These movies vary wildly in tone, veering from genuinely intense to winking self-parody, but they're unified by violent plot twists, seedy sex scenes, and hilariously vulgar dialogue, like, "I do the fucking, I never get fucked!" and "Fucker! Fuck off!" They are glorious. Here's a quick list of some of the movies Eszterhas wrote: the Glenn Close courtroom thriller Jagged Edge (1985), the leg-crossing bombshell Basic Instinct (1992), the less-beloved Sharon Stone vehicle Sliver (1993), the David Caruso in a " fuck house" experiment Jade (1995), and the camp classic Showgirls (1995). Sex in offices! Sex in public places! Sex in the kitchen with a pants-less Michael Douglas!īesides Douglas, who was unquestionably the charming face of '90s male paranoia, there's one more big name from the genre's heyday you need to know: Joe Eszterhas, an enormously successful Hollywood screenwriter who now looks like a very rich werewolf. In most erotic thrillers, the plot is an old-fashioned noir or a corporate thriller with an extra twist: lots of sex. What the hell happened to erotic thrillers over the past 15 years or so? And could they actually be making a comeback? and Bill Clinton eras, was yes. While the actor embodied the erotic thriller in a trio of movies ( Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, and the unapologetically absurd Disclosure) with his preening arrogance in both the bedroom and the boardroom, Douglas eventually aged out of his sexual conquistador period, and the genre entered an accompanying downswing.īut with the Morris Chestnut-starring When the Bough Breaks grossing a surprising $16.6 million in its opening week, it's worth taking stock of the type of film that helped define steamy sex for a generation of moviegoing adults and teens with access to premium cable. The answer, for most sentient humans during the Reagan, Bush Sr. But for years the upper echelon of erotic thrillers was defined by a simple question: do you want to see Gordon Gekko's posterior from a flattering angle? The genre is rife with other tawdry, sweaty elements - femmes fatales "trapping" men in morally compromised situations, tastefully lit sex scenes in spacious office buildings with glass bricks, poor little bunnies boiling in pots. In the late '80s and early '90s, the mainstream erotic thriller was all about Michael Douglas' ass.