Sexy Thrills: Undressing the Erotic Thriller [Paperback]

Luckily, a friend loaned me her advance copy of "Sexy Thrills." From its title to its last sentence, this book is fascinating, well written, witty, and just plain fun. More than simply a genre study of erotic thrillers, "Sexy Thrills" grapples with the big issues of women's sexuality and identity, as well as with the important debates within contemporary feminism.

Erotic thrillers are a form of soft-core pornography targeting a female audience. Unlike male-oriented porn, erotic thrillers address, as Martin says, "the sexual subjectivity of women and the social construction of gender." Initially these films are difficult to categorize, as they draw from a number of genres--film noir to soap operas, romances to pornography--but they share a number of key features, most revolving around "a gendered formula for visual arousal." In addition to examining the primary examples of this genre from its most famous, "Basic Instinct," through its most prolific practitioner, Zalman King, to its many multiple-part series, such as the "Body Chemistry" films, Martin delves deeply into their structure and cinematic character to analyze the filmic qualities that make these movies so attractive to women. Along the way she unpacks "sexual consumerism, feminized niche marketing, and a post-feminist focus on sexual exploration as the means to female empowerment."

"Sexy Thrills" is of value across the disciplines. Martin is a real star of that new generation of feminist scholars questioning received traditions and counter-productive intellectual dichotomies. And she does so in a remarkably fair minded and generous fashion, which I take as the sign of a truly sophisticated scholar. What Linda Williams did for hard-core, Martin accomplishes for soft-core pornography: making it intelligible and intriguing. "Sexy Thrills" is a highly original work of interdisciplinary scholarship, and beautifully written. I recommend this book to anyone interested in contemporary American culture.

If you like expressions like exposition, resolution, chiaroscuro, and mise en scene, then you are probably a film student or just a devotee of filmdom like I am. And if you like highfalutin-sounding terms like syntactic, commodification, hyperidealism, binary, and tropes, words that are used throughout this text, then you are likely to find the perusing of this quasi-monograph even more delightful.

For myself, portions of the read gave my sinciput a workout. As much as I intellectually enjoy this subject, the literate layperson may want a head's up: The author, in my opinion, intellectualizes the topic to a fault. The book, in parts, is too scholarly for my liking, in which the reading becomes an insipid chore rather than an absorbing pastime. As just one example: As I see it, the author strays into such a detailed scrutinizing of the movie Indecent Behavior that practically no stone is left unturned in the search for description and meaning, a synopsis-commentary delivered with such starchy seriousness that you'd think these pictures were on par with important news events. Really, now, beneath the literary magnification, these are still only movies, commonly served and associated with popcorn and sweatpants as opposed to caviar and tweed coats. Indeed, the question could be posed as to whether such scholastic microscoping fails to take notice of the otherwise simplicity of viewing these primarily psychologically non-taxing flicks.

Nina K. Martin's Sexy Thrills: Undressing The Erotic Thriller (2007; 206 pages) takes a formal, clinical, semi-subjective gaze at the film genre known as the erotic thriller, a genre that is often disregarded and undervalued within the motion-picture industry and by media-based movie reviewers, albeit undeservedly so. As we learn from reading this so-so companion, the reason why the "B-grade" erotic thriller is generally professionally neglected is not on account of these movies being "technically" poor, or even theatrically mediocre for that matter, but often due to the fact that they are not advertized to the extent that mainstream and Hollywood sure-fire boffos are. Which then raises the curiosity: Why is it that the small-screen erotic thriller is unappreciated while big-screen releases like Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, and Sliver demonstrate that there is a large audience base for these narratives? Therein lies an inconsistency, but one that goes to show that popularity and obscurity ought not to be held up as benchmarks in determining the value of films. That is to say, low-budget does not necessarily mean low-quality, as the reverse is also true.

Personally, I dislike the term "B-grade" when describing the small-screen erotic thriller. The acting within these pictures is, to the contrary, very often "A-grade," regardless that the roles are performed by actors and actresses who are not as well-known as marquee stars are. In fact, sometimes obscurity is all for the better in that it makes for a more convincing portrayal, subsequently causing the viewer to become involved in the character, as played by an unknown or not-as-popular performer, more so than he or she probably would with a celebrity as protagonist; headliners and megastars, many of whom only made it into the movies based on their looks, whereas the argument can be made that those who are featured in leading parts in small-screen pictures are more talented and naturally gifted thespians. Incidentally, also, frequently the screenplays of these erotic thrillers, however somewhat template-constructed they may often be (as all genre films are), are nevertheless - here disagreeing with Martin's assessment - individually quite often brilliantly, intricately, and uniquely written as well, on par with if not more so than I'd say most big-grossing blockbusters, that are mainly comprised of shoot-'em-ups, slashers, and lightweight, frivolous romance-comedies ... mercenary rehashings whipped together and eaten up by theatergoing consumers anxious for the latest escapist box-office fix.

I liked Sexy Thrills up to a point. I liked Chapter 1 the most and thought it informative and pertinent to the book's theme. Chapter 2, on the other hand, I found excessively veered away from the book's subject, digressing to the point that, facetiously speaking, it had me referring to the front cover repeatedly to make sure that it wasn't a different book that I was reading.

