When you’re making a podcast about sex in film, there’s no way to go on for very long without addressing the topic of ‘erotic thrillers’. It’s the genre to end all genres if you want to talk sex in mainstream movies. And there sure is a fuck-ton to choose from. I have an entire book on the subject, The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema by Linda Ruth Williams. She did a pretty complete look at the genre from the origin of the term to circa 2003… and still managed to miss Beyond Desire (1995). For shame, Mz. Williams, for shame. How could you have overlooked such a gem?! It has a sex scene… with William Forsythe! And Kari “I’m-Not-Ashley-Judd” Wuhrer! Pure gold.

But we decided our best bet for broaching the subject would be to start with a couple of classics. So we chose the Hollywood megastar, Basic Instinct (1992) and the bizarre-to-the-point-of-madness, Color of Night (1994).

And if that doesn’t have you erotically thrilled already… you’re dead inside.

You can find the Pinterest album for this episode here.

The thing about coming of age, is that we all do it. Time doesn’t wait around letting us stay kids until we decide otherwise. It pushes us forward into an aging skin until all the mysteries of adulthood have been firmly handed to us as a big old wad of chewed up lassitude. The strange contradiction of it all is that the events of those turning points in our lives often make up some of the most interesting moments of our history. I’d venture a guess that this probably has something to do with the popularity of the subject in filmmaking. It’s a complex and varied experience that has a magical way of being hugely universal, while at the same time remaining deeply individual and personal.

For Laura and myself, the two films we chose this time around… 1992’s The Lover and 1996’s Stealing Beauty… had a lot of personal connections to our own youthful experiences moving from our teenage years to adulthood, and it was very interesting for us to see how our perspectives on them have changed over the years.

We didn’t originally intend to split the subject into gender editions, but it happened naturally… so expect a ‘Gentleman’s Edition’ to make it’s way down the pike sometime in the not-too-distant future.

You can find the Pinterest album for this episode here.