex scene. Like a lot of kids who have had some access to some headier stuff and are are expressing themselves but so i started there and then going backwards to your basic instincts and your fatal attractions and your body heats um is an interesting

direction with which to learn about sex because they become more self-conscious, I guess, as it goes on. And at the very beginning, it's just kind of like, well, now we're just going to show some people fucking for a while. It's pretty wild to see when you're 15 years old. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, for me, sex was always around. Like I went to a school that had, I went to an all boys school that after about a year and a half of my being there, co-edited itself. And so you essentially had this very biblical situation

where you just, it was all men. And then all of a sudden, here come all these women. And it was just men. And then all of a sudden here come all these women. And it was just very clarifying for, for, for all of us, really, um, you know, having women, having, having, having women show up and having the boys then decide, oh, wait, look at all these, look at this. I'm definitely, definitely into these people, not whatever was going on over here. I grew up around a lot of rap. I grew up with MTV and the way women were treated in music videos.

And even when it wasn't bad, and what Tawny Katane was doing on the hood of David Coverdale's car was ostensibly consensual, it also had one purpose. And so there was that visualization. There was the way women functioned in hip hop. And then there was these movies. And the thing about erotic thrillers that I

realized pretty quickly was that it really was a romantic comedy with murder and sex, right? I mean, the good ones, there are some exceptions that I still count as being erotic thrillers that don't necessarily follow this formula. But basically what we're talking about is a man and a woman who, who occupy equal parts of the plot. And you, you rarely have a scene without them that doesn't, or, or, or that doesn't involve them in some way. Um, and I liked how in those movies, unlike in those music videos and in, in the rap we all listened to the women were, I mean, in most cases,

they're agents of doom, right? Because they're the, the sex is the sex is mutual and frequently consensual, but morally they are there to punish men in some way. Um, but that's too sophisticated for like young me. I just liked that.

I get to see my favorite that I got to see my favorite actors have sex or like just be in any movie for one thing, but mostly have sex. Right. Um, and, and pretty much the thing about this genre that's amazing is every everybody did one, unless you were just too, too good. Like Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan never made one.

Well, that's not true. Meg Ryan eventually, when times got tough, when she decided she had had enough of being, you know, the Meg Ryan, she took a turn. But before that, I mean, those were things that there was a class of actor, but pretty much setting those two people aside, everybody made an erotic thriller, pretty much. Yeah. And one thing that jumps out as you rewatch some of these films is, I'm just convinced that our society has gotten so much more conservative in the last 20 years. I mean, there are sex scenes in these movies. We'll talk a little bit about Body of Evidence, but Body of Evidence is just an astonishingly

graphic movie. It's amazing. It's fascinating. I mean, that's an R-rated movie that played in thousands of movie theaters in the early 1990s. And, you know, I think there's probably a variety of reasons for that. Probably the first of these films that I

saw was Basic instinct basic instinct as a as a pre-teen boy was like finding the shroud of turin like it was like it was like an amulet with extraordinary power and if you could get your way into a movie theater or something i think it was kind of a revolutionary act i mean i really think that that was the most i think i had i had a not dissimilar experience, Wesley. I was really into rap as well. I watched a lot of MTV. I felt a very sexualized culture, but not a culture of sex until I saw these movies. I, you know, I didn't have my hands on pornography. This was literally to see Sharon Stone, a stride Michael Douglas was probably the introduction to sex in my life. In addition to the fact that the movie itself, which we won't really talk about that much

because The Rewatchables did an episode on that movie earlier this week. And I would encourage people to check that out if they want a quite in-depth exploration of the story and the storytelling of Basic Instinct. But to see that at an early age, I don't know if it necessarily normalizes those sex acts, but it made them feel closer to what expectations were around sex. And Amanda said something so funny to me when we first started researching this, which was,

I think it's probably true for her husband and it's true for me. I mean, I think the way that the relationship that a lot of straight men have to sex is informed by shit like basic instinct and body double and movies that are were purposefully almost like as you're saying like rom-com humorous perversions of what sex was supposed to be like and also like at super high stakes they were meant to be high tension melodramatic stories about people who were obsessed with sex and that isn't what the relationship most people have to sex what do you think amanda wesley what i actually said to sean dramatic stories about people who were obsessed with sex. And that isn't what the relationship

most people have to sex. What do you think, Amanda? Wesley, what I actually said to Sean was imagine dating a generation of men who learned about sex from Brian De Palma films, which is a true thing that I lived through and many other people have. With Zach or with, with some other relationship. Well, let's, you know what? Let's not get into specifics. I will say though, as soon as I was like, okay, we're going to be doing erotic thrillers. My husband, Zach, who has really, he is supportive, but is not really trying to get involved in the day to day of this podcast within 30 minutes had emailed me his own personal rankings of erotic thriller films i mean which we then needed to watch in the next week he was very involved that's why we love your

husband yeah it's it's one of many but it was also telling i think he and and sean and a lot of men of a certain age both learned about sex and learned like what the cool version of sex was or you know what to be interested in and how to think about sex from some very specific reference points and i think i i'm sure i learned what to think about sex and you know how to how sex works from these movies as well but you know it was a little different watching these movies as a woman as opposed to a young man but just also because the way that you experience a sexualized culture is is especially in the 90s was very different as a young woman and so for me it was more like oh so this is what is this what everybody is thinking and doing while

i'm just kind of this this This is how it works. Like, okay, interesting. Gonna end, you know, happily that wasn't totally true all of the time. I have not been involved in any homicides related to my sex life yet. yeah,

but, but it did feel like for, for me, I was like, oh, is, is this, this how it works and then and especially as a teenager being impressionable it takes some time to separate separate those those lessons if you will yeah well i just was gonna say well maybe this is the part where we get into this um but

i think i understand like the reason that we're allowed to feel this way about the sex in these movies is I think the genre itself comes from a very specific, I mean, I'm going to posit, I am positing in this thing that I'm writing. I don't have anybody telling me this. I'm just kind of deducing and, like, using my common

sense. I could be wrong. And Sean, I feel like you might actually have an answer. But, I mean, I assume that these movies were meant to combat the arrival of the VCR and the fact that you could watch porn in your house. So what they were doing were taking movie stars, putting them in murder mystery plots that also had sex. And then Joe Esterház came along and changed everything. These movies were a boon to video stores. I had a friend yesterday when I told him we were doing this, emailed me to tell me that when he worked at a video store,

the most rented tape in the whole store was a movie called The Lover, starring Tony Leung and Jay March. Oh, yes. That's very controversial. Very controversial, very graphic movie, but it was not X-rated, I don't think, or it may have been X-rated, but it was not it was not x-rated i don't think or it may have been x-rated no no no there was a fight about right there was a fight about the rating because of the sex and because well i mean we don't have to relitigate the lover but

uh because it's not doesn't really qualify for what we're talking about but um you know there was some questions about jane march's age um and the sex she was being required to have in this movie. But, you know, Jane March is the star of a movie we're not going to talk about today. But to me, but I mean, and I didn't bring it up with us, but it'll figure very prominently in this thing that I'm working on, Color of Night, the, I would say like an extremely important version of the genre that we're talking about today. Do you guys, have you seen this movie? Oh yeah. Yes. Sean, is Color of Night the one that was on Zach's list that you were like, yeah, that's just the straight porn option?

It's Bruce Willis. Yes. Yeah. That's it. Jane March is fearless. that's how i'll describe it she is uh she's willing to really put herself out there um i think it's like pretty bad like borderline unwatchable but also but it is it's a significant it's an aftermath of basic instinct kind of movie there was like a rush of more movies and the basic instinct is kind of the second wave and maybe we should just talk about that quickly so you know like in movie history obviously you've got a lot of romances you've got a lot of noirs and detective thrillers um as amanda cited in the

70s and 80s when the mpaa started to loosen up and our culture started to get a little bit more aggressive it got more violent you know we got the introduction of a lot more sort of like reactionary Reagan era art, which is trying to push the limits. And so you take those noir and detective stories, you mash them up with these romance stories, you sprinkle in a little bit of sex, and then you get the erotic thriller. It probably starts, what would you say is the birth of this genre, Wesley? I mean, I think that you'd, I mean, if you want to do it properly, you'd have to start in the seventies,

right? You would have to start in the seventies with all those exploitation movies. Um, things like looking for Mr. Goodbar, uh, looking, remember that,

uh, looking for Mr. Goodbar, looking the eyes of Laura Mars. And then that, that first wave ends in 1980 with Cruising. And Cruising, I mean, again, Pacino, because Al Pacino is Al Pacino, he kind of muddles the even structure of these movies. But all of those erotic thrillers were what I would say are thrillers about sex.

They're not necessarily erotic thrillers because the people having sex, except for looking for Mr. Goodbar, they're not about punishing anybody for having had the sex. Cruising is a different thing. It's like using sex as a lure to solve a sex mystery. But those are all movies that took both the pursuit of relationships and the violence against people having sex or sexual violence. It took them seriously, like very seriously, despite how ridiculous they were.

And then in the 80s, by the time you get to cruising, you've set a bar for realism and verisimilitude and grittiness, but you've also set a bar pretty low or high, depending on how you look at it, for absurdity too um so i think the thing that winds up happening is like once the vcr comes in and the adult movie can be watched in your house there needed to be something to keep people away from keep to keep people going to movie theaters who also wanted sex so they started i i I think the, the narrativization of, of, of people having sex, building plots around sexual relationships, um, is, is why is where the thriller, where the erotic thriller comes out of, of, of, of it's sort of solving a commercial

problem or an industrial problem. But it's funny because the first bunch of these are essentially remakes, right? Body Heat's a remake. The Postman always rings twice as a remake. And they're remakes of films noir. But they're, well, William Hurt and Kathleen Turner weren't movie stars when Body Heat came out. But Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson certainly were.

