Editorials
[Horror Queers] The Sad, Underwhelming Saga of Erotic Thriller ‘Sliver’
Each month in Horror Queers, Joe and Trace tackle a horror film with LGBTQ+ themes, a high camp quotient or both. For lifelong queer horror fans like us, there’s as much value in serious discussions about representation as there is in reading a ridiculously silly/fun horror film with a YAS KWEEN mentality. Just know that at no point will we be getting Babashook.
As two gay men, we have opted to use the moniker “Horror Queers” for this series of articles. It is a word that has a complicated history due to its derogatory use by bullies and hateful people, but has increasingly been adopted as a term of empowerment and a unifying term that recognizes the many complex identities that make up the LGBTIQQ community. Queer has become commonplace in academia, politics and pop culture over the past three decades. We understand and recognize that the term is still very hurtful for some people, but we believe that the more people that proudly reclaim it, the more the wounds and stigma surrounding the term are reduced. Using the word “queer” is intensely personal, but it is a decision that we are committed to. Please don’t be an asshole when using it and we’ll get along fine.
***SPOILERS for Sliver follow.***
Synopsis for Sliver: Book editor and recent divorcee Carly Norris (Sharon Stone) moves into exclusive New York City apartment building “Sliver”, whose secretive tenants include video game designer Zeke (William Baldwin), novelist Jack (Tom Berenger), and fashion model Vida (Polly Walker). Carly soon becomes embroiled in an intimate and dangerous investigation into the mysterious death of Naomi Singer (Allison Mackie), the former resident of her apartment who looked just like her and recently plummeted off of the balcony to her death.
Queer Aspect: Billy Baldwin has a rockin’ bod and the sex scenes rival the campiness of Showgirls.
Joe
I was relatively young when screenwriter Joe Eszterhas briefly took Hollywood by storm with a flurry of cliché, sordid erotic thrillers. I remember that Basic Instinct was a huge hit in 1992, but I didn’t know that it was notoriously protested by lesbians and bisexuals in the same way that Cruising was. I vaguely recall adult fans of NYPD Blue commenting on David Caruso’s ill-advised decision to leave the series to do dreck like 1995’s Jade and of course there was no escaping the controversy around Showgirls’ X rating.
Absent from my knowledge of Eszterhas’ filmography: 1993’s Sliver. I didn’t discover this one until many years later when I began making my way through all of the 80s/90s sleazy sex thrillers when I was doing research for a course I was prepping. The cover art, featuring the building and a still of one of the film’s many torrid sex scenes, was provocative and narratively unhelpful all at once. The cast was surprisingly stacked with 90s stars (Stone, Baldwin) and character actors I liked (Martin Landau! CCH Pounder!), but the title itself was a complete unknown. Why had I never heard of Sliver?
I remember being disappointed the first time I watched this, but found I remembered virtually nothing going into the rewatch for this column. I selected it for my “off cycle” pick because I vaguely remembered how…memorable…Baldwin’s body is, and I knew that Eszterhas never met an erotic thriller trope he couldn’t turn into pure sleaze, so I figured we would have plenty to talk about.
Whoo boy…what a mess! This turned out to be a much more appropriate pick than I had anticipated because the camp value of this film is HIGH. What is going on with Stone’s acting choices? WTF is up with the pacing, which lilts all over the place? And we haven’t even gotten to the hilariously terrible sex scenes (mmmm column sex) and the botched double ending that doesn’t reflect the film’s troubled production and battles with the MPAA so much as a defeated decision to lay down and die without attempting to provide any kind of satisfying closure.
What’s most interesting to me is the pedigree of both the original source material and the story. I’ve seen all of the adaptations of Ira Levin’s work and in hindsight, it seems to be notoriously tricky. Do it right and you get Rosemary’s Baby and the original Stepford Wives. Do it badly and you get the Stepford Wives remake and this. That is a steep pass/fail ratio.
I’ve convinced that the idea of a woman who falls prey to the seductive powers of voyeurism is a solid concept for a film. Partnering it with an erotic thriller, which is all about watching, being watched and the implications of both sides, is particularly topical for the early 90s when the balance of power is shifting from older technologies to more modern ones (represented in the film by Carly’s old-timey telescope and Zeke’s state of the art 007 villain lair). The use of the seductive, exclusive high rise building as a societal microcosm is a longstanding genre metaphor; throwing diverse people into small enclosed cubes that are stacked according to wealth and status is a recipe for conflict, particularly when one individual has the ability to play god.