It should be emphasized: This isn't just a book about erotic thrillers. No, that would be too easy and sensible. If you can get past the at-times boring textbook-like prose, the cerebral terminology, the occasional interjectory reiterations, the periodical use of generalizations in defining the genre, and the sporadic mentioning of self-evident observations (like the stating of the obvious, the noting of - palpable - differences between this thing and that thing), then there is interwoven throughout the text paragraphs and entire portions dedicated to periphery content centering around feminism and feminist culture, material whose inclusion is debatable as far as relevancy to the erotic thriller is concerned. Quite so, that from time-to-time amidst the read I found myself asking whether Sexy Thrills is about feminism or the erotic thriller? I like feminists and am always interested in what they have to say, but in a book about a film genre?

In regard to what the author believes concerning the erotic thriller, that these films are made especially with female viewers in mind, that it's a women's genre, is a notion that I view as being an erroneous one; way off base and out-to-lunch. Agreed, the protagonists of these movies are heroines. But as the author acknowledges, the genre is produced primarily by men. It's only speculation to posit this genre as a female-oriented one. Elsewhere in the book, the author makes the comment that there is just no way of knowing with certainty, based on a lack of demographic information, which between the two genders are more inclined to view these films.

Still, valid criticisms aside, Sexy Thrills is not altogether dryasdust and insubstantial. The reader is taught, for example, the assorted features that characterize the erotic thriller, the various sub-genres of the erotic thriller, and how this filmic type evolved from and repeatedly echoes cinematic styles of past decades, like the film noir (in which modernized, becomes a flipflop of sorts, where instead of a male shamus it is now the female as investigator) and the gaslight pics ... as well, what an "empowered" woman in today's culture signifies; the underlying misogamy in many of the erotic thrillers where spousal relationships inevitably extend to extra-marital liaisons; how the male is objectified in the genre by women; about the recent influx of female makers of erotica; and whether the DTV erotic thriller borrows from mainstream pictures or is it more a case of the other way around?; and what it means by the erotic thriller being "instructive" and "educational" - which very well might be euphemistic expressions to describe the pervasive "conditioning" of women going on via cultural subliminalism.

What I would have liked to have seen included here and what I anticipated was a few profiles of those actors and actresses well-known to fans of this film genre, but the book shirks on this. A page or two on the film careers of say, Gloria Steineim - I mean, Shannon Tweed, and Mary Wollstonecraft - er, Tanya Roberts, and how these two fine performers have contributed to the genre and their thoughts on their performances and the genre itself, would have been a much-welcome addition to the book, but Sexy Thrills curiously omits such would-be relevant material and would rather take time-out to talk about feminist culture instead.

As for the highlighting of Zalman King's work, however appreciated the auteur's oeuvre is by many familiar with his productions, it makes me question as to why Martin devotes pages to this filmmaker when, as the author comments, technically speaking, King does not make erotic thrillers - this latter aspect being absent from his movies. Also, the author, in breaking down the numerous sub-genres of the erotic thriller, erroneously includes virtual reality as sometimes playing a component, when in actuality the utilization of such sci-fi technology is never used in these movies.

Other films besides Indecent Behavior that are spotlighted in Sexy Thrills, at various lengths, are Lap Dancing, Sexual Response, Bare Deception, Night Rhythms, Night Eyes 2, and Animal Instincts, among a few others.

The book contains: (besides the color image on its cover, picturing Shane Brolly and Erica Prior, from the briefly run anthology series, chromiumblue) 9 b&w photos ("frame grabs") taken from scenes within motion-picture erotica, interspersed throughout; a table of contents; and at the back of the book, 15 pages of notes; a 9-page bibliography; and a 10-page index.

Last but not least, then there's the book's disappointing conclusion. Aside from a few paragraphs, the conclusion, in general, is non-summarizing; oddly, instead of bringing the material all together as a roundup should, there is very little recapitulating made, but rather the author introduces new discussions, making the conclusion somewhat of a nominal one and reading like any other chapter before it.

For connoisseurs of the erotic thriller genre, I consider Linda Ruth Williams' book, The Erotic Thriller In Contemporary Cinema (2005), the better resource between these two studies.

In the end, I would like to have touted Sexy Thrills, but can't. It just doesn't contain, as I perceive it, the best coverage of its subject. It's a bit academically esoteric in presentation - unreadable in places, I think, for the average reader. A tad uninteresting in areas, as well. That is, unless you're a feminist, perhaps.

The following review is from the January 2008 issues of Review in "Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries."
Martin's engaging book builds (as she makes clear) on the work of others who have examined the world of the soft-core erotic thriller. But this in-depth analysis of the practice and reception of these often-maligned films takes the discussion several steps further, examining this work from a feminist point of view. This results in a study that is both surprising and refreshing. Adroitly disposing of the artificial demarcation between high and low art--which, as Martin [Connecticut College] correctly argues, is the reason that many of the films discussed in this book have gone unexamined--the author gives trenchant readings of contemporary soft-core thrillers, films noir, and gothic films. In so doing she seeks to reclaim for females the pleasure of viewing these films, which have in most cases been specifically designed to appeal to stereotypical male fantasies. Illustrated with a solid selection of frame grabs, and offering carefully detailed deconstructions of numerous films in the genre, this groundbreaking work is similar in its ambition to Carol Clover's Men, Women and Chain Saws (CH, Sep'92, 30-0181). It offers a fresh view on a type of film often dismissed out of hand. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers; all levels. - W.W. Dixon, University of Nebraska, Lincoln