And there is this sort of remake karaoke quality to both those movies that kind of makes them dull in a lot of ways, but gives them something to play against and gives them like a really solid undergirding to have all the sex. I mean, the one difference, the one thing that's not dull to say about something like Body Heat is, how can I put this? Kathleen Turner just takes her clothes off in the movie. You know, that's just not something that Barbara Stanwyck did in Double Indemnity.

Right, exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly. I mean, that's the thing that, they're an excuse for Kathleen Turner to do that. Exactly. Amanda, you pointed out that there is like a key function in a lot of these movies. It's not true in Bodhi, but it is true in a lot of these movies, which is something that happens right at the beginning of the movie every single time. Yeah. You put together a like, how do you know if you're in an erotic thriller

guideline? And one way to know is that someone dies in a sexual situation within the first 90 seconds of the movie. It's like a cold open of sexual violence. And it happens even in the 10 movies that we have listed just a tremendous number of times. It just is a very, it's formulaic essentially. And you know, it,

that's good writing because you get sex. Usually you get some tits and you get violence very early on. You're just letting people know what the movie is about and what's going to come. Sorry, Wesley. I just walked right into that. Damn it. I'm sure that won't be the last time that happens. So, I mean, I think the other reason for that,

there's a couple of reasons for that. One, for that sort of rental audience that you're talking about, Wesley, people get a chance to know what they're getting right away. They're like, I'm getting sex right off the off the bat two you get to sense that there's violence in this movie and that this is a certain kind of a genre drama three if you're watching a movie with your kids and you see that there's a sex scene in the opening sequence you know you

can shuttle them out of the room and watch the movie by yourself there's like some purposeful reasons for this yeah i think it calcified over time for a very good reason. But also, I mean, it is formulaic, but so are war films, so are westerns, so are all genres rely on these strategies. There isn't a dead man on a bed that opens

one of these movies where I saw it and was like, well, I've seen this 10,000 times. What else y'all got? That doesn't happen one time. Anytime it happens, I'm like, oh, I've seen this 10,000 times. What else y'all got? That doesn't happen one time. Anytime it happens, I'm like, oh, cool. Yeah, I feel similarly. It's certainly not a turn off.

Even though the other thing that is so perverse about this is I think it did create, for some people, this relationship between sex and violence in their minds. Where you think that in order to be in an adult sexual situation, you need to have an ice pick, which is just absolutely absurd. But I do think that it had that effect on people for a little while. And a lot of the outrage culture that grew out of these movies was oriented around not just the sex, although the sex is probably more specifically concerning to people, but also just the high levels of violence that take place in most of these movies. I guess, who do you guys think of as the patron saints of this work?

Who are the key figures? I mean, Adrian Lyne, because he, you know, every movie, well, Joe Esterhaus. We have to start with Joe Esterhaus, right? Like, he is the person who basically, because it isn't so much that, um, anybody I guess could make these, but you really have to have nerve to do what these movies actually try to do. Um, I mean, just think about Jagged Edge, right? I mean, well, let's sort

of say what Joe Ester, all, all the Joe Esterhaus has done. I mean, he's pretty much more than half his screenplays are in this genre. So he wrote Nine and a Half Weeks. He wrote Jagged Edge. He wrote Basic Instinct. He wrote, oh, help me out. I'm not

going to remember all of them. Showgirls? Yeah, of course. We're not talking about show girls today but he is responsible for that um i mean flash dance was was his which is not quite in the zone but yeah he wrote sliver wrote jade cursor yeah sliver and jade definitely erotic erotic thrillers um but but flash dance is a sort of formal precurs, not so much for the violence part of the sex, but for the sensational and erogenous aspect of sex and sexuality. Like what a body could be shown doing, what you could write a body to do, and then have a director and an actor if you're Jennifer Beals do it that movie is a total fantasy of of of of woman of woman dumb because womanhood is not really up

on offer in that movie but yeah Joe Esterhaz is one of them. Adrian line who directed, um, at least one Esther Haas movie. Um, you know, Michael Douglas, who, who is the only actor on our list, the only actor that, that,

that at all, who's made several and was committed to the sex and, and all of them too. He's kind of the Bill Russell of the erotic thriller. He's got, he's He's got 10 titles. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and who else?

I mean, there's probably some composer. There's probably some, I have not done all the homework on the composers, but I mean, anyway, I mean, the sound of these movies, because there's no, there might be, they might, those movies might have soundtracks, but they're not soundtrack movies. They're score movies. And I would say that the high point,

I mean, De Palma, oh, De Palma, well, De Palma's guy is the guy that I'm thinking of. And he did body double and, and, uh, what's his name? I can't remember now. Pino DiNaggio. Oh yeah. There you go. Shame on me. You know, he, a god he's his his sound is the sound i mean it's keyboards and saxophones um but i mean graham revel's score for body of evidence is um it's not i mean it is a high watermark for um because he had to score all he had to score all of the sex that happens in that movie so the music has to sort of make sense. And it can't be thriller music, right? It can't be sex scored with like...

You can't have that basic instinct sound. You need actual what for 1993 would have been sexy music. And that Graham Revell score I think is very, very good for what you're being asked to watch people do when it's playing. The other thing is, there's not a lot of dialogue in these movies. I went hunting for great scenes

and a lot of the scenes are just men walking behind women who are walking through art galleries or obviously the sex scenes in which there's not a lot of dialogue. I don't know, Amanda, but you look like you want to say something. I mean, that's the point. For decades, we had to have sex scenes with talking because you weren't allowed to show sex, right? And finally, people don't have to talk anymore. We can just see it. These are a visual medium. I'm okay with it. Please let cinema do its job. Let cinema do its job. But I will say that it's

not, but the thing about the genre though, is that there is actually, I would say there's a lot of talking and the talking isn't happening during the sex necessarily, but it's like, take a movie like Fatal Attraction, which we don't need to redo here because there's a good rewatchables that I'm lucky enough to be a part of about that movie. But the great thing about that movie is the talking that Glenn Close and Michael Douglas do before the sex, right? Where they set the table for the steaks and then proceed to have sex on that table. And I really like the talking in that movie. There are things that we're not going to talk about today, like suspect, which isn't,

it technically is not an erotic thriller because she, because Cher and Dennis Quaid do not have sex in that movie. But every, so one rule for me, we're talking about like what makes the genre of the genre. The, my rule for me, we're talking about like what makes the genre the genre. My rule is, one of my barometers for whether it qualifies as an erotic thriller is, whether a movie qualifies as an erotic thriller is, what happens when you remove the sex from this movie? Do you still have one? And the answer should always be no. Like if you remove the intercourse, the actual intercourse

from this movie, is there anything left? And the answer is no, because the motivations for the characters don't make, they don't hold anymore. You're not looking for anybody to kill. You're missing a whole 40 minutes of movie built around either the pursuit, the doing of, or the implications of having done sex. And so a movie like Suspect, which is really Cher representing homeless Liam Neeson for the murder of a woman that's too complicated to go into, but on her jury is Dennis Quaid, who for reasons we don't understand is both attracted to her, that's not a mystery, it's Cher, but is attracted to Cher, lawyer Cher, but also is helping her

solve the murder mystery. And she keeps saying, dude, give me a break here. You're going to get me disbarred. You can't fucking help me. Do you not know how this works? And he keeps doing it. And what you realize,

you're meant to think that Dennis Quaid's the murderer, but he's just so in to share that he can't help himself. He has to keep trying to solve this murder because it's like an insult to her filler, but, but if you take Dennis Quaid, if you just make him a regular juror, like any of the other black people, they're all black people on the jury, except for Dennis Quaid. I think there's one, there's like a Filipina and like eight black people at Dennis Quaid. Um,

and if you take him out or you make him just a regular juror, there's no movie. And his entire motivation for helping her is not that he's the killer. It's that he, he wants her. That's it. I was just going to add that one more way, it can't be an erotic thriller if anyone says at any point, you're going to get me disbarred. This isn't how things work. Or please stop being, please stop. If anyone is practical and is like, we actually can't have sex because that's going to have some long-term problems. It's not an erotic thriller.

But interestingly about Suspect, which is, by the way, for anybody who hasn't seen it, this came out in 1987. Parentheses, Cher had, her 1987 is as good as almost anybody's year. Sidney Poitier's 1967 and Cher's 1987 are, I mean, maybe Julia Roberts had one of these years. I got to figure out which year that would be for her. But Cher had Moonstruck,

Suspect, The Witches of Eastwick, and her comeback album all happened in that year. Who had a better 1980s? Who had a better year than Cher's 1987? That's a better year than, than shares 1987. That's a whole,

that's a whole other idea for a podcast that I, we, I don't want to spoil that. Um, I would say that the thing about Sharon, that movie is she, she does say to him at some point, Amanda,

look, you're going to get me disbarred. And, and, um, John Mahoney, who's the judge in the case, you guys got to see this movie.