It should work, but the execution and those restrictive censorship battles clearly took their toll. What did you think, Trace? Tell your initial impressions: what – if anything – works for you? And where do you think the film goes wrong?
Take your time. I’ll just be over here stroking my volcano centerpiece, watching all of the POC that the film only bothers to show on video screens.
Trace
WHOA, Joe. Let’s not put down that remake of The Stepford Wives just yet. Is it a mess? Absolutely. But is it hilariously entertaining? Most definitely. I would watch that movie a thousand times over the “film” that is Sliver because, hoo boy, this film is a turkey. There aren’t even that many sex scenes! There are two or three at most. I can handle a bad film being bad; what I can’t handle is a boring film, and Sliver is the latter. Imagine what this film would have been if Roman Polanski had directed it, like Ira Levin wanted?
Are we supposed to care about these characters? One of the reviews I dug up referred to Carly as a cipher, and that description couldn’t be more spot on. I never knew what Carly wanted or how she was feeling. This worked for Stone in Basic Instinct because the role of Catherine Trammell called for it, but Carly is the protagonist of this film. She is meant to be the audience surrogate. Why should I care that Tom Berenger broke into her apartment and is waiting for her to come home when she doesn’t even care? Stone looks utterly bored throughout all of her scenes except the aforementioned column sex scene which, well, that is a scene. Reading that Entertainment Weekly article you linked to, it makes sense. Stone didn’t want to do Sliver because it was too similar to Basic Instinct. If only her jealousy (or is it pride?) hadn’t gotten the better of her.
Joe, you are right in that the concept of a woman giving in to the voyeurism is interesting though. The problem in Sliver, however, is that they wait until 80 minutes into the film to really address it, and by that point there are only 25 minutes left in the movie! So by the time the script really starts to delve deep into the effect that voyeurism can have on a person, the movie just….ends. The same goes for the murder mystery aspect. There isn’t enough focus given to that subplot to make it interesting (though the opening scene is pretty solid, even if it calls to mind Maggie’s death in Child’s Play). The resolution is so anticlimactic! I know it has to do with the reshot ending, but Berenger’s character is arrested before it is even confirmed that he is the villain so there isn’t even a big final showdown between Stone and Berenger! He just gets arrested and later we see him murdering Naomi on Zeke’s surveillance footage.
Now, I don’t walk into an erotic thriller for tastefulness, but Sliver comes off as particularly tacky in some areas, the tackiest of which is the child abuse storyline that has no resolution. Why even include it as a subplot if you’re not going to give it the proper attention? I’m assuming this was included because it was a part of the novel’s narrative, but…why? Is it to show how Carly’s morality is wavering as she begins to accept her voyeuristic tendencies? Okay, fine, but the movie essentially ends with Carly turning against them and still doesn’t say anything about this girl whose stepfather is raping her! It left an awful taste in my mouth.
What did work for me is the fact that Sliver is an equal opportunist when it comes nudity. Yes, Sharon Stone gets the brunt of it (I can’t recall if we see her vagina but her tits and ass are all over the place), but Baldwin’s booty gets a fair amount of screen time and we even get a penis shot in one of his video feeds (I was watching the R-rated version too)! Full-frontal male nudity wasn’t a new thing in the ‘90s, but it wasn’t exactly commonplace, so it was a pleasant surprise to see that in Sliver. Those sex scenes though, yeesh. That column sex scene almost puts Showgirls’ pool sex scene to shame.
Also working in the film’s favor are the moments when it leans into the campy aspects you mention. Just look at practically anything that Colleen Camp (whom readers may recognize as Yvette from Clue) says (“Isn’t Pearl Jam some sort of Oriental sex thing?” or “I’m getting a plastic yeast infection!”) and Sliver is frequently (unintentionally?) laugh-out-loud funny. The dinner scene, in which the elderly couple watches Zeke ask Carly to remove her panties in a crowded restaurant, is also highly amusing. If only Sliver had had more scenes like that! Also, Zeke’s Bond villain lair is one for the books. The fact that the film’s original ending featured Zeke and Carly’s airplane diving into an active volcano seems appropriate. That’s where his second evil lair is!
