We Kill For Love - Lilith Likes to Watch Documentary December 2025
Title: We Kill For Love
Year: 2023
Starring: Andrew Stevens, Monique Parent, Amy Lindsay
Director: Anthony Penta
Synopsis: A documentary that goes in search of the forgotten world of the direct-to-video erotic thriller, an American film genre that once dominated late night cable television and the shelves of neighborhood video stores. - via Letterboxd.com
Lilith's Notes: How many titles do you recognize?
"It's just a thriller."
I don’t remember what movie it was, or maybe it was just a show, but I had a VHS of something recorded off the TV, commercials and all, and one commercial for one movie has been unidentified, half-remembered, my own little piece of Lost Media that to this day, haunts me.
In the commercial, a woman wearing a long fur coat walks into a room. The camera is behind her. She begins removing the coat, wearing nothing underneath. But before we see anything more risque than a nude back, she either walks into the room and our line of sight of her is broken, or, the scene cuts to another scene. I don’t know anything else about this movie. I don’t know the year, the title, the actors, anything. If you do know what I’m talking about, please tell me and put my curiosity to rest.
If you were anything like me, growing up in the 80s and 90s, you remember these sorts of strange echoes that became known as the erotic thriller. Something that brought with it a sort of awakening within you, but knew it was too grown up. Their commercials sneaking into your orbit while watching perfectly appropriate shows like Star Trek or the Edited for Television Broadcast version of Robocop your parents recorded onto VHS. What, exactly, was Basic Instinct? Fatal Attraction? Jade? And when was I finally going to see them?
Decades later, the fad more or less has passed us all by, and many of the erotic thrillers have come and gone. But where did they go? Why did they leave us? These are the questions that We Kill for Love brings forth and tries to answer. What it brings forth is a valiant effort that doesn’t quite satisfy.
The documentary begins with a moody set, where a would-be detective looks at a murderboard and files and tries to decipher the origins and ultimate fate of the Erotic Thriller. I don’t love the framing device of this film because it is scripted, which takes away from the feel, the very concept, even, of a documentary. I know there’s often some scripting in documentaries, but this guy is monologuing and acting the part of a hardboiled noir detective. Key word being acting.
Through various interviews, the filmmakers ardently strive to trace the history of erotic thrillers, pinning the origins with film noir, and Hitchcock. While these works were not outright erotic as we would define the term today, they were more daring and provocative in their time, with themes like voyeurism, and bold women, with life and death teetering on the line. By the time films such as Fatal Attraction came out, the genre was firmly cemented, and giving humanity a new lexicon, like Bunny Boiler. In fact, the entire section on Fatal Attraction is fascinating, as it delves into it’s first iteration, then what it became in the hands of Adrien Lyne, and how the filmmakers and actors believed they created a sympathetic character in Alex while the audience absolutely hated her and needed to see her be punished for the crime of breaking up a happy family. It’s an interesting look at what goes into making a film.
We also go into, of course, Basic Instinct and the infamous leg crossing scene and the power that lay behind that simple movement, both on-screen and off.
But this documentary has its share of flaws. It’s both too long, and too short, which results in a shallow wading into a directionless middle. It didn’t need to be nearly three hours long as is, but rather it should have been a series of four or six episodes, each running an hour or so. For example, we talk about Julie Strain for no real reason. We don’t single out any other actor like we do with Julie, nor do we touch on her tragic death, or even mention she passed away, other than referring to her in the past tense. She’s just in and out of the documentary like a sexy detour.
Then the film pontificates about why erotic thrillers aren’t made as much anymore, and we get a bitter whiff of It-Was-a-Different-Time-itis. We all care about consent now, and rightfully so, but “You can’t just grab a girl and throw her on the bed anymore” and it reeked of “Men can’t even talk to women anymore without being accused of rape!”
C’mon. We’re better than that. Erotic Thrillers are fantasy, and ideally there’s a tacit agreement that whatever happens in them, stays in them. You can’t admonish Erotic Thrillers on one hand and then agree that Dark Romance is one of the most popular book genres around right now, and that Bodice Rippers have always been a thing. It even answers its own question with the fact that they’re still being made. Where? By whom? Lifetime Channel! Who watches Lifetime? Housewives.
And me.
Those who are scandalized by what happens on a screen is a small, loud minority and we really have to stop kowtowing to them or else we end up with nearly half the USA unable to access Pornhub fuck it I will not shut up about this I don’t care that I’m Canadian and that Pornhub is a Canadian company it affects us all.
In a beautiful moment of situational irony, one of the former actresses in these films helpfully lets us know that she is a Conservative, and appeared in a campaign commercial for Ted Cruz. Of course, once her fellow Cons realized her filmography, she was shunned. Gee, who could have seen that coming?
Most egregious of all, remember that murderboard I mentioned? Upon it was tacked an image of the neo-noir thriller Bound, starring Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon. The quintessential erotic thriller. Nowhere is it mentioned. At all. Excuse me?
Talk about queer-bating.
Highlight: Added a bunch of new films to our list.
Lowlight: I really, really wish it went into more depth about the Erotic Thriller to Lifetime evolution.
LILITH'S SCORE: 3.5/5
Until next time, my voracious voyeurs. I’m Lilith, and I’m always watching.
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