It's ridiculous. Of course he is. That's pretty, he's, that's perfect. Judge John Mahoney is like, I can see you guys talking to each other in the library. What is going on? You were so unprofessional woman, but it does not, it does not stop her from like, at some point he gets stabbed and winds up in her apartment. You know what happens at some, he just won't leave her

alone. And so she succumbs to him. I guess we have to go, ah. She gives in to Dennis Quaid. And so it kind of counts as an erotic thriller. I'm not going to die on the hill to argue that it is one. It just doesn't have the nerve to have the sex. That's the only thing missing from that movie. So we're going to do a top 10. The top 10 is going to roam from 1980 through about 2005. And that is kind of the heartbeat. I would say 83 through 95 is really like the core time, but there are some outliers that we wanted to hit on. I guess before we get into the movies themselves, you know, this genre really effectively did die.

I mean, they really, they still make the Blank from Hell movie, but they don't make the erotic thriller. I think there's probably a few reasons for that. If you guys have some thoughts about why, I'd be curious too. I think obviously middle ground dramas is just not really a genre anymore. And the only reason to make them is because award season typically rewards them, which then helps drive box office and anything that doesn't really fit into that realm kind of struggles to get made.

In addition to that, I think we are like a more prude society. And I think in part because of social media and because of the exposure that it has given a lot of famous people, there just seems to be less interest in doing the kinds of things on screen that you needed to do to make these movies successful. Do you think that's right, Amanda? I mean, I do think

that's right. I think we just, we're in polls now. We are both, there's a lot of extremely widely accessible sexual content available to anyone by the internet if they want to seek that out. But we do expect that it stays hidden. And there's kind of what you do in public and what you do in private, which I do think is certainly more conservative, but it's not that it doesn't exist. It's just how we process it and where we think it is like quote appropriate. Yeah, that seems right to me. I also but it's not that it doesn't exist. It's just how we process it and where we think it is like quote appropriate. Um, yeah, that seemed right to me. I also think it's important

that these movies that the, the, the, the watershed of these movies happened during the AIDS crisis. And while people were dying of sex, people were dying of sex. And there was a real, there was a, I mean, the movies are panicked. This genre of movie is slightly panicked about sex, maybe not between the participants, but the, but the way that these movies are always set in spaces that require people to do self-interrogation or to explain their behavior or justify it, whether it's a psychiatrist's office, a courtroom, or some interrogation room because you're watching a police procedural, there's some degree to which Alfred Hitchcock is rearing his head in the AIDS era where people who want sex and enjoy sex have to die because, because they love it so much,

um, which is a sort of grim place to, to, to, to go. But I mean, there's no way to divorce this genre and its popularity from what was happening on this planet, you know, in a real crisis oriented way for 20 years, 25 years. And well, maybe not that long, but like almost like almost 20 years, basically we were, we were super duper terrified of, of sex in a way that going to watch movies about people who weren't scared of having sex. sex, but where there were repercussions for some of the sex being had. But this is just in this one genre, by the way. I mean, in the 80s, all movies had sex. Like Sally Field was having sex in movies.

That's how pervasive sex was. And so I don't know i feel like i feel like it on the one hand you did have this sort of societal crisis but you also had this moral and cultural situation where i mean you said this earlier sean but like there was this this real determination not to give in to to like nancy into like Nancy Reagan and, you know, Tipper Gore and the culture of, you know, artistic conservatism that was driving so much of our politics in relation to our culture during that period. The other thing that happened, I think, in addition to a generation of people being chilled on the idea of casual sex is places like Cinemax started making their own bad versions of

these movies. And they became very dominant. Yeah. Shannon and, and, and, uh, is it Shannon weary as well?

Like there were, there was a sort of like a generation of stars who were basically just making soft core and soft core became the new version of this. And the mood, the sort of mainstream movies got slightly more, they tightened their belt a little bit. You could find those movies on Cinemax before internet porn, as Amanda points out,

was more widely available. Now there's this like massive diversion between what's private and what's public. The private is very illicit. The public is very safe, unless you're like Kim Kardashian, in which case the human body is like more of an art piece than it is an object of like sexual fetishization.

Right, right, right. But even there, like the sex scenes that we have now, we had to go through the whole phase of like, of deconstructing the sex scene and showing the reality versus like this, like slick kind of choreographed,

possibly vaguely unrealistic though. I not you know if you're having sex like the movies we're about to discuss and as long as it's safe and consensual and no one's dying that's great for you but you know I think we just we had to do all these things where watch all these movies with like awkward people having sex and it it was a real bummer because that happened like in my 20s and then everyone was like that what we now consider a sex scene is like a bunch of people in brooklyn like fumbling with the lights on just like this is not what anybody wants in real life or in the movies but the movies did seem to go through that like moment of convulsion and trying to deal with the the myth versus the reality of what we see on screen which i guess for a generation that's what they wanted i don't know i kind of

missed the other way so the the genre theoretically is coming back later this year amanda and i have talked about it a couple of times already one of our most anticipated movies of the year is called deep water and it is the return of Adrian Lyne, who has not made a movie in well over a decade. And this movie, did you, Wesley, did you not know this was happening? I did not know this. Oh my God, Wesley, can I tell you who's in it?

Yes. It's Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. Yes, yes. That's why they're dating. They filmed and then they got together oh my god i know this is why we wanted to do this in many ways because theoretically there's going to be a boom in in movies like this if this turns out well now oh my god i i can't But you guys, who wrote the script for one thing? Do we know? Do we have a writer?

That's A. And then B, there is something important to remember about Adrian Lyon. And I don't want to play this card, but what is he like 80? Adrian Lyon is 79 years old. This film has two writers, one of whom is Zach Helm, whose work I'm not super familiar with. The other is very notable.

It's Sam Levinson, creator of Euphoria. So I suspect that this will be a highly charged film. And if it comes back, great. They have to do it. They really, they gotta, you gotta. They gotta go for it. You gotta go for it. I mean, and you they have to, they have to do it. They really, they gotta, you gotta, you gotta go for it. I mean, and you don't really even have to go for it.

Really. If you think about it, like if you watch the sex that Willem Dafoe is having with Julianne Moore in body of evidence, that is, that is just a sex scene that's there to prove that Willem Dafoe will really, you know, he's not a bad husband.

He's still in love and enjoys having sex with his wife, who enjoys having the sex with him. And it is not some, like, throwaway sex scene. It is like, they're doing it. And she is really having a good time, that Julianne Moore.

Let me tell you something. Really enjoy that scene. Huge fan of Julianne Moore. Right. I like a scene, I like that kind of sex. Where, I mean, in a movie like Body of Evidence, it right i i like a scene i like that kind of sex where i mean in a movie like body of evidence it's there to make a point about about his his fealty to his family um but there's a breakfast scene that would have done that just well just just fine right like but no

the thing that's going to make us believe that Madonna is really that sexually powerful is that we need to see him loving having sex with Julianne Moore first. I think that that kind of sex in movie, I mean, this Adrian Lyne movie with Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, like they have to just go for it. And you can't put any pressure on yourself. You just got to like, the thing about Madonna and Willem Dafoe in body of evidence is they look like they were really, that just looked like easy peasy. You know, is it, is it Thursday? I can't believe I get paid to do this sex. I don't know. I feel like are those two people in this new Adrian line movie going to go there because I can spot, I can spot two people who are the wrong sexual orientation making out a mile away i'm this is you know it's the thing that ruins all sex now is that you can just tell who's really into it and who's not and nobody's like a lot of people aren't good enough

actors to fake that which is the great thing also about this genre. There's nobody, nobody appears to be faking anything. Like everybody's most, in most cases, they seem to enjoy, I believe the sex that I'm watching people simulate. What percentage of co-stars in erotic thrillers do you think actually had sex? You don't have to say who, just what percentage? See, I'm naive about this sort of thing. I know very little about the meat that goes into the sausage casing um all right it's quite a metaphor um i don't know that's a good one i would say i'd say somewhere between 45 and 50 percent

what do you think amanda i think i'm also naive like wesley so i would say I'd say somewhere between 45 and 50 percent. What do you think Amanda. I think I'm also naive like Wesley. So I would say 50 percent. OK. We'll agree on 50 percent which is a lot.

That's a lot of that's a lot. That's a lot. I don't know. But you know a lot of people who aren't in erotic thrillers but do a movie

together get wrapped up in it and then wind up having sex. It's an intimate experience. Wrapped up in it. and then wind up having sex. It's an intimate experience. Wrapped up in it. Okay. Let's go to our top 10. But before we do that, we're going to take a quick break to hear a word from Bill Simmons. Hi, Bill.

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I just wanted to make sure you were listening to podcasts on Spotify. Here's how you do it. First, search for your favorite podcast on Spotify's app. They have a library of over 750,000 pods at this point. So let's say you're searching for the Rewatchables or the Dave Chang Show or the Ringer NBA Show. Once you find them, click on the follow button. That's how you subscribe. Then click on those letters near the top of the app

that say podcasts. All the pods you're following will pop up separated by episodes, downloads, and shows. Wait, it gets better. On Spotify, you can adjust the speed of the pods to seven different speeds. 0.5 times is the slowest. I actually sound drunk at 0.5. You can do 0.8 times, 1.2 times, which is my favorite. Everyone sounds like they just had a good cup of coffee. And then there's 1.5 times, two times. And if you're completely insane, three times. Anyway, Spotify's app connects directly to many of the best automobiles in the world.

Even has a car play feature. That's pretty cool. Best of all, it's free. Download Spotify on any device and you're good to go. Should you be embarrassed that you're not listening to podcasts on Spotify? Well, I don't want to app shame you, but the answer, unfortunately, is yes. Make the move. Listen to podcasts on Spotify. Back to yours. Okay, we're back in the big picture. We're ready to share our top 10s. You know, we've talked about fatal attraction a little bit already. The way that we've broken this down is we've each chosen three films. And then we all agreed that fatal attraction had to be on our list.