Joe, do you think Sliver is intentionally campy? Do you agree we needed more of Colleen Camp’s character? Did you cringe at the line “Do you have any body parts that hurt?”? And does everyone really have a telescope, as Carly suggests?
Joe
Do I think Sliver is intentionally campy? Oh hell no. I think that this film has clusterfuck written all over it. It was clearly a victim of cuts and edits that made it into a fairly nonsensical erotic thriller, but even if you account for that, there’s still so much in Sliver that doesn’t work that I’m certain this was a mess from the very beginning (though a Polanski version would have made for a much more interesting mess, to be sure).
As you rightfully pointed out, there are quite a few bright sections hidden amidst the lows. The dinner sequence when Carly plays along with Zeke is arguably both sexy and silly – the reactions of the older restaurant patrons are either intended to mirror the audience’s or underline how juvenile Carly and Zeke’s antics are. That’s a delicate line to tread, but considering how new their romance is, it works. And it’s intentionally funny, which is something that Sliver doesn’t often accomplish.
Watching the film through 2018 eyes is very different than what I imagine a 90s screening would have been like. I don’t know that Carly’s reaction to the little girl’s molestation would have ever played well (using a child’s trauma as a stopover on your protagonist’s character arc isn’t appropriate in ANY decade), but Carly’s reactions to Berenger’s continual sexual harassment and home invasions were confounding! Her casual response to finding a strange man in her dark apartment is insane, particularly when juxtaposed with her flip-out after he scares her in the park. I don’t know if this speaks more to how Stone is playing the character (somnambulist mode activate!) or how Eszterhas writes her, but it defies explanation.
I haven’t seen Jade in nearly two decades, but from what I remember of that hot mess, I’m prepared to place the majority of the blame for Sliver on the screenplay. Looking at Eszterhas’ oeuvre, it’s clear that he has a very specific (read: simplistic, offensive) perspective on women, sex and sexuality; not only do his screenplays lack nuance and depth, but the finished result tends to play to society’s fears about sexually forward women. Not unlike the 50s melodramas that allowed women to adopt modern roles before punishing them with misery and death, Eszterhas writes female-centric narratives that chastise women for daring to have sexual impulses.
What saddens me is how director Phillip Noyce suffered for this. Looking back over his filmography, he’s clearly a talented director. I would argue that one of the film’s strengths is how desolate and brutal the high-rise looks. I love Zeke’s pulpy villain lair because it is so ridiculous, but Noyce still manages to create a hazy disorienting vibe when Carly succumbs to the visual pleasures of the building residents’ soap opera lives. Eszterhas contributed a nonsensical script that included a fucking volcano dive; Noyce brought some film noir sexiness and tasteful Baldwin nudity (ohh that scene when he’s sitting spread eagle on the bed with juuuust enough shadow to cover his dirty bits!).
As for performances, I’m not sure that anyone really acquits themselves here. Stone in particular is utterly atrocious; I truly don’t understand her creative decisions and Carly’s complete lack of believable reactions to everything is bizarre. Calling the character a cipher is 100% accurate. Baldwin is better, though the role hardly requires him to do more than look hot and act enigmatic. Berenger is over the top and so obviously a villain from the very first moment he’s introduced that it’s laughable to consider anyone else being the killer.
I didn’t actually care for Colleen Camp, if we’re being honest. That character felt like she was in a completely different movie. If everyone else were cracking one-liners or if this were a parody of erotic thrillers, then it might have worked, but to me she felt out of place. I mostly just wanted more Landau and CCH Pounder, who I loooove, but neither of them really have anything to do other than show up and grab a paycheck.
