Editorials
Erotic Thriller ‘Color of Night’ Lacks Both Skin and Scares [Sex Crimes]
Spend enough time charting the corners of any subgenre and you’ll quickly discover that not all entries are created equal. Due to the sexually charged nature of Erotic Thrillers, a common mistake that Hollywood suits make is believing that so long as there’s an adequate amount of sex and skin, the mechanics of the plot and the characters don’t matter.
What’s wild about Richard Rush’s 1994 film Color of Night is that it both does and does not fall into this trap. There is sex, yes, and it is ridiculous, but the carnal relations are condensed into a single part of the film, leaving long stretches of the thriller without its accompanying eroticism. And while there are a few murders, the thrills are also spread out and tend to be fleeting.
Which begs the question: without the sex and without the thrills, what becomes of an Erotic Thriller?
Color of Night follows New York psychologist Dr. Bill Capa (Bruce Willis). When a patient named Michelle (Kathleen Wilhoite) dies by suicide during a session, Capa loses his ability to see the color red (though this proves mostly immaterial to the character or the plot).
Capa takes a mental health sabbatical and travels to Los Angeles to visit his colleague Bob Moore (Scott Bakula), who has a regular Monday night group therapy session with a deep bench of character actors. These include Lance Henriksen as widowed detective Buck, Brad Dourif as OCD lawyer Clark, Lesley Ann Warren as kleptomaniac sex addict Sondra, and Kevin J. O’Connor as entitled painter Casey. There’s also a young man named Richie (played by Jane March in unconvincing drag) who is diagnosed with a “gender identity problem” and “social phobia” that prompts him to stutter.
All of the patients are implicated when Moore is killed by a masked killer in a glorious slow-motion sequence that plays like a homage to Argento. Alas, none of the patients make for compelling murder suspects or red herrings because Billy Ray and Matthew Chapman’s script hardly develops anything unique or interesting about them aside from their malady (or vice, as the case may be).
As previously discussed, Erotic Thrillers are indebted to the characterizations and sexual politics of Film Noir, which were often fronted by a cop, private investigator, or journalist. The films use this character to drive the narrative forward: collect clues, interrogate witnesses, and eventually finger the culprit.
Alas, that description doesn’t fully apply to Capa.
Capa is soft-spoken and wounded, so although 1994 Bruce Willis is extremely charismatic, this character makes for a bland – and often resistant – detective. It makes sense given his grief over losing his patient, but it renders too much of the film passive and uninteresting.
And then there’s the narrative’s shoddy foundation: not only would Capa not be allowed to live in Moore’s mansion following the murder, he would absolutely not be permitted to take over the man’s practice in order to break patient confidentiality for Ruben Blades’ aggravating Detective Hector Martinez.
This suspension of disbelief would be easier if Ray and Chapman’s script did anything to bring the film to life. Aside from Moore’s death sequence and the discovery of Casey’s corpse in his palatial artist loft later, the film’s only other thrilling moment of action is a drawn-out car chase on the Los Angeles freeway. And while Rush’s use of mirrors to create interesting depth of field and framing is notable, it can’t elevate a plodding script.
And then there is Color of Night’s lack of sex. In addition to doing it on the kitchen counter, the film features sex scenes in both the pool and the shower (ie: a feminine hygiene disaster waiting to happen). But that’s it. These scenes are appropriately hot, yes, but they also feel surprisingly tangential and removed from the other storylines. At times, it seems as though they have been included simply because sex is an expectation of the subgenre.
March’s female-presenting character Rose is the object of Capa’s lust, but she’s hardly a femme fatale, nor is she a particularly interesting suspect in the mystery. Instead, Rose/Richie exists primarily as a component of the queer sexuality at the heart of the film’s “twist.”
As mentioned, Richie is played by March in unconvincing boy drag, but unlike other Erotic Thrillers of the era, Color of Night doesn’t entirely devolve into transphobic/queer panic. While the hyperbolic medical diagnosis of Richie as a “genuine nut case” and “volatile and dangerous” is completely incongruous with the experiences of transpeople, Ray and Chapman subvert expectations when it is revealed that Rose/Richie is not the killer (That would be Andrew Lowery‘s Dale, their psychotic older brother).
In the film’s climax, we learn that after Richie died by suicide, Dale forced Rose to impersonate their dead sibling against her will. Over time this caused her to develop something akin to dissociative identity disorder, hence the reason why she assumed different personas when she dated each member of Moore’s group. Rose still identifies as female, however, and Dale is very clearly the killer, and therefore the film’s true villain.
In a way, Color of Night partially side-steps Hollywood’s problematic tendency of demonizing queer sexuality or playing into outdated tropes about transwomen as killers. While it doesn’t excuse the false sentiments made about Richie, the film’s “twist” has aged better than other Erotic Thrillers such as Psycho, Dressed to Kill, and Stripped to Kill.
Queer elements aside, Color of Night’s greatest weakness is its disinterest in developing characters beyond stock, one-dimensional tropes. The film would have been better served by either beefing up the role of a few of its exceedingly talented character actors or leaning into the smutty intrigue of the subgenre and making the narrative a proper sexual thriller (or both).
By straying too far off the well-established path of its predecessors, the film ultimately fails to satisfy. Color of Night is primarily a bland mystery with too few thrills and too little sex to qualify as a serviceable Erotic Thriller.