Wesley has already appeared on a rewatchables about that movie. I would encourage you to check it out. We don't need to spend too much time on packing it, but otherwise we're going to go in chronological order here. Amanda has the first pick due to chronology. Amanda, what'd you go with? I went with body heat,

which we have talked a little bit about already on this podcast. And it's just the first thing that came to my head because it really, to me, is the quintessential, oh, they're just going to show a sex scene for a while movie. So obviously, Body Heat is 1981, written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner. starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner. And William Hurt and Kathleen Turner just really, really, really have a lot of sex. And this movie, I mean, they do. It is.

It is a remake of Double Indemnity and, or not a remake, but it kind of really heavily leans on Double Indemnity, except they added in all the implied sex scenes. And I get a kick out of that. I do remember watching, I remember the moment when I realized that like old movies were implying sex and I, it took me longer probably than it should have as a young person. Like, I remember when I realized that, you know, in Casablanca, when Ilsa goes back to Rick's apartment to get the letters and they cut to the light tower and you're supposed to understand that they had sex.

I don't think I knew that until my 20s, but it's OK because I know now and I hope that they had a lovely time. When did you figure out Hitchcock's fireworks? I know. I'm not a very smart movie watcher i just kind of like oh it's on the screen okay that's that's what's happening which is i think why i like this genre because i'm like oh they're having sex i get it now but this to me is the quintessential yeah just the implied sex is the quite literal sex i think it's great it's like It's like a, it's a very, it's a very interesting feature debut

for a, for a writer director. You know, Kaz then had written a Star Wars movie and had been a screenwriter. But for this to be his, like he'd never really made

another movie even close to this. And it just seems like more of a genre exercise in the context of his filmography now. But the first time that this happened when this

movie came out in 81 you must have been like wow we have like the new sexy filmmaker of our time and if you ever see an interview with Lawrence Kazan you might be confounded by that idea but he really does like he really he really makes it work I really like this movie and it basically introduces two major movie stars of their era who are

now totally forgotten like William Hurt and Kathleen Turner just don't even have, I feel like a public reputation, but they are so beautiful. Kathleen Turner, you know, she means something to gay people still. I mean,

she, not that she doesn't mean it. Well, I mean, for one thing, she's in Provincetown all the time. So she's basically, you know,

she and John Waters are just, they, they're the mayor and mayor of Provincetown. I mean, with all due respect to the actual mayor of Provincetown, if Provincetown does have a mayor. But, you know, she does, she, I think she means something to a lot of people. She just doesn't work as much, right? She doesn't, she's really, I mean, I've seen her on stage a couple times in the last, you know, 10 years. And she's wonderful on stage too.

She's a really good stage actor. This movie, you know, I think that there's something, I don't, this is one of those movies that I don't believe feels a little, I think I said this before. It feels, it feels like an impersonation. It feels like somebody just turned 18 or it feels like somebody, you know, just got their driver's license. Yeah, all of us. Me, when I saw Kathleen Turner naked, I was like, I'm legal now.

Well, I think that's how Lawrence Kasdan is too. What do you mean, what? I can hire some actors and make them take their clothes off? Couldn't do this on Empire Strikes Back or whichever one I wrote. That's the one. Let's go for it. But the thing that makes the movie, there are two things that make the movie. There's a kind of, and you just had it because this is how movies used to be made. There's a

kind of on-the-spot realism that comes out of the chemistry of the actors in the space. So all the scenes that are set in the diner, I think, are really great. I think that when he picks her up on that boardwalk, that is one of the best pickups of anybody in any work of fiction I've ever watched or read. And part of what's so good about it is it is completely hormonally driven, but he, she can, how do I put this? She catches everything,

every pitch that, that she throws, he catches. And, or is it, I don't know which, I don't know who's the pitcher and who's the catcher in this metaphor. Yay.

Um, but And or is it I don't know which I don't know who's the pitcher and who's the catcher in this metaphor. Yay. But they're they're in sync with each other in a way that she there's a version of this where Barbara Stanwyck, if if if Fred McMurray were a loose like creep, she'd slap him. You know, in this version of the way William Hurt is going after Kathleen Turner. But in this one, I just believe it. He knows he's going to get her and she wants him to keep trying because she wants to be got. And I'm not thinking about the murder plot at this point. I'm not thinking about the, the murder plot at this point, I'm thinking about two people who were looking for a way to get in one of their beds. Um, and that's just, that was just exciting.

Now the rest of the movie, as far as I'm concerned, jumps out, like goes off a cliff at that point. Um, you know, I, I do like them as,

as a relationship, as a sexual relationship. I do too. You're in it for the bodies and you're in it for the heat. That's really why the movie works. It's an okay noir with some really great movie star stuff going on. My pick number two is Body Double, the aforementioned Brian De Palma masterpiece, one of the most twisted mainstream movies ever released.

It is, like so many brian de palma movies hugely influenced by alfred hitchcock it's like if alfred hitchcock just whipped it out um it's very strange it is it literally is well done it stars craig wasson uh phil an actor who like really went on to do very little after this movie, even though he's at the center of one of the more famous movies in this genre. Is it because he can't act, Sean? He's not a good actor. I'm not going to defend Craig Wasson.

It's way over his head. And there are a lot of actually very good actors in this movie. Greg Henry's great as kind of like the over-the-top villain. And Melanie Griffith gives what I would describe as a very meaningful performance to me uh it's about a young actor who kind of loses his way and is struggling with some version of claustrophobia or stage fright and encounters another aspiring actor and finds himself ensnared in a complicated plot about a woman who lives across from the the giant home that he is house sitting that home is house sitting.

That home is called the Chemosphere. It's a very memorable architectural landmark in Los Angeles. And, you know, it's a movie about watching other people and pursuing things you shouldn't pursue. It's very sexy and also very kind of odd and strange and gross. And it has a very unusual pace to it. It really works in three distinct acts, and you never really know what's going on even though it's incredibly obvious what's going on in terms of where the story is headed but at one point the movie just turns into a um frankie goes

to hollywood video and that's like one of the most exciting one of the most exciting things i've ever seen in a movie like a movie the movie just turns into a music video and then just turns into a porno and if you if you like boogie nights you can imagine how many times paul thomas anderson watched body double to prepare for boogie nights because there's so much of it in just that small section of the movie i really like it i'm like i'm a big diploma fan while acknowledging that i think half of his movies don't work this is one that that I really, really love. I mean, one thing about Body Double that's important to mention is that, you know, in I never really liked this kind of casting for a person who also has a fetish, like who has many fetishes, but like De Palma's Hitchcock fetish invariably leads him to cast Tippi Hedren's daughter in, in, you know, in what I would say is a

star making, she has a star making moment in this movie. Um, and I, you know, I think it's ingenious in some ways and I think it's kind of like, well, no, it's purely ingenious, but it risks making me uncomfortable. But anyway, Griffith's character, her name is Holly Body, which I just feel like that's worth mentioning here. And I mean, I don't know if we just want to play a clip of the contract negotiation scene or like whether it's worth just reciting because it is such a, I mean, I'm shocked that in college we never watched this for any of our, you know, feminist cinema. I mean, you really have to have a person who understands what is happening in a scene like that. And it's easy, and I wouldn't fault anybody for discounting who the agents are in the, who the authors are and the agents are in the creation of this scene. But she totally owns it.

And the character is basically stipulating the kind of sex she will and will not be having. And it's just, it's just an amazing scene. And Melanie Griffith, who I don't know. I, I have always believed in Melanie Griffith.

I did a really good group, Melanie Griffith impersonation when I was in, when I was in middle school. Um, she wasn't one of my film. Um, just in general, I could do a Melanie Griffith,

like ordering an omelet at a diner if I wanted to. Um, but there's, you know, she just, there's something about her. She's a surprise. Everything about her. She is cast to surprise you

not with the plot but with the things that come out of her mouth and for how smart she doesn't sound but always is in movies um it's just she's she's one of my favorite she is one of my favorite stars, period. Mostly for just how little sense she so often makes in being cast. And the best example of that is Shining Through, which I won't... If you've never seen Shining Through, just rent Michael Douglas and Melanie Griffith in Shining Through. I'm not even going to tell you what it's about, but it is the most ridiculous movie maybe ever made. Notable too that her daughter is Dakota Johnson, the star of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, creating three consecutive generations of beautiful, desired film actresses. Amanda, I think this was the first time you saw Body Double, right? Yes, it was. And this was the first movie that my husband chose to watch he was like okay

the project starts with body double which was just a tremendous flex by him i had an interesting reaction to this you know i was thinking like the danger in these movies is interesting because usually for the most part the danger i mean is obviously sex but then is also someone else who has some sort of mental issue. But the danger is other, right? And in this particular case- But with sex, by the way, the danger, the person's, the sex is dangerous, but then the person who is dangerous is dangerous almost because of sex. Yes. But it's all outside danger. You're getting entangled in something else.

