Sex is dangerous, so satisfy your wife: The softcore thriller in its contexts

Cinema Journal

Volumn 45, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 59-89

  Andrews, David ^a,b  

^a CHICAGO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 67649556954     PISSN: 00097101     EISSN: 15272087     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/cj.2006.0024     Document Type: Review

References (70)

1. Linda Ruth Williams's admirable new book, The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), is an exception to this trend in that the author devotes half its length to discussion of the "direct-to-video erotic thriller," which she considers tantamount to "softcore." Williams's book became available after Cinema Journal accepted this article, so I have had to scramble to incorporate its many insights. Luckily, Williams has not rendered this piece redundant. She historicizes the softcore thriller by concentrating on Hollywood precursors, and in analyzing softcore vehicles, she focuses on a single paradigm - which is to say, the mid-budget model that became obsolete by 1996. By contrast, this article traces the softcore thriller in part through its alternative heritage in "classical sexploitation"; it also presents the subgenre as one contemporary-softcore subgenre among many. Finally, it presents the "midbudget" model on which Williams focuses as one phase of a softcore-thriller sequence that has continued to unfold as of 2005, albeit in ever-cheaper forms
2. Anonymous survey respondent, quoted in David Loftus, Watching Sex: How Men Really Respond to Pornography (New York: Thunder's Mouth, 2002), 220
3. See Carol Clover, Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 21-64
4. In Men, Women, and Chain Saws, Clover draws on Tania Modleski in defining the oft-disputed term "post-feminism" as "the appropriation of feminist thought for nonfeminist purposes" (153). The softcore thriller is "post-feminist" in Clover's sense in that its producers have disarmed and depoliticized feminist critiques by "feminizing" the subgenre - i.e., by constructing it as a profemale space that favors rudimentary notions of female agency while privileging traditionally feminine stereotypes and styles. For overviews of the term, see Sarah Projansky, Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 66-89
5. Joanne Hollows, Feminism, Femininity, and Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 190-97
6. and L.S. Kim, "'Sex and the Single Girl' in Postfeminism: The F Word on Television," Television & New Media 2, no. 4 (November 2001): 321
7. Contemporary media critics often interchange "post-feminist" and "consumerist." See Projansky, Watching Rape, 79-83
8. In the present article, these terms refer to overlapping but non-identical concepts. As a set of potentially radical forces, consumerism dissolves market systems that limit sexual consumption: this destabilizing tendency includes a drift toward "genderlessness." See Lawrence Birken, Consuming Desire: Sexual Science and the Emergence of a Culture of Abundance, 1871-1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 111
9. "Post-feminist consumerism," by contrast, refers to a status-quo subset of consumerism that commodifies sexuality without threat to the identity hierarchies that organize the mainstream media. See Celia Lury, Consumer Culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 118-55. This gendered, heterosexist ethic is favored by mainstream distribution networks - and thus it is the consumerism most evident in mainstream forms of pornography like the softcore thriller. That softcore cinema has long been capable of liberal and illiberal forms of consumerism maybe verified by looking at classical sexploitation, which typically relied on "alternative" distribution networks
10. Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible," exp. ed. (1989; repr., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 130-34
11. For another definition of "sexploitation," see Eric Schaefer, "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 338
12. In "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!", Schaefer examines "classical exploitation" as a genre that "paralleled the rise and fall of the classical Hollywood cinema" (8) as defined by David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson in The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). In Schaefer's account, exploitation was distinguished by its form, which relied on "scandalous" spectacle and ad-hoc narrative; its content, which exploited topics proscribed by the Code; its low cost, which necessitated a departure from Hollywood values; and its "carnivalesque" mode of exhibition and reception (4-6)
13. Two other major factors in the decline of classical sexploitation were the Supreme Court's ruling in Miller v. California (1973) and rising real-estate values. See Jon Lewis, Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle Over Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 267-70
14. Eric Schaefer, "The Triumph of Exploitation; or, From Exploitation Film to Exploitation Culture in Eight Easy Decades," Bridge, no. 12 (October/November 2004): 23-24
15. Fred Olen Ray, The New Poverty Row: Independent Filmmakers as Distributors (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1991), 132-33, 160
