Especially when you pair the two together and let them just have at each other in a back alleyway to the sound of wailing saxophones. (There are several key E.T.s here that predate the Reagan-to-Bush-I–era heyday.) From swampy sleazefests to high-temp neo-noirs, Fatal Attraction to Cruel Intentions, these 50 movies remind you that there are few things that movies seem to love more than sex and death. What surprised us during the making of this list was not only what the definition of term meant when it came to what did or did not qualify, but the fact that these types of movies have been around longer than you think. Which means, naturally, that it’s the perfect time to rank the trashiest, the sexiest, the most sordid, and the straight-up best erotic thrillers of all time. Regardless, these often controversial, almost always problematic movies are once again making pulses race and palms sweat.

Or it might simply be nostalgia for an anything-but-simpler time. It could be that moviegoers bemoaning the lack of sex on screens today have rediscovered yesteryear’s hot-and-heavy handwringers in an effort to scratch that itch. the genre’s Golden Age, over the last year. You can credit You Must Remember This, Karina Longworth’s popular Hollywood-history podcast that’s been doing a deep dive into these sleazy, saxophone-soundtracked potboilers from the 1980s and ’90s, a.k.a. Whether or not Fair Play - which begins streaming on Netflix today - brings back this disreputable, much-maligned genre or not, it’s safe to say that erotic thrillers are experiencing a huge resurgence of interest. It was the perfect recreation of a vintage erotic thriller. This was a trashy, panting corporate drama set in 2023 that looked and acted like it was still 1993. What people keyed into was the throwback thrill that Domont and her leads (Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor) were channeling so beautifully. It wasn’t just the now-notorious opening scene of a couple getting it on in the bathroom during a wedding, or the kinks that keeps a secret relationship between these competitive Wall Street sharks in maximum-horny mode, or even the looming threat of violence lurking around every downtown New York corner. When Fair Play, Chloe Domont’s wonderfully salacious thriller, premiered at Sundance this past January, festival audiences immediately reacted to this tale of two financial analysts gunning for a golden-ticket client and C-suite brass ring.

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