The danger in this one is that this person is a creep. The danger is really ultimately extremely, it is located in the protagonist, which is like interesting. I found it a little bit harder to not judge this person. I mean, and these movies do all ask you, maybe, I mean, they do ask you to judge the various characters

and whether you do or not is depending on what kind of experience you want to have. But there are embedded morals and like this is, if you go down this road, then you're going to pay the consequences. And for some reason, I don't, I enjoy yelling like,

why are you doing this at most people in these movies even as they're just like making really stupid decisions it's part of the fun and then this one I was just kind of like oh this is pretty creepy but that has value right I mean it definitely got a reaction out of me it is a very um vivid unsettling, kind of weird movie. And it's also just to the extent that being obsessed with movies and seeing yourself in movies and all of this stuff and everything we do here is like a masqueratory

endeavor. This really sums it up quite nicely. There we go. Well, that's a little on the nose, right? That is the lighthouse in a movie we're not going to talk about called fatal final analysis have you guys seen that one i did i re-watched it for this podcast that is richard gear that to me feels like an all get out get out they're all gonna burn

you're all gonna burn it anyway sorry there's a shot of a lighthouse at some point yeah and for fans of the film, the lighthouse, if you're confused, the lighthouse represents a giant male phallus. So just, you know, these are, these are, these are important things to know.

So Wesley, you chose jagged edge, which you mentioned a little bit earlier in the conversation. I, before you explain why I just want to give you quickly the context under which I saw jagged edge. I took a class in high school an elective class called um i believe it was called law and the courtroom and the class was built to appear to be a courtroom with a jury bench and a sort of the approaching the judge's

bench and where'd you gallery public high school waltman High School in Long Island. But for whatever reason, they kitted out this room. And my teacher was a lovely man whose name I forget, but who was very lazy and showed us a lot of films. And he showed us Jagged Edge in full over two classes, which is not appropriate.

I just need to say that right now. I was 15 years old. Yes, Amanda. Can I just say, actually, I do think it's appropriate because I'd never seen this movie and I loved it. I can't wait to talk about it with you, Wesley.

But it does not have a lot of sex. That's true. There's one key scene, right? Yeah. So why did you choose this, Wesley? Well, I kind of misunderstood the rules for what we were doing today. No, no. This qualifies. I just got some things that I thought were essential to the understanding of how the genre works, right?

The reason I chose Jagged Edge was because after Fatal Attraction, I saw Glenn Close. I mean, after Fatal Attraction, I just knew that Glenn Close was my favorite actor. And I immediately went to our Errol's video and rented a copy of Jagged Edge and was just so taken by how poised this woman who just makes one bad choice after another. That's the thing about these movies. And I just want to make a distinction between a film noir and maybe um a blank from hell movie like they can all have a little bit you know an erotic thriller can be a little bit of both those things but the thing that that makes an erotic thriller an erotic thriller to me is somebody did something wrong and has to pay and the thing that they did wrong is entirely around having slept with somebody. What rule did you break? Whether it was the vows of your marriage, what's the legal Hippocratic oath? Whatever that is. Or are you a cop who shouldn't be sleeping with the suspect?

Somebody has to pay for the attraction. That's how, that's to me, how erotic thrillers, that's an engine of the erotic thriller is somebody being paid, being made to pay for lust. And jagged edge is a great one because this is a woman who only because the genre dictates it sleeps with Jeff Bridges. Now he is looking good. He, he is, he is outrageously handsome. There are some people,

oh my God, young Jeff Bridges. I mean, we can talk about old Jeff Bridges too, but oh my God, young Jeff Bridges. I was astonished. I had not seen this movie. The grooming, the wardrobe, I have to tell you, his home is one of the great homes. We need to talk more about real estate as it plays into this genre at some point. Oh, it's 100% important. The horses. Oh, yeah. All these movies have animals, by the way. There are two sub things in these movies that are important to note. The presence of black people and what black people do in these movies. They almost all, and they're not all racist.

Although some of them are about racism in a weird way. But some of them- They're all detectives. Right. There's so many detectives. Judges, detectives, homeless people. Suspect is the realest DC movie I have ever seen. It goes to all of the places that make Washington, DC, Washington, DC,

and knows what exactly all the problems are. It's a terrible movie, but yet whoever wrote it really understands. I think Eric, did Eric Roth write that? I want to say Eric Roth wrote Sus suspect. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Um, jagged edge is just an absurd movie. You know, you know, almost instantly because none of the red herrings are really that persuasive who did it, but you also don't blame. This is the other thing about the genre. Do, do you understand why the person who had the wrong sex had the wrong sex? And in every case, in all of these movies where that is applicable, it is a hundred percent relatable. Who would not

have had sex with Jeff Bridges? Like if I'm, if I'm Jeff Bridges, his lawyer, and I think he might have killed his wife. And I know that like, I shouldn't have sex with this person because he might have probably done it. And I'm his lawyer and his wife hasn't been dead for 10 minutes. But he's Jeff Bridges and he's looking so good. He looks like Randy Orton with all of Randy Orton's kinks straightened out. That's Jeff Bridges in this movie. Incredible, Con. I've said before that George Clooney is my hair icon,

but Jeff Bridges in this movie is like, has my haircut. My mom when I was five must have just taught me that that's how you should wear your hair because it's like right now it is replicating. Maybe that's not a good look for a 25 year old haircut but nevertheless um i mean did you like you like jagged edge you were you were switched on by bridges yes i i really really did understand the impulse of wanting to sleep with jeff bridges

though i will say i was kind of mad at glenn close's character because she decides to sleep with him very quickly it is really just like they have one meeting and then they ride horses. And I do understand the particular appeal of horses in this scenario. I'm just saying it happens very quickly. I didn't really get a lot of foreplay, even for the context of this genre, which doesn't usually do a ton of foreplay. That's okay. And then they just just their covert skills are terrible they're like when they're sitting in the courtroom just like making eyes at each other and i'm just like there is a courtroom full of people here who are picking gonna pick up on what's going on it was i don't understand how they got away with it and and that's part of what i like about it

there is a preposterousness to all of these movies of like this doesn't make sense and you're yelling at the screen. But I was yelling at this screen for them to just like tone it down in court just a little. Wait till you see Dennis Quaid and Cher and Suspect. You're just like, are you guys fucking kidding me right now? If people came in here

not owning stock in Suspect, they are going to be sadly disappointed when they learn that that is the most beloved movie on this podcast, even though it's not on our list. So that's number three, Jagged Edge. Number four is Fatal Attraction, which we've talked about already. Number five is my pick, Sea of Love, 1989,

which I wonder if you think that this is actually an erotic thriller. I don't know if both you guys had a chance to revisit it. Very interesting movie. A little bit more high class than some of the other movies on this list. Directed harold becker written by the great new york writer richard price who if you watch the outsider earlier this year that's his work he's written uh on the wire and a lot of other television shows and he's obviously a hugely accomplished novelist great novelists one of the great novelists um this is a pretty early uh hollywood gig for him and a very slick kind of neo-noir movie that

features a really it's the first stages of weird over-the-top pacino to me um that sort of in that this is after scarface yeah that's true but like this that performance had to be over the top and this one doesn't have to be oh you mean where it's just like a, like it's Tuesday and he's who he's a lot. Yeah. He's just like, you know, when it's the wet ass hour, you know,

like the weird shit that he's saying in this movie. Um, and Ellen Barkin, who is, uh, Jesus Christ. Just incredible. Just throwing a 107 miles an hour in this movie.

Who do we know the story? I mean, she's probably told, she had a really great, uh, she had a great Koppelman podcast episode. Um, and I don't remember,

I was, there was so many other things that she talked about with Brian Koppelman in that, in that episode that I don't remember if she told the story of how she got into the movies, but how the hell did Ellenen barkin get in the movies some you just like who was the person who cast her like that person deserves a lot because there's a there's a there's a version of this where like she does not they skip her they skip right over her

i mean the reason that i picked this movie is, it is very sexy and it has a pretty good mystery element to it, but it is by far the most New York movie of this kind ever made. And Barkin is, is pure Bronx. Like she is so many people in my family are just like her, the way that she talks, the way that she looks, the way that she styles her hair, her attitude, her sense of humor, her very specific, the way that her character in this movie looks at the world and looks at her her prey or her partner depending on how she sees al pacino in the movie um and their their dynamic is just incredible and it's not exactly the same like fireworksy zeitgeisty basic instinct style movie that a lot of these others are but um because she doesn't represent yeah she doesn't represent what glenn close represents right which is both like a career woman and a threat to the to the to the american family a single career woman who represents a threat to the american

family but ellen barkin oh man you know the thing about this is definitely an erotic thriller i thought about this and i i understand why you're, the thing about, this is definitely an erotic thriller. I thought about this and I understand why you're asking the question because really this is the only one of these movies that I've ever seen that is about men. It's just about male relationships and this woman enters the picture and I mean, it's all he can talk about to these other dudes, right? I met this girl. There's this woman in the picture. And I mean, it's all he can talk about to these other dudes,

right? I met this girl. There's this woman in my life. She, you know, they set up this stake that, you know, all of his, I mean, there's some good, I don't know if this is Sean, you can speak to this better than, than, than I could, but like, is this a common NYPD tactic? Like to set up these immensely illegal to get all these dudes together to say that they're going to meet the yankees and then surprise you're all under arrest it's the best the opening sequence it's like it's not a sex scene but it is a different kind of um emotional and physical engagement yeah anyway i i i love i i, the thing that I like about this movie is I like the twist. Although Roger Ebert's, I don't know if you, Roger,

Roger Ebert did not like this movie because of the ending. He said he could justify it. And so can I, um, it's really twisted. You know, speaking of like, speaking of AIDS era paranoia, this is, this is, this is a deep one. And I'm not going to ruin it, but it's wild. I did not see that. I didn't see that. I'm not even going to just, I didn't see it coming.