16. and Jack Stevenson, "And God Created Europe: How the European Sexual Myth Was Created and Sold to Post-War American Movie Audiences," in Fleshpot: Cinema's Sexual Myth Makers & Taboo Breakers, ed. Jack Stevenson (2000; repr., Manchester: Critical Vision, 2002), 48
17. Birken, Consuming, 111
18. Schaefer, "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!", 15
19. The majors apparently believe that sexualized films will flow through disparate, far-flung markets most readily if they combine sex-negative moralism with graphic violence. The erotic thriller is thus one of few forms in which a "Hollywood ending" is depressing. See Lewis, Hollywood v. Hard Core, 223
20. There is at least one rationale for tracing the softcore thriller through its immediate sexploitation precursors. In the 1960s, violent forms like the "roughie" and "kinky" capitalized on the success of the tame nudie-cutie comedies. Thus early examples of classical softcore like William Rotsler's proto-erotic thriller Mantis In Lace (1968) integrated their numbers with the violence of their immediate antecedent, the roughie. See Kenneth Turan and Stephen Zito, Sinema: American Pornographic Films and the People Who Make Them (New York: Praeger, 1974), 10-25
21. See also Eithne Johnson and Eric Schaefer, "Soft Core/Hard Gore: Snuff As A Crisis in Meaning," Journal of Film and Video 45, nos. 2-3 (Summer-Fall 1993): 48-49
22. James Naremore, More Than Night: Film Noir In Its Contexts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 165
23. Brian McNair, Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratization of Desire (London: Routledge, 2002), 63
24. See also McNair, "'Not Some Kind of Kinky Porno Flick': The Return of Porno-Fear?," Bridge, no. 11 (August/September 2004): 17-19
25. For broader discussions of the origins of the theatrical erotic thriller, see Linda Ruth Williams, Erotic Thriller, 1-61, 77-96
26. McNair, "'Not Some Kind of Kinky Porno Flick'," 17
27. Naremore, More Than Night, 263. According to IMDb.com, these two films cost $14 million and $49 million, respectively - and grossed $320 million and $353 million worldwide. For Fatal Attraction, see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093010/business, and for Basic Instinct, see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103772/business. See also Linda Ruth Williams, Erotic Thriller, 2, 56n1
28. McNair, Striptease Culture, 152
29. See Sharon Willis, High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood Film (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 60
30. and Linda Ruth Williams, Erotic Thriller, 50, 54-55
31. See also Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown, 1991)
32. Besides blatant ripoffs, Fatal Attraction has spawned persistent sexploitation motifs like sink sex and elevator fellatio. Basic Instinct has inspired myriad titles (e.g., Animal Instincts [Alexander Gregory Hippolyte, 1992])
33. and influenced the performances of softcore actresses playing femmes fatales (see Sharri Shattuck in Dead On [Ralph Hemecker, 1993]
34. and Maria Ford in Showgirl Murders [David Payne, 1995])
35. Linda Ruth Williams provides broader sections on both films and adroitly discusses the controversies that shaped their public receptions - subjects for which I unfortunately have no space. On Fatal Attraction, see Linda Ruth Williams, Erotic Thriller, 48-56, 177-87; on Basic Instinct, see 163-67, 187-89, 222-30
36. See Walter Kendrick, The Secret Museum: Pornography In Modern Culture (1987; repr., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). Kendrick explains porn's censorship and marginalization in terms of the cultural myth of "the Young Person." It is intriguing, then, that while the theatrical erotic thriller often places children at the center of its moralistic schemes - a trend duplicated by just-shy-of-softcore sexploitation thrillers like Body Chemistry (Kristine Peterson, 1990) he softcore thriller depicts a childless world
37. Laurence O'Toole, Pornocopia: Porn, Sex, Technology, and Desire (London: Serpent's Tail, 1998), 152
38. The phrase is Linda Ruth Williams's. See Linda Ruth Williams, Erotic Thriller, 187
39. "True" softcore had a bit more sex in the early 1990s, with seven or eight numbers a standard minimum
40. Stephen Neale, Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1980), 30
41. Here Neale draws ideas from Patricia Mellencamp's article "Spectacle and Spectator: Looking Through the American Musical Comedy," Ciné-Tracts 1, no. 2 (Summer 1977): 27-35
42. Paul Verhoeven, "Inside Basic Instinct," interview by Jeff McQueen (1993), in Basic Instinct: The Original Director's Cut, unrated VHS, dir. Verhoeven (1992; Live Home Video, 1993)
43. Verhoeven, "Inside." See also Linda Ruth Williams, "No Sex Please, We're American," Sight and Sound 14, no. 1 (January 2004): 18-20
44. See Linda Ruth Williams, "No Sex Please."
45. O'Toole, Pornocopia, 152
46. Naremore, More Than Night, 161, 162
47. Linda Ruth Williams notes a "'trickle-up' as well as a 'triekle-down'" in the nontheatrical/theatrical chain of influence. See Linda Ruth Williams, Erotic Thriller, 12; see also 12-14
48. See Andrew Rausch, Turning Points in Film History (New York: Citadel, 2004), 114-19