As for everyone having a telescope…of course! If you live in a high-rise and aren’t spying on your neighbours, you’re doing it wrong. 😉
Trace
Joe, whatever movie Camp was in is the movie I wanted to be watching! She sticks out like a sore thumb but, unlike Stone, at least she’s interested in whatever it is that’s happening on screen. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Camp is the campiest thing about the movie (sorry). Sidebar: Thank you so much for making me Google CCH Pounder because I have seen that woman in so many things but never put a name to a face. I thought CCH Pounder was a wrestler. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t know if I fully buy into your theory that Eszterhas’ narratives chastise women who have sexual impulses. After all Catherine Tramell won in Basic Instinct (though the argument with her is that she’s portrayed as a predatory lesbian) and Nomi Malone is an insufferable twat in Showgirls. With Eszterhas’ quartet of erotic thrillers (Basic Instinct, Sliver, Showgirls and Jade), it could be argued that it’s a fear of the female gender, as opposed to female sexuality, if only because he insists upon writing characters that he clearly doesn’t understand. That mindset might feel antiquated, but I was reminded of our harsh reality today when the first publicity still for the next Terminator movie was released. Just read some of the comments on this article: they are vile, disgusting and hateful. All because the first publicity still of this “macho” franchise (which has always been about female empowerment) dares to focus on its three lead female characters. And don’t even get me started on the comments regarding Mackenzie Davis’ appearance. Eszterhas’ scripts aren’t anywhere near as offensive as the Terminator comments, but they do fall in the same ballpark: fear of females.
It’s no surprise that his career took a sharp downturn in the late ‘90s. Other than the one-two punch of box office failure from Showgirls and Jade in the same year (they were released just one month apart from each other!), audiences and critics were simply over his schtick. The man has only written one film post-2000 and it was 12 years ago. He has written five books since 2000 though, so he’s probably doing okay for himself. Noyce (you can’t tell, but I’m giggling right now because I just binged all of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and all I can think of is Andy Samberg saying “noice” instead of “nice”) hasn’t fared nearly as poorly, however. He still directed The Bone Collector, The Saint, The Quiet American and 2016’s Roots mini-series after this.
I do want to address the original ending of the film one more time. Yes, Zeke and Carly dive into a volcano before the film blacks out, but in that ending Zeke is the killer. It’s clear that Berenger was acting as a red herring for the whole film, which is why when he is revealed as the killer in the theatrical cut it feels like an underwhelming afterthought. It’s almost as if the editor was like “Oh right, we have to reveal the killer” in the days leading up to the film’s release. This is just one of those instances where a studio shouldn’t have listened to test audiences. You see, they took issue with Carly turning immoral and choosing to stay with the villain of the film. Even if that ending wouldn’t have saved the film, it’s at least more interesting than the ending we got.
Overall, Sliver is a total miss for me. It’s dull and it’s not sexy. This is a shame for both Stone and Eszterhas, especially coming off the tour de force that is Basic Instinct. What 1993 audiences must have thought walking out of the theater! Think about how disappointed they must have been!
Next time on Horror Queers: we’re venturing to Norway to check out Joachim Trier’s 2017 thriller Thelma. Expect snakes, ballet and telekinesis.
Sliver is available for free on Amazon Prime. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
And don’t forget to catch up on our previous Horror Queers articles right here!
On July 13th, 2026, the world lost one of its brightest stars.
Beloved New Zealand actor Sam Neill passed away from pneumonia after a long battle with stage 3 lymphoma. The multifaceted movie star will be remembered by mainstream audiences for his iconic role as Dr. Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece Jurassic Park, as well as powerful turns in A Cry in the Dark (1988), The Piano (1993), and Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), and prestige TV series The Tudors and Peaky Blinders. But horror fans know him as one of the genre’s most surprising Scream Kings.
Through a handful of memorable starring roles, Neill spent the 80s and 90s bringing life to a wide variety of characters and finding humanity in the most unusual leading roles, regardless of how heroic or villainous.
The Final Conflict (1981)
After a decade on the stage and screen in New Zealand and Australia, Neill made his international debut as Damien Thorn in Graham Baker’s The Final Conflict, the third installment of The Omen franchise. Now a 36-year-old businessman, Damien is fully aware of his devilish parentage and hell-bent on world domination. But rather than a hooved and horned monstrosity, Neill’s Antichrist is a suave businessman who leads his followers in an expensive suit and seeks to bring about the apocalypse through deceptive altruism rather than grand proclamation.