I didn't see it coming. It also unusually has an unusual like sweet coda. Oh, that scene is great the end scene i don't want to spoil it but like most of these movies don't end with like oh man i love these people you know like and that is how you kind of how you walk out of sea i hope they make it i hope they make it yeah yeah i mean yeah amanda yeah i did want to talk a little bit about that because as you both pointed out, he Pacino does seem to have real affection for this woman. He is taken with her beyond the just,

you know, pure lust way that is so often included in these movies. And I don't know whether I, I think it's nice. I think it's nice. I think it's nice. I like those people. I, too, am rooting for them. But I don't know whether I count it.

Well, I just I kind of don't think in this genre, one signifier of an erotic thriller for me is that like they can't. This is not love. I'm sorry. And sometimes they say it's love and maybe they even think it's love, but it is not love. That's not what we're doing here. There are other genres for that.

There are other scenes for that. And maybe that speaks very poorly of me that that's what I expect and want from these movies, but I'm not really here for the emotional complications. But should we say though, that the thing about the movie, the premise that you as a moviegoer are led to believe is that is the case is that ellen barkin is murdering men that she's having sex with and al pacino and john goodman who plays

his partner like young very charismatic privately sexy johnman. There's a scene where Al Pacino comes home to his apartment, to his own apartment and finds John Goodman there because he told him he could be. And John Goodman is having sex with someone else who's not his wife. And John Goodman is wearing this t-shirt that is two sizes too big for him and his chest is kind of like hanging out a bit a little bit. It is, that is not an erotic thriller, but it is just erotic. It's as erotic as John Goodman

has ever gotten for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I think that the idea that Ellen Barkin is murdering men and putting on an old,

an old 45 instead of smoking a cigarette is kind of a dumb idea for me. But the place that it goes and the need that these detectives have to believe that it might be a woman doing this, they're all convinced it's got to be a woman, it's got to be a woman, it's got to be a woman. And where that takes them and part of the thrill for them, because John Goodman is also sleeping with a suspect.

Or no, no, no. He's sleeping with a woman. It gets complicated. But he's sleeping with someone who's involved in the investigation. She's a witness, technically or possibly. And there's something about the titillation of the dangerous sex that is driving that movie. I think it counts. I think anything where the premise is that people are being murdered via 90s personal ads definitely counts within the sex is danger erotic thriller.

I just wanted to make the case against real emotions for whatever reason you know i think they kept that i they kept that ending because it was too good not to keep i definitely don't think that that ending it maybe it was even in the script but i think that movie probably had a different ending and they saw that play they saw how they how that scene played just not even maybe with an audience, but like it just between two actors and the like the, oh my God, he's so,

he's never been more charming than he is in those five minutes. I love it. And just how, just the effect that he has on her. Oh my God.

I'm getting chills just thinking about how good they are in the last five minutes of that movie. I would have watched Nora Ephron's Sea of Love 2 immediately. It would be an incredible movie set in New York, Pennsylvania. Yeah, it's just a different type of movie.

Let's go to number six. So, Wesley, you picked Basic Instinct. As I said, there's a massive rewatchables about Basic Instinct. Is there anything quickly that you want to say about this immensely important film to this genre well it's the one that sort of takes all of the principles of the genre to the extent that i mean joe esterhouse wrote it so he clearly knows the rules he invented them and it sort of lays everything out. It is, there is an actual shrink. I mean, it's like, it's like a department store erotic thriller. It is got, it's got a murder plot.

It's got a psychology wing. There's a legal element and there's, there's omnivorous sexuality that goes in, in two directions. There is, there's a rape. There's an actual rape. And the reaction, the woman, Jeannie Triplehorn's reaction to being raped is one for the psychologists in real life.

There is the moment where Michael Douglas realizes that she wasn't kidding about using him for a book and then being done with him. Like Michael Douglas is giving a performance in this movie. I know Sharon Stone is very good, but, but Michael Douglas is giving a performance in this movie. He is someplace that isn't even on the page.

He like, she is really breaking his heart and he really can't believe what is happening to him in this movie. He, like, she is really breaking his heart. And he really can't believe what is happening to him in this movie. It's just, it is,

it might be one of my favorite Michael Douglas movies in a movie that is, like, kind of queasy and a little reprehensible, but not,

but I actually don't think it's reprehensible. I think it's fascinating for the risks that it takes in terms of what it is arguing about human sexuality.

And it makes some weird moral choices, but I think it is one of the great attempts to make somewhat ridiculous sense out of something that is inherently ridiculous about human beings, which is just our desire for each other. It's a strong case. That's a way more sophisticated case than I have, which is everybody just looks really hot in this movie. It's completely absurd. It reminds me a lot of listening to Howard Stern in the 90s. I loved Howard Stern in the 90s. And like all good tri-state area New York kids was kind of fascinated similarly by the same way that he would kind of explore inappropriate subjects in a very approachable way and you knew that there was something wrong about it that there was something uncouth insensitive at times certainly on the edge

of decency but also i i just couldn't turn away i could i loved listening to stern and i feel very similarly about basic instinct even though I know that there are certain aspects of the movie that are just like super problematic. Forget the modern version of what problematic is and how loaded

that term is now. It's just there are certain parts of the movie that are just like what the fuck were they thinking when they made this?

Well, but that's kind of both a point and the appeal of Basic Instinct. It's supposed to be over the top. It is pushing your button. We are going there.

Yes. And it's, there's an intentionality to it that like makes it like a little, I don't want to say safer. Cause I get, it's a ridiculous over the top movie, but you know that they're, they're trying to do that.

They are, as Wesley said, going there. And the amazing thing about it is that it is so ridiculous and also everyone's so good at it. And it still is like kind of sexy, which some of the movies that really go over the top at this point in 2020, they're like kind of silly and you're not really drawn into the world as much.

And you still very much are with Basic Instinct. Just one more thing about this movie this also to me is the culmination of the sort of straight appropriation of aids era gay paranoia um sex movies it is i mean just the way bisexuality functions in this movie and the way like Roxy and, and Catherine's sex life is both enhanced and, and threatened by the presence of this man. Um, I mean, he is the disease in some way. Um,

but then so, so to him is, is Catherine. Um, I mean the, the degree to which like we're talking about addiction and, and catching a, catching a sort of metaphorical virus, although I'm sort of morally opposed to viruses, metaphors, my people are anyway, I, there's something about this movie

that really speaks to that moment. And a lot of the reaction against it when it came out was, I mean, from queer people who were just like, are you fucking kidding? People are out here dying. Can we not be dignified in any way for like 30 seconds? Why are we the killers? There's a real killer out there and it needs a drug. And if you guys were really concerned about gay people, you'd be out there helping us try to fight for one, for some treatment. Anyway, I think that this movie, both in the film itself and beyond it, is the sort of apotheosis of the moment in which these movies were being made and were most popular. And this is the high water mark for the genre, right? I mean, it's the most popular of these movies. And it's the one that maybe it didn't do the craziest stuff, but it,

it maybe did the third or fifth craziest stuff. I still love it. I, even though I have complicated feelings about it, I mean, you had, you had number seven. What'd you pick?

I did. I put single white female into the mix, which I rewatched it yesterday is not a particularly well-made or great film with a capital G, but to me is a very memorable and I was greatly affected by it when I first saw it. It is of the from hell genre, and I suppose technically it would be their roommate from hell. But, you know, I kind of saw it as the woman from hell in a woman to woman relationship. It is technically about the relationship or our relationship between two women and how obsession can spiral out of control or mental health can spiral out of control as the case may be.

This is, I guess guess technically by our definition, it's not a pure erotic thriller because there are some sex scenes, including one very memorable blowjob, but they aren't going at it the whole time. They're more like little grace notes of sex, like one person watching the other masturbate or the blowjob or just

some nudity because you could do that in the 90s. I think this is also just a peak 90s movie for me. And I really do associate these movies with the 80s and 90s. They are of their time for their morals and their cultural settings, but also like the look of them and the wardrobe and the truly terrible haircut. Like maybe the worst haircut ever committed to film

that Bridget Fonda is wearing at the beginning and then Jennifer Jason Leigh copies as part of her obsession. I guess they're like, are they doing like the Linda Evangelista? But you know they doing like the Linda Evangelista, but you know, they're not Linda Evangelista. Like what is that haircut?

Well, that's the thing about the haircut is that I was like having rewatched it. Like, I don't know. You don't know. I mean, Tabitha Soren, it's got more body than, I mean, Tabitha Soren wasn't going for that haircut. That was just her haircut. It just was a thing. I was like, I was, what I was thinking when I was watching, it was like, that was a haircut that was supposed to be a thing and it never happened. It never, it never happened. It's such an interesting movie too,

because a lot of these films fall under this this category of slightly high-minded filmmaker comes into this genre playground and tries to gussy it up a little bit like this is barbara schroeder who is coming off of reversal fortune and barfly and i mean barbara schroeder is swiss filmmaker guy who um produced celine and julie go boating you know what i mean like he is a very he's in some respects a very hallowed international filmmaker but then he makes this movie and then he makes kiss of death and then he makes before and after and he just kind of gets mired in this very 90s like you're describing amanda like kind of trashy kind of slick hollywood fair

but all of those movies are very watchable you know like they're not they're not disasters but it's so strange that he pivots out of the oscar glory of reversal of fortune into these kinds of movies i never really understood that but you know like a lot of you know seemingly celebrated international paul verhoeven is one of the godfathers of this form too and he obviously has made some of the most important erotic thrillers ever. So I always find that interesting that like it was kind of a classy genre, even though it was so illicit at the time. The problem with this movie, though, I mean, the person that you care about. I mean, this is I'm I am I you guys have heard me like fall into this trap before. But I anytime you watch a movie and you are more sort of sympathetic to the alleged villain,

and because the genre, because I mean, I don't, I, this is, this is a hundred percent a blank from hell movie that has like erotic thriller flavoring to me. I'm a hundred percent sympathetic to Jennifer Jason Lee's character like Hedy is her is the character's name but the performance is the reason that you're on board I mean Jennifer Jason Lee this was in the the at the beginning of her great sort of like 10 year stretch where she was great in, in about, you know, 17 movies and bad and only one.