Sex Crimes is a column that explores the legacy of erotic thrillers, from issues of marital infidelity to inappropriate underage affairs to sexualized crimes. In this subgenre, sex and violence are inexplicably intertwined as the dangers of intercourse take on a whole new meaning.
Editorials
11 Years Later: The Horrific Cycles of Violence in ‘Only God Forgives’ Starring Ryan Gosling
Traditionally, movie theater walkouts are usually associated with the horror genre, with infamous cases ranging from 1973’s The Exorcist (particularly during the crucifix masturbation scene) and even Lars Von Trier’s controversial serial killer memoir, The House That Jack Built.
That being said, there are exceptions to this rule, as some movies manage to terrorize audiences into leaving the theater regardless of genre. One memorable example of this is Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2013 revenge thriller Only God Forgives, a film so brutal and inaccessible that quite a few critics ended up treating it like a snuff film from hell back when it was first released. However, I’ve come to learn that horror fans have a knack for seeing beyond the blood and guts when judging the value of a story, and that’s why I’d like to make a case for Winding’s near-impenetrable experiment as an excellent horror-adjacent experience.
Refn originally came up with the idea for Only God Forgives immediately after completing 2009’s Valhalla Rising and becoming confused by feelings of anger and existential dread during his wife’s second pregnancy. It was during this time that he found himself imagining a literal fistfight with God, with this concept leading him to envision a fairy-tale western set in the far east that would deal with some of the same primal emotions present in his Viking revenge story.
It was actually Ryan Gosling who convinced the director to tackle the more commercially viable Drive first, as he wanted to cement his partnership with the filmmaker in a more traditional movie before tackling a deeply strange project. This would pay off during the production of Only God Forgives, as the filmmaking duo was forced to use their notoriety to scrounge up money at a Thai film festival when local authorities began demanding bribes in order to allow shooting to continue.
In the finished film, Gosling plays Julian, an American ex-pat running a Muay-Thai boxing club alongside his sociopathic brother Billy (Tom Burke). When Billy gets himself killed after sexually assaulting and murdering a teenager, Julian is tasked by his disturbed mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) with tracking down those responsible for the death of her first-born child. What follows is a surreal dive into the seedy underbelly of Bangkok as the cycle of revenge escalates and violence leads to even more violence.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
There’s no right or wrong way to engage with art, but there are some films that clearly require more effort from the audience side in order to be effective. And while you can’t blame cinemagoers for just wanting to enjoy some passive entertainment, I think it’s always worth trying to meet a work of art on its own terms before judging it.
Despite being a huge fan of Drive, I avoided Only God Forgives for a long time because of its poor critical reception and excessively esoteric presentation. It was only years later that I gave the flick a chance when a friend of mine described the experience as “David Lynch on cocaine.” It was then that I realized that nearly everything critics had complained about in the film are precisely what made it so interesting.
If you can stomach the deliberate pacing, you’ll likely be fascinated by this stylish nightmare about morally questionable people becoming trapped in a needless cycle of violence and retaliation. Not only is the photography impeccable, turning the rain-slicked streets of Bangkok into a neo-noir playground, but the bizarre characters and performances also help to make this an undeniably memorable movie. And while Gosling deserves praise as the unhinged Julian, I’d argue that Vithaya Pansringarm steals the show here as “The Angel of Vengeance,” even if his untranslated dialogue is likely to be unintelligible for most viewers.
However, I think the lack of subtitles ends up enhancing the mood here (even though some editions of the film ended up including them against the director’s wishes), adding to the feeling that Julian is a stranger in a strange land while also allowing viewers to project their own motivations onto some of the “antagonists.”
And while Only God Forgives is frequently accused of burying its narrative underneath a pile of artsy excess, I think the heart of the film is rather straightforward despite its obtuse presentation. I mean, the moral here is basically “revenge isn’t fun,” which I think is made clear by the horrific use of violence (though we’ll discuss that further in the next section).
To be clear, I’m still not sure whether or not I enjoyed this movie, I just know that I’m glad I watched it.
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
There are two different kinds of gore effects. One of them is meant to entertain viewers with exaggerated wounds and excessive blood as you admire the craftsmanship behind the filmmaking. The other kind is simply a tool meant to simulate what actually happens when you injure a human body. Like I mentioned before, Only God Forgives isn’t trying to be “fun,” so you can guess what kind gore is in this one…
From realistic maimings to brutal fist fights that feel more painful than thrilling, the “action” label on this flick seems downright questionable when the majority of the experience has you wincing at genuinely scary acts of grisly violence. I mean, the story begins with an unmotivated rampage through the streets of late-night Bangkok and ends with the implication of even more pointless violence, so it’s pretty clear that you’re not really meant to root for an “action hero” here.
I can’t even say that the deaths resemble those from slasher flicks because the movie never attempts to sensationalize these horrific acts, with Refn preferring to depict them as straightforward consequences of violent people going through the motions – which is somehow even scarier than if this had just been yet another hyper-violent revenge movie.
Not only that, but the characters’ overall lack of moral principles makes this story even more disturbing, with the main antagonist being the closest thing to a decent person among the main cast despite also being a brutal vigilante.
Only God Forgives doesn’t care if you like it or not (and actually takes measures to make sure that the viewing experience is often unpleasant), but if you’re willing to step up to this cinematic challenge and engage with the narrative and visuals on their own terms, I think you’ll find an unforgettable nightmare waiting for you on the other side.
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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