Despite his austere demeanor, the man’s true evil knows no bounds. When a prophecy foretells the second coming of Christ, known in the film as “the Nazarene,” Damien commands his followers to commit widespread infanticide, murdering all baby boys born on a specific date. He seduces a high-profile reporter while transforming her teenage son into a bloodthirsty disciple, then uses the child as a human shield. This tricky role allows Neill to demonstrate his trademark versatility, easily charming the outside world while dropping his suave mask of normalcy behind closed doors. Though certain aspects of The Final Conflict are admittedly dated, Neill’s performance feels eerily prescient. He’s mastered the heinous portrayal of a politician willing to sell his soul for power that will ultimately bring about the end of the world.
Possession (1981)
Though Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession is often remembered for Isabelle Adjani’s stunning depiction of a woman on the edge, Neill delivers an equally unhinged performance as Mark, a spy returning home from a lengthy assignment in divided Berlin. Upon discovering that his wife Anna (Adjani) wants a divorce, Mark desperately tries to hold his family together even at the expense of her sanity. Filmed the same year as The Final Conflict, Neill dives headfirst into this visceral role, managing to evoke sympathy for the distraught father who becomes ever more desperate to regain control. Inspired by his own divorce, Żuławski resists blaming either party for the separation, instead showing the chaos and heartache that comes in the wake of a family’s dissolution.
Once considered to replace Roger Moore as the next James Bond, Neill has fun with the international spy persona as Żuławski’s plot grows increasingly bizarre. But the skilled actor never lets us forget that Mark is a flawed human being struggling to keep his life from falling apart. A second character emerges in the film’s mesmerizing climax, allowing Neill to lean into full villainy with a glassy-eyed stare that chills to the bone. Now a cult classic, Adjani and Neill bounce off each other’s seething rage, creating one of the most effective cinematic duets in the history of horror.
Jurassic Park (1993)
When Steven Spielberg’s creature feature first hit theaters, Neill was by no means a household name and hardly a traditional leading man. Without the swashbuckling swagger of Harrison Ford, the mega-watt smile of Tom Cruise, or the chiselled jaw of Brad Pitt — all famous action stars of the era — Neill felt like an unconventional choice for this massive role. But he perfectly captures the essence of Grant, an aloof academic who prefers dig sites to fancy fundraisers and social events. Despite an aversion to children, the dinosaur expert finds himself tasked with saving the theme park’s youngest survivors who gradually break down his emotional walls. Grant’s transformation into a courageous caretaker is a landmark deconstruction of traditional gender norms wrapped in the guise of a rugged outdoorsman.
Neill proves to be the perfect action star, effortlessly navigating Spielberg’s stunning set pieces without losing the character’s relatable hook. But perhaps the film’s most touching moment is Neill’s childlike wonder at seeing a dinosaur for the first time. Stunned to speechlessness, he channels the audience’s wondrous joy when Grant first spies a real, live Brachiosaurus. But he seamlessly weaves this infectious awe into serious concerns about the creature’s existence, amplifying the story’s prophetic messaging. Jeff Goldblum may utter the film’s iconic warning, but the duality of Grant’s performance perfectly illustrates the scientific imperative, reminding us that just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
Neill would go on to lead Joe Johnston’s 2001 sequel Jurassic Park III, in which Grant is again tasked with saving a child. In 2022, he would appear in Colin Trevorrow’s legacy sequel Jurassic World Dominion, which merges the franchise’s two distinct eras while bringing the carnage onto mainland shores. Despite turning in strong performances, neither film is able to top the magic of Spielberg’s original or Neill’s captivating performance as the stoic leading man. But his nuanced depiction of Alan Grant inspired a generation of would-be paleontologists and quiet kids who could now see themselves as courageous academics capable of surprising strength.
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
After catapulting to worldwide fame, Neill returned to horror proper to lead John Carpenter’s mind-bending In the Mouth of Madness. We first meet John Trent (Neill) as he’s dragged, kicking and screaming, into a padded cell. An unknown stretch of time later, he recounts an unbelievable story while covered in protective crosses scrawled into his skin — and the cell’s walls — with black crayon. A private investigator, Trent has been tasked with locating Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), a world-famous yet elusive genre author whose work has been driving his ravenous readers to disturbing acts of random violence.
