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With: Andrew Stevens, Monique Parent, Athena Massey, Amy Lindsay, Kira Reed Lorsch, Fred Olen Ray, Jim Wynorski, Regina Russell Banali, Nancy O'Brien, Jodie Fisher, Doug Jeffery, Rodman Flender, George S. Clinton, James Dearden, Kurt Voss, Michael Reed, Alain Silver, James Ursini, Linda Ruth Williams
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Written by: n/a
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Directed by: Anthony Penta
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MPAA Rating: NR
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Running Time: 163
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Date: 09/01/2023
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We Kill for Love: The Lost World of the Erotic Thriller (2023)
Naked Investigation
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
One of the best things about film criticism is when intrepid critics go where most critics fear to tread. The latest Marvel movie will be reviewed by hundreds of writers, podcasters, and video-makers, but who will dare touch the likes of Dangerous Touch? That, by the way is the name of a Lou Diamond Phillips erotic thriller from 1994. The erotic thriller genre can include well-known titles like Body Heat, Fatal Attraction, and Basic Instinct, but Anthony Penta's documentary We Kill for Love: The Lost World of the Erotic Thriller is prepared to go deeper. We meet an Archivist character, played by Michael Reed, who pokes around a room filled with VHS tapes, and offers an introduction to the challenges of this project. To start, many of these movies existed only on VHS and maybe LaserDisc. They were never upgraded to DVD, and never coded for streaming; they're practically "lost films."
In essence, the doc asks the question: why, in the 1980s and 1990s, did the popularity of these movies explode? Part of the reason was the advent of the VCR. People could watch in the privacy of their own homes. But why not just rent a flat-out porn movie? And, by the way, what's the difference? We Kill for Love uses its whopping 163-minute running time to discuss the idea of sex being dangerous, and possibly more alluring that straight-ahead porn. (There's an amusing insert of a refrigerator full of magnets, which can make interchangeable titles like "Fatal Instinct" and "Basic Obsession.") The doc also interviews many of the actors and filmmakers who were there, and they tell the untold story of the erotic thriller factory, and what it was like to crank out these movies. (Surprisingly, many took pride in their work and tried to make the best and sexiest movies they could.) In essence, We Kill for Love has found uncharted territory in film criticism and proved that, even though this genre has been seen as trash, it actually has merit.
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