49. Maren Pust, "That's Why the Lady Is a Vamp: The Danish Origins of the Screen's First Dangerous Lady," in Stevenson, Fleshpot, 77-79
50. See Bruce Crowther, Film Noir: Reflections in A Dark Mirror (New York: Continuum, 1989), 115-17
51. See also Slavoj Žižek, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost Highway (Seattle: Walter Chapin Simpson Center, University of Washington Press, 2000), 8-12
52. Quoted in Pust, "That's Why the Lady Is a Vamp," 79
53. In Dangerous Company (Ruben Preuss, 1988) typifies the equivocal sexism that has shaped sexploitation noir. In this film, a secondary character voices the misogyny felt by the stoic hero (Cliff DeYoung): "You know what's wrong with this country today, Blake? Women control fifty percent of the money and one-hundred percent of the pussy." As the film's default ethos, this sort of misogyny softens the monstrousness of the femme fatale (Tracy Scoggins), giving her a tool with which to manipulate the hero: "It's not my fault I look the way I look. Guys have been following me home since I was thirteen - and using me and abusing me and lying to me. You think you were the only person to ever suffer?"
54. Corman's company has specialized in sexploitation noir. See Odette Springer's documentary, Some Nudity Required: The Naked Truth Behind Hollywood's B-Movies (1998)
55. Alexander Gregory Hippolyte, "Gregory Hippolyte (aka Brown/Dark)," interview by Anthony Petkovich, Psychotronic Video, no. 26 (1997): 84
56. See also Linda Ruth Williams's interviews with Hippolyte (Erotic Thriller, 277-83)
57. Hippolyte, "Gregory Hippolyte," 78, 81
58. Not to be forgotten in this connection was Hollywood's growing domination of home video during the mid-1990s. As Barbara Boyle notes, the "growth of home-video revenue in the early 1980s had a great and positive impact on independent financing and distribution because a significant percentage of a movie's budget could be secured by an advance from licensing home-video deals, in effect subsidizing independent filmmaking.... It took years for studios to decide to cut out the middleman and build their own home-video divisions, at which point separate advances for home video rights declined as U.S. distributors required all rights in all formats." Barbara Boyle, "The Independent Spirit," in The Movie Business Book, 3rd ed., ed. Jason Squire (1983; repr., New York: Fireside, 2004), 176. The shift to which Boyle alludes appears to have had a particularly adverse impact on independent softcore producers in the mid-budget bracket
59. For example, see Sarno's Inga (1967; American release, 1968) or Metzger's Therese and Isabelle (1968)
60. That the career woman has been the most common protagonist across contemporary softcore owes much to the overwhelming success of Zalman King and his Red Shoe Diaries serial (1992-1999). On King's influence on softcore, see David Andrews, "Class, Gender, and Genre in Zalman King's 'Real High Erotica': The Conflicting Mandates of Female Fantasy," Post Script 25, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 49-73
61. Softcore Reviews, review of Star Struck, http://www.sreviews.com/ starstruck.htm (accessed June 23, 2004). Evidence of this backlash is also common on other Internet sites like This Is Sexy?
62. Linda Ruth Williams's interviews with Gernert and Garroni and with Mundhra offer insights into these competitive pressures. See Linda RuthWilliams, Erotic Thriller, 69-73 and 323, respectively
63. MRG, "Company Profile," http://www.mainlinereleasing.com (accessed September 5, 2004). Marc Greenberg, the executive producer at MRG, may be the most prolific softcore producer in history
64. Robert Lombard, e-mail message to author, June 30, 2004
65. Robert Lombard, e-mail message to author, February 14, 2005. Like Torchlight, a new label headed by an old rival (New City), MRG is also now shooting sixty-minute softcore vehicles for about $50,000, using threeo four-day shoots and thirtyo forty-page scripts. These relatively explicit simulation features are reportedly long on sex and short on narrative and are intended mainly for pay-per-view distribution
66. Robert Lombard, "A Journey Uphill," Adult Industry News, May 8, 2003, http://www. ainews.com/Archives/Story4899.phtml (accessed November 23, 2003)
67. See also Lombard, "Robert Lombard: Casting & Talent Manager, Creative Image Entertainment," interview by Softcore Reviews (2004), http://www.sreviews.com/rlombard1.htm (accessed June 30, 2004)
68. For example, Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough (Jay Lowi, 2005), the third installment of the series, hides two femmes fatales and contains three femmes fatales in all. Because this film was produced by executives at Mainline/Magic Hour/MRG, it seems possible that this film's upscale, elaborately motivated version of the hidden femme fatale was shaped not only by the original film but by an intracorporate "trickle-up" hat is to say, by MRG's downseale, unmotivated hidden femme fatale
69. See Sex, Secrets, and Lies (Stan Allen, 2002) - which is not, incidentally, to be confused with MRG's similarly entitled cheapie, Sex, Secrets, and Betrayals (Dave Franks, 2001)
70. Schaefer confirms that relatively low-cost, 16mm softcore films had somewhat comparable formal and ideological effects on classical sexploitation. See Schaefer, "Gauging a Revolution."