Heating up August with Erotic Thrillers

With August the dog days of summer are upon us (even though July brought that massive heatwave). Cinema Shame is planning to perpetuate the sizzle by focusing on the classy, uber-sophisticated world of the erotic thriller. A sub-genre of films that could really make family movie nights awkward.  Yeah, I’m looking at you, Xenia Onatopp. Your orgasmic coup de grace techniques always had me scrambling for the remote.

Death by sexual healing.

When I think of the erotic thriller sub-genre, the first thing that comes to mind is direct to video refuse or heavily-edited features on USA Network. My turning point was watching “The Last Seduction” last November. Linda Fiorentino (a @007hertzrumble obsession, by the way) and dark neo-noir compelled me to investigate the genre further.

Obligatory Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction picture.

In Robert Barton Palmer’s book Hollywood’s Dark Cinema: The American Film Noir, he refers to the “erotic thriller as a direct descendent of the film noir.” Here I was judging these films for having a plot to tie sex scenes together. It also felt like a good time to cleanse the mind of the mindless summer blockbuster. So for this month, I plan to tackle the following erotic thrillers: Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo and Cat People and Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat.

Reach out to us on twitter (@cinemashame) or by email (cinemashame@gmail.com) with your essential erotic thrillers. 

—@campbelldropout

June Prompt – 1989

This June marks the 30^th anniversary of Tim Burton’s Batman. A film with huge cultural significance, positive and negative — as it forever it changed the summer blockbuster landscape. The entire summer slate of 1989 has to be one of the greatest in film history for sequels, blockbusters and surprise hits.

Consider that during just a few months, the summer of 1989 begat Ghostbusters II, Lethal Weapon 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Licence to Kill, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Abyss, and Do the Right Thing.

And so far I’ve just mentioned the summer releases. The entire year boasted en entire roster of films worthy of discovery (or rediscovery). I would have been around three so there are no solid memories of this year for me, except vague memories about Hardee’s promotion of Ghostbusters II. I guess Licence to Kill would have been too much for a child’s happy meal toy, kids probably couldn’t handle a shark-mangled Felix Leiter toy.

For more discussion of non-summer related releases from 1989, we have our in-house resident expert, James Patrick (@007hertzrumble), whose personal website has posted some great discussion on films from that year. It is a great resource if you want to scroll back through a few of these releases you might have missed.

I’m limiting my choices to three, but I have a feeling I will be doing more rewatches of 1989 films. My biggest shame release from 1989, which has had a lot of talk in the film twitter vacuum, is Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. (See James’ conversation here.) I’ve seen bits and pieces over the years but never took the time to watch the entire film. I’ve owned The Dream Team (another entry that James has lauded) for at least a year now without watching it and it would be interesting to compare Keaton’s performance to his role in Batman. The last movie I will pick from 1989 will be Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape. I will always take this opportunity to toss a Criterion release into the mix.

Reach out to us on twitter (@cinemashame) or by email (cinemashame@gmail.com) with your Cinema Shames from 1989 or 1989 recommendations.

Future Prompts — Coming Soon to Shame Near You!

July – Cult Films

August – Racy Films (SCANDALOUS!)

—@campbelldropout

March Prompt: Female-Directed Films

I’m writing in the field today to discuss our March prompt — reporting from lively Salt Lake City, Utah.

This month we are going to focus on a personal blind spot of mine, films by female directors. Along with this month and going forward I’m going to make a strong effort to focus on films directed by women. I recently purchased Alicia Malone’s “The Female Gaze,” which I plan to use as reference material for upcoming watches. It is ridiculous how few female-directed films I’ve seen.

I don’t have any excuse. With all this information at our fingertips, it’s inexplicable that I haven’t made an effort to tap into these resources until now. The only female director’s career I’ve actually followed has been Sofia Coppola. Penny Marshall, Nora Ephron and Kathryn Bigelow have also made a mark. Besides the Shame, what really pushed me to find female-directed films were some statistics Brian Saur (@bobfreelander) mentioned on Pure Cinema Podcast discussing Film Debuts with director Sean Baker. Brian discussed Elaine May’s A New Leaf. Between 1966 and 1971 no studio produced a female-directed film. In 1979, the Directors Guild of America created the Women’s Steering Committee, which released a study that showed between 1949 to 1979, 7,332 films were distributed through the major studios, of those only 14 films were directed by women and three of them were directed by Elaine May. Those are some shocking statistics, I don’t know the current stats but I assume the improvement has been negligible.

For the month of March, I’m planning to watch these films for the first time:

Ava DuVernay’s Selma

Elaine May’s A New Leaf

Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky (a pick-up from Criterion’s recent flash sale)

Penny Marshall’s Awakenings

Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women (second pick-up from Criterion’s flash sale)

So for the month of March, let us know the female–directed films you plan to watch. You can reach us on twitter (@CinemaShame) or by email cinemashame@gmail.com. I am looking forward to the discussion and all the discovery.

@007hertzrumble has created a Cinema Shame Shop on Amazon with treasure trove of suggestions for female-directed films you need to watch.

Remember to share your Shame!

—@campbelldropout