Carnal Crimes (1991)

If the erotic thriller were to be analyzed through a Gartner Hype Cycle, the genre could currently be seen as experiencing its “Slope of Enlightenment”. Time has revealed the erotic thriller to offer much more than it was ever given credit for during its heyday or “Peak of Inflated Expectations”. Little wonder (Or perhaps it's ironic?) then the genre and its complex depictions of sexuality are finally starting to gain appreciation again when the prevailing attitudes towards the types of sexuality, particularly female sexuality, seen in 90's erotic thrillers seem increasingly illiberal. While legends like Paul Verhoeven and William Friedkin owned the big-budget studio side of the genre with benchmarks like Basic Instinct (1992) and Jade (1995), even more fascinating was the direct-to-video/late night cable area, the undisputed champion of which was Gregory Dark. After revolutionizing adult films with his outrageous and surreal style, Dark, along with producer Walter Gernert, AKA Walter Dark, the second half of the Dark Bros, noticed a niche to be filled in the marketplace for sexually charged, noir-based potboilers a good year before Basic Instinct. The erotic thrillers made by Dark from 1991 to 1996 represent the very best the genre has to offer. The genesis of them all, Carnal Crimes, saw Dark was already confident in the ideas he wanted to explore with his softcore films as he found himself becoming an auteur in a new medium. 

Despite her attorney husband Stanley being an overweight, neglectful louse, Stanley's wife Elise is desperate to bring back some spark in their long defunct love-life, though she fails to turn Stanley's attention away from his work. Something changes in Elise when Stanley introduces her to Renny (Martin Hewitt), a mysterious photographer with a penchant for sadomasochistic imagery at an exhibit of Renny's work. Immediately taken by something in Renny, Elise soon finds herself in Renny's shop and not long after outside his apartment fire escape, beginning an affair that briefly fills the void in Elise's romantic life. The fling quickly takes a turn for the dangerous when Elise becomes aware of Renny's past, suddenly finding herself the central player in a twisted game.

Despite being the first in what would eventually total fourteen erotic thrillers for Dark, very little of Carnal Crimes feels like a first time go-around with virtually all the obsessions Dark would explore in his subsequent softcore films on display. By and large, a lot of the themes in Dark's erotic thrillers are are fairly representative of the direct-to-video erotic thriller as a whole like bored, affluent wives embarking on affairs with potentially dangerous men, voyeurism and sprinkles of sadomasochism. Dark, however, always took each of those ideas and turned them on their heads and even at this early stage, Dark is already finding ways to subvert them. Like most of Dark's erotic thrillers, Carnal Crimes is very much a “women's picture” with the female at the dead center of the story and Dark giving extra attention to psychology, more specifically psychosexuality, with a genuinely surprising late in the game twist that wouldn't feel out of place in a Sergio Martino giallo, making the film, and the way certain characters are perceived, all the more interesting. By his own admission, Dark's erotic thrillers were never “sex positive” and right from the beginning with Carnal Crimes there is a fascination with supposed adults failing to properly handle their desires. The married life also isn't presented in a very warm light in Dark's softcore films from the put upon wife's point of view, something which began here with Carnal Crimes, Dark brilliantly using the twist to reveal even more secrets hidden between Stanley and Elise.

Dark has long credited himself with the explosion of erotic thrillers in the 90's. During a 1997 interview with Psychotronic Video, Dark claimed “I sincerely believe I started it in this country. Zalman Kin is credited with it, but I did Carnal Crimes way before his stuff. I was developing Carnal Crimes in '89, and there were no erotic thrillers in the US at that time. My softcore films are really not so much underground. I mean, Hollywood tries to rip me off in wholesale fashion as often as they can. Carnal Crimes was my first bored housewife feature, where the heroin gets involved with the “wrong” guy”... Dark described leading lady Linda Carroll as “very pretty” and “very strange”, telling Psychotronic “I saw her sitting outside of this casting call, and she was so strange... had this bizarre energy that I can't quite describe. I thought she might be right for this character. But she was quite difficult to work with and proved me wrong”. With the Secret Games (1991-94) and Animal Instincts (1992-96) trilogies plus films like Night Rhythms (1992) and Body of Influence (1993) following in quick succession, Carnal Crimes, being the first of Dark's softcore thrillers, might get overshadowed by Dark's thrillers that followed, but the film is a crucial stepping stone in Dark's career and being his first in the genre, a crucial and frankly, essential erotic thriller.