Hello, backdraft. I see you, Jennifer, Jason Lee and backdraft. Um, but that, that was like doing,

that was like her paycheck movie. That was like her Amy Adams and Superman moment. I mean, she wasn't Amy Adams. She wasn't the Amy Adams. She was not the Amy Adams and Superman moment. I mean, she wasn't Amy Adams. She wasn't the Amy Adams. She was not the Amy Adams of 1991, but I'm, I'm just,

or 1990, but I'm just saying that, um, this was a, this was a good actor who made weird, interesting choices who wound up in a thing that she was only in because she had a good agent. Um,

but she's so good in this movie and the movie needs her, it needs her to die because like people would have been really pissed if she hadn't. And I also watching it again, really appreciated how much, like how great audience movies this is the blank from hell genre is. Right. And like, if you've got a little, um, blank from hell in your erotic thriller, it makes your erotic thriller function in a, in a sort of heightened level. Um, like sea of love

hats this, right. We're like, we don't know what her, what the blank from hell even is at this point. Um, but but but in single white female it is just you know once the once the puppy goes out the window and like i think that's 40 minutes in you're like wait there's another hour what what's she gonna do i feel that way in all of these movies they're all like something insane happens at the hour mark and then they have a whole rest of movie to make right right right um but yeah I don't know this doesn't like I'm there's a way in which

this could have been a great erotic thriller if it had turned it needed to turn two corners right he needed to either the boyfriend needed to either sleep with Jennifer Jason Leigh or Bridget Fond needed to sleep with Jennifer Jason Leigh or Bridget Fond needed to sleep with Jennifer Jason Leigh. Somebody, Jennifer Jason Leigh needed to have sex

with somebody and not herself. And without that, I don't, because we don't know, Jennifer Jason Leigh's illness is her sexual orientation, unfortunately, in this movie, right? And so we don't know, we don't know, we don't know,

we don't understand the motivation for her behavior beyond this stupid backstory the movie gives you. So I don't know. It doesn't feel, sex isn't motivating anybody to do anything here. No, I agree with that. And it doesn't go far enough, though. It is interesting, like at the climactic moment when Bridget Fonda is all tied up. Oh, that's when uh bridget fonda is oh that's a great point yep yep that's a great point and it is actually she she finally kisses jennifer jason lee and that's what jennifer jason lee you know gets her

to release her now like that's complicated but if i'm if i'm if i'm if i'm like if i'm act up or like you know some lgbtqia organization i'm like oh come on'm ACT UP or like, you know, some LGBTQIA organization, I'm like, oh, come on. Oh, come on. Now she's gay. She's gay to save her life. It's problematic. It's also a cop out. Like, if you're going to do it, why don't we do it?

But I guess also I saw this pretty young. Like, it was training wheels for me of being like oh interesting so there is this kind of sexual thing lurking in these scenarios that i like maybe wouldn't have picked up on and it is at least like you know there are enough bare breasts in this to tip me off that there's something else going on between besides your average like oh i just want to be her um the other thing can we just talk about the apartment oh my god that apartment I mean the apartment is just extraordinary

so it's like she lives on the upper west side a New York movie I think I want to say it's like near Broadway and 72nd

does that seem right to you I think it's 70 she didn't I don't know what the cross street was but it's 70 I think it's 70 it's not 72nd

is it 72nd it's in the 70s it's 70. It's not 72nd. Is it 72nd? It's in the seventies. It's in the seventies. Yeah. It looked near that, that subway station. And one of those like old magnificent upper West side buildings with like the towers and she lives in one of the towers. So they have those, you know, just majestic windows, which are not great for the puppy, but great for everybody else. And, you know, palatial bathroom and a random drawing room. And it's... Is it the Dakota?

I don't think it's the Dakota because I think it's further west. I think it's further towards the Hudson. Okay. You know, that's another thing of I moved to New York from watching movies like this and being like, oh, I too can have an apartment in a, in a tower with a roommate who really makes me uncomfortable, you know? And, and it's a, some of it sort of came true, but the, all of these movies. Oh, Amanda. No, I didn't actually, I didn't, I had a studio apartment but all of these movies just have like amazing amazing homes like the location is essential except for sea of love that's the

only one in the bunch that does not have great real estate that's a realistic portrayal of New York real estate the the home in your next pick Wesley Wesley, is also incredible. The movie is Body of Evidence and Madonna's estate. A lot of incredible things in this movie. We're running a little low on time, but Body of Evidence was quite a journey to revisit that film. Why did you choose it? Because it's one of the greatest erotic thrillers ever made, period. It is not a great movie, but it's a great erotic thriller. And it's the one that comes along at exactly the right moment where it's this 1993, this is after Basic Instinct,

and this is at the moment where Basic Instinct sort of breaks everything wide open and all of the rules for what these movies can do completely change. And there are, they're all about murder, but they're all about like how much sex can we, there's more sex in the movie than there is murder. And it just basic instinct just changed every, it essentially kind of killed the genre. It led the genre on a road to its death.

Because you couldn't, Basic Instinct is like a secretly smart movie. And it's also not so secretly brilliantly directed. And it also is secretly emotional, right? In terms of the relationships among all these characters. In every subsequent one of these movies that is like trying to drive the car off the cliff to bring in a completely other movie, these movies start to want to see what they can get away with. And in the writing, the movies sort of become, without acknowledging how meta they are, they become these self-analyses, right? Final Analysis, for instance, is a movie about,

it's an erotic thriller entirely set among mental patients and Richard gear. So is color of night and Bruce Willis and body of evidence is a courtroom drama in which Madonna's body, her sexual or sexual prowess is the murder weapon. Like in sex itself is on trial. I mean, you don't get any more farcical and, and, and parodic than that. Except the thing about the movie that I think makes it incredible is it never gives up on its ridiculousness.

It is not content to just be able to say, you know what, y'all? We're going to spend a grand total of 15 minutes letting Willem Dafoe and Madonna have sex on a number of occasions. The wax in this candle, it's real wax. The champagne in this bottle, it's real champagne. It's not ginger ale. And that tongue that's licking all that candle wax and champagne off Willem Dafoe's chest, that is not a stunt tongue. That is Madonna. I like the movie is not content to leave it there. There's this great sequence toward the end. I mean, there's two of them. One involves Julianne Moore and Madonna and the other involves Aunt Archer and Madonna. Wait, is there, wait, am I remembering this right? Is there a Julie,

is there another Julianne Moore and Madonna scene or does Madonna just do the thing she does to Julianne Moore? Anyway, it doesn't matter. It's great. This, this, it has one of the stupidest last 30 minutes of a movie you're ever going to see, but it's just, it's just a, it's a total dunk on, on nobody. There's just nobody. I need not, it's not dunking on anybody. It's just like, well, I got to break away. I'm just going to do it. I'm putting, I'm just, I'm, I'm in there. And I love that. I love the speech about, you know, the fucking, you know, the it's, I mean, that is an all time. It's the,

it's the best thing Madonna's ever said in front of a movie camera that wasn't in truth or dare. Um, I don't know. I don't know. I just really, I respect how, how fearlessly absurd this movie is and it understands the rules of the genre enough to simultaneously follow them and set them on fire. I don't want to say too much about this movie for fear of self-incriminating. It's just the sex scenes are just insane. They're just insane. They just melted my brain when I was a kid. And Madonna is just so hot and confident in this movie.

She's not good in it. She's just, it's energy. Acting is poor, but she has so much heat though. Yes. You think she's good, Amanda? May I defend Madonna briefly? Oh, sure. May I defend Madonna briefly?

I don't think at the time that this movie came out that she was good in it. Now, I think there is a sort of meta Madonna being Madonna in this movie quality to the performance that I find very interesting and captivating. But that would seem true in 1993. Like this was this was her like she she was about to put out one of her very best albums, which is, uh, uh, bedtime stories, erotica and, or maybe erotica was out. Erotica was out in 93 and the sex book was out. So this was like the capstone to Madonna's erotic adventure. And the thing about the sex to me is it's just the realist. It's the, it's some of like Ellen Barker and Al Pacino, Willem, Willem Dafoe and Madonna and, and William Hurt and Kathleen Turner of all the movies that

we're talking about, of all the movies, of all the sex I've seen people have seen people have in movies, in erotic thrillers. These are the three, these are the, this is the three of the best sexes you're going to see or in the, in, in maybe Douglas and Glenn Close in, in fatal attraction. That would be number four. Um,

the look on his face, this is what I think they were really doing because they must've been his muscles are doing things. I don't think you can make an actor's muscles do. It's truly remarkable what's happening in this movie. It is amazing. It is amazing. You said something that I completely agree with, which is a good segue

to my next pick, which is that I think Body of Evidence kind of broke erotic thrillers in a way, and there were some that came after it that were very good and very credible, but they basically became self-aware because movies like that were so parodic in their own unintentional way so i chose wild things which i is certainly it's it's very important and it is the kind of the late stages um it's not a last gasp by any means um i would probably argue it kind of it is well i would would say Amanda's pick is probably,

is almost like a post-mortem on them. Is the last one, yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Wild Things, let me just read the opening lines

of a very important review of Wild Things. Wild Things is lurid trash with a plot so twisted they're still explaining it during the closing titles. It's like a three-way collision

between a softcore sex film, a soap opera, and a B-grade noir. I liked it. That's Roger Ebert. I feel the same way. With a dollop of this movie is really funny. And it's really ridiculous.