A love letter to fans of horror fiction, we delight in watching Trent explore literary easter eggs that lead him down jarring rabbit holes. A late-night road trip takes Trent and Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), an editor for Cane’s publishing house, to a tiny New England hamlet teeming with darkness. While investigating an ominous cathedral on the outskirts of town, Trent realizes that he’s somehow been transported into the author’s interdimensional story and become its unwitting protagonist.
Neill serves as a skeptical everyman and the audience’s conduit through this bizarre tale of literary monsters that find a way to burst through the page. An often overlooked Carpenter film, In the Mouth of Madness spirals into insanity, but Neill keeps us grounded throughout each outlandish twist. A shocking conclusion leaves us gaping at our screens and contemplating our own relationship with horror fiction. After all, does free will truly exist? Or, like Trent, are we merely pawns in someone else’s monstrous creation?
Event Horizon (1997)
One of the scariest movies ever set in space, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon builds upon the heroic image Neill established for himself in Jurassic Park. Dr. William Weir (Neill) is a physicist temporarily joining the crew of the Lewis and Clark to assist in their latest rescue mission. Seven years after vanishing without a trace, a spaceship called the Event Horizon has suddenly reappeared near Neptune’s orbit. As the creator of a top-secret gravity drive designed to facilitate faster-than-light travel, Dr. Weir has been sent to explore the ship and find out what happened to its missing crew.
Still haunted by his late wife’s suicide, Dr. Weir is a sympathetic figure, particularly in comparison to the harsh Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) who commands the crew of the Lewis and Clark. But Weir’s desperation to return to the infamous ship hides a sinister secret that leads his fellow astronauts to the threshold of hell. Neill’s talent for playing the everyman pays off in spades as the formerly sympathetic widower transforms into a disciple of this frightening dimension. Resembling a long-lost cenobite, Weir claws out his own eyes and prepares to drag the crew into a world consumed with sadistic pain.
Daybreakers (2009)
Neill returns to his Omen roots in Michael and Peter Spierig’s action-packed film as a secretly sinister businessman. But rather than the Antichrist, Charles Bromley (Neill) is a proud vampire convinced of the species’ superiority. With human blood in short supply, Bromley Marks Corp. is working on a synthetic substitute to prevent the human race from impending extinction. While hematologists perfect the formula, Bromley oversees disturbing fields of humans chained to massive machines that systematically harvest their blood.
Neill chills in this sinister role with vampiric yellow eyes, a pale complexion, and subtle fangs. But more upsetting is the fact that he honestly doesn’t believe he’s wrong. Once diagnosed with cancer, Bromley was delighted to find that vampirism would totally reverse his illness and grant him the gift of eternal life. He begged his daughter Alison (Isabel Lucas) to turn alongside him, but she has rejected her father’s controversial choice and is now hunted by his bloodthirsty goons. In a heartbreaking moment of clarity, Bromley brings his daughter to the brink of death, then turns away in disgust when she will not embrace his undead lifestyle.
Daybreakers is a surprisingly thrilling exploration of survival and sustainability. Similar to a plot Damien Thorn would hatch, Bromley’s ultimate plan is to placate the vampire population with synthetic blood while allowing the human population to replenish itself. With a larger stock, he plans to sell authentic humans at a premium, hunting these poor souls to season the meat. Bromley rejects a cure that would reverse the vampiric disease, choosing to enrich himself over saving the world. The strangely captivating villain’s end is a cathartic nightmare and fitting punishment for a wealthy man who places himself above everyone else.
In the Mouth of Madness
While the world may remember Neill for his signature role as a gruff but compassionate paleontologist going head to head with a raging T-Rex, horror fans may picture the versatile actor maniacally rocking back and forth in a filthy Berlin apartment, commanding a boardroom of corporate vampires, disappearing into the darkness of a haunted spaceship, sermonizing to satanists, or giggling over popcorn in a deserted movie theater. Or perhaps you have another favorite role in the beloved actor’s stellar career. But whether he was playing a hero or villain, Neill brought undeniable humanity to every role, redefining our idea of masculinity and the very nature of goodness vs. evil. By bringing such disparate characters to life, Neill challenged audiences with a variety of complex roles, asking us to examine the humanity of each character no matter how flawed or virtuous.
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