And it has similarly like a weird relationship to all of the things that all these other movies don't handle very well. Like it centers on a false accusation of rape and it focuses heavily on a lot of performers who are not um good enough to be in a movie of this caliber uh denise richards you can imagine how i felt about denise richards when i was 15 she's very appealing but she can't act and it's interesting to watch her in this environment doing besides what she's doing again in defense of defense of Madonna, in defense of Denise Richards, they were sent to play a part and they played it. Well, and they're in a similar situation too, where there are a lot of great actors in Body

of Evidence and like Julianne Moore and like Willem Dafoe. And there are a lot of great actors in Wild Things as well. Kevin Bacon and Neve Campbell kind of in that very specific moment of Neve Campbell's power. And Matt Dillon, of course, who is a fascinating person, who we also, much like William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, we don't talk about very much anymore.

The movie has like an incredible scene-stealing comedy turn from Bill Murray in the middle of it that is like simultaneously out of place, but also perfect. Takes place in a wealthy enclave in, is it Florida or Louisiana? Iida or louisiana i can't i can't actually tell i can't remember i thought it was florida but just because of i don't know

the gators i really watched this like a month and a half ago and now i can't remember where exactly it's set you know the plot is is immaterial it's the all-time confusing backstabbing every single character is turning on every single character but it's got just an amazing energy to it and a propulsiveness and it's very funny and the sex scenes are very hot and it's just it's similarly absurdist

it's like one big joke but also everybody is trying really hard to look super hot the whole time and in that respect I love it and it is it too strong to say this is a movie that changed my life i mean it's your life okay uh any we should we should probably go to number 10 amanda what do you what do you want to say what do you want to say i remember watching this movie and hating it. Like, just really being like, this is terrible. This is so bad.

And I wonder, because Ebert doesn't do this in his review, but if I were, I might have written about this when it, this is 98. I wrote about it in my very first adult job. You'll never find it, so don't bother trying. Although somebody did just give me a tranche of stuff, so I'll see if I can find it in there. It was a little capsule. But I remember not liking it, not liking it, not liking it. If I were reviewing it, I just would have walked you through the terrible first half of the movie.

And then this thing happens, and you're like, it's kind of like Mulholland drive in a way, right? You think you're watching one movie and then all of a sudden you have to rethink everything that you've been previously watching because you didn't realize that smart people were responsible for this. And all of a sudden you're like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Can we rewind this and start over please?

Because this, this, this pair of boobies just grew a brain. I can't believe this. This is, this is real. I'm on a rollercoaster now. And, um, I love movies that give me that where I have to reevaluate everything about what I've been watching in one moment, you know? And you have to, as a filmmaker, be so sure that you've got the goods to be as bad as that movie is for like 45 minutes to turn it around in a couple of scenes. And it's like, once it's dawning, I didn't see this movie with an audience and I really wish I's like, once it's dawning, I didn't see this movie with an audience and I really wish I had, but once it is dawning on people in the audience

that what is happening is happening, I would have paid a million dollars to be at the Court Street Movie Theater to hear people like clapping and cheering as this shitty movie starts wiping its ass. It's just, it's just, oh my God. It's such a pleasure. It is such a pleasure.

I can confirm it was so fun in the theater. So, so fun when you see what the machinations of the plot kind of grind into place. Any thoughts, Amanda, that you want to share? This is a very vivid high school moment in time for me. I mean, this is like when i think of mtv and all of us watching these types of movies it's definitely wild things and i you know i remember everyone just being very fixated on the nev campbell denise richards moment that was if you

were in high school and that was the first time you were seeing that or being made aware of that um and maybe not catching the fact that this movie is just making fun of itself for the last hour. I mean, the plot is also impossible to follow. So I think there's both a realization that people are in on it. And then also you have no idea what's going on. And you can just you can just watch it for fun to be along for the ride. But yes, I think this, and then I cruel intentions,

which I think came out a year later and was very important for me personally in the same genre and moment in time of, of, of teens who are having a lot of sex. Be a great double feature. Probably was a double feature at some point when I was 16. Yeah. Let's do the last one. What's last one amanda number 10 the last is unfaithful also directed by adrian line this is the one for me this is really important and yeah and i'll tell

you why because i know it's it's kind of a bummer i've re-watched it again last night and it was just like very grateful that my husband has not, to my knowledge, ever killed anyone, lovers or otherwise. I mean, I was just like, because it really does become sort of a bummer at the end.

But this sex scenes in this movie between Diane Lane and Olivier Martinez are what I think about in this genre. They had a really profound effect on me as a young person. And I think part of the reason that is pretty obvious, which is like, this is a movie that really focuses on Diane Lane enjoying herself. And a woman actually really wanting the sex thinking a lot about the sex

and being really driven by it but also enjoying it and there is that very important scene which is like kind of shown in flashback and she's on the train remembering what just happened and then it's cut in with with the sex scene and you see her shaking and then you see her, you know, yelling at him. And it is maybe not as explicit as some of the other scenes that we've talked about in terms of like actual nudity or length, but in terms of understanding of what's going on between two people, I, it's, is quite effective for me. feel really bad for richard gear like nobody i mean all the great sex that's happened in movies is it tends to happen against richard gear and all the bad sex that happens tends to involve richard gear um summersby i'm looking at you. But,

this movie, I have complicated feelings about Unfaithful because that great scene on the train should just be Diane Lane remembering the thing we just watched her do. Like, I don't need to, I don't, like, I rewatched it and it's not as annoying as it originally was

when I first saw it. But I was like, why don't we, she's so good in this scene right now. We don't need to see her reaction on the train intercut with the sex that we just watched her have. I can, I know what she's thinking about. I just, I politely disagree. I, 18-year-old Amanda really needed to see that, Wesley. And I'm really glad that I did.

And I'm going to say, it's not just me that that scene and, and even the flashbacks are like a touch point for women of a certain age. Oh no, it's a famous, it's a famous sequence now. It's a famous, it's a famous movie sequence now.

It is, it is. I'd love to hear the editor talk about the choice to do it the way that the editor did it. But it's edited by Ann Coates, who edited Lawrence of Arabia, one of the greatest editors of all time. I'm so stupid. Yeah. So that's why I rewatched it, actually, because I wrote a thing about her after she died. And the conclusion that I came to was that it doesn't really under cut what she's doing. What it actually does is enhance. It actually enhances what Diane Lane is doing. I can't believe I forgot about this. But at the time it really bugged me because I just wanted Diane Lane

to do, to just tell me what happened. just seen it um but re-watching the movie I realized that you need to see it because you aren't watching the same and coach doesn't show you the exact same sex sequence or sexy she's showing it to you from other from other shots it's actually shrewd um anyway this movie something about the way I mean it is a classic erotic thriller in the sense that like a person does a thing she shouldn't do and is punished for it

but she really isn't because you're totally on her side and and the bad person is the person it's like the morals of the movie are all wrong for this genre I would say it should come as no surprise that it's based on a French film by Claude Chabrol. That might explain some of the slightly different gender dynamics that come into play.

But that's the exact reason that I like it. And I think it's the reason why, even though it's one of the last gasps, that it was so successful because it did feel like it was turning the conventionality of this genre onto its head a little bit. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, again, I think she's wonderful in it. The movie just really bugged me. Richard Gere, I'm so torn about him in all kinds of ways.

He's obviously one of our great stars, but man, he both can't catch a break and doesn't deserve one at the same time if you do what i mean like it's very well put i think he's really good in this because he is both you do feel for him even though ultimately i think everyone is like this is your fault um or at least i am maybe i'm showing in. I just feel like that's so unfair. It is unfair, but that's why it's good because you're supposed to,

I know I'm contradicting everything I said about like these shouldn't have ideas or emotions, but this, you know, and this movie does. And to some extent, like the knock against it

being an erotic thriller is that the second half of the movie, there's no sex and it is a real downer. And you're like, what's going to happen to this family? And you're concerned with, you know, suburban pursuits and questions of morality. And there is like this ambiguous ending. I know it's like really boring. I mean, if like the Claude ship, well, anyway, go on. I mean,

it just American films can't handle this. And Adrian Lyon, who's British, ultimately, like it just, this movie can't, it's not really asking any of these questions. It really isn't. Like this movie is living and dying by this, by her performance, really, as far as I'm concerned. I think that's true. It's not dying by her performance.

It's entirely living by it. Sorry. I think the best thing to do is to re-litigate whether or not these movies deserve ideas when Deepwater comes out later this year, assuming it does come out in movie theaters and we can finally understand once and for all what Adrian Lyne was trying to accomplish

by setting off fireworks in this genre for 25 years. Does that sound like a plan? We haven't even talked about indecent proposals. I mean, like I mean, there's mean, we can make apologies to so many movies. American Gigolo, we didn't talk about Dressed to Kill, Nine and a Half Weeks, we barely discussed.

No Way Out, The Crush, Sliver, Eyes Wide Shut, In the Cut. Oh, The Crush. I mean, this is a vast market of cinema. If you are interested in these movies, there are so many that people can watch. And I'm glad that you guys rewatched some of them to talk about them with me. Thanks for

participating today. Thanks for having me. Thank you.