‘We Kill For Love’ Review – A Patchwork Cinematic History Of Sexual Taboo

There has always been a special kind of attraction to the voluminous subgenre of erotic thrillers. But during the video store era of the eighties and nineties, it was impossible to ignore. Big name titles got checked out often to the point of renting out every copy, making smaller low budget titles get more exposure on the shelves of both local and chain video stores. All types of fans within genre film spaces were no strangers to this at their local video stores, no matter if they were action junkies, horror hounds, or sci-fi geeks. They may even tell you that’s how they discovered much of the films they love today — cult or mainstream — that they would obsess over for days, weeks, or a lifetime.

This now-gone* era of the video store is a prime focus within Anthony Penta’s documentary We Kill For Love, a nearly exhaustive examination of how the elements of erotic thrillers came to be on a somewhat unified, and sometimes individual, level. It’s a clear love letter to the cinematic trend that wears its heart squarely on its sleeve. Yet, while celebrating the genre, Penta misses a prime opportunity to properly examine its established sexuality. The documentary credits erotic thrillers with challenging ingrained puritanical attitudes surrounding sex, with moviegoers and critics at the center. Despite repeated acknowledgements of the role sex and sexuality plays in these films the only origin point we spend any length of time on are American noir pictures.

Of course, we are provided countless examples of thrillers from the 1980s through the 1990s in detailing the VHS and video store era, too many to count in fact, as well as plenty of samples from classic film noir. It goes into some detail showing parallels between films like Double Indemnity and Body Heat, and how audience attraction to onscreen sexuality could have solidified in the American noir. The evolution here being a graduation of sexual representation in tandem with its depictions of violence. The basis for its argument here is sound; there is indeed a strong origin point providing a through line for the mild sexually charged origins of noir that intersects with erotic thrillers as we know them, as well as an adoption of film noir’s characteristic pessimism and misanthropy.

But the analysis of the rise and fall of erotic thrillers in Penta’s study focuses on specific arguments for what constitutes its genesis and gradual adaptability. Alluded to earlier, one such glaring omission of a key component in erotic thrillers is the sexploitation film. Best examples in the genre include the works of Doris Wishman and Russ Meyer as spearheading creatives. It would be regrettable if the conversation encompassing sex and sexploitation omitted 42nd street film writer Bill Landis, whose contributions and analysis of celluloid sexuality opened doors for future filmmakers working in genre spaces well after film noir nudged filmgoers into a, shall we say, hornier mode of thought.

Writers like Landis also provided a compass for those seeking out titles to discover well before the advent of home video, yet the attention paid to critics both before and during the video store era are suspiciously devoid of attention in the documentary. We Kill For Love points out that the seedlings are all there in American noir, and the connection between noir and erotic thriller may seem like a direct unbroken line to Penta and the viewer in the moment. But in the grander picture of how film movements influence others, there is yet the underlying problem that still plagues this documentary in a puritanical sense: the more sexually explicit films that precede the erotic thriller subgenre don’t receive the recognition or credit that they deserve—in fact they receive none at all. Even still, for the section of genre cinema We Kill For Love does focus on, it still makes for an enthralling analysis of the erotic thriller.

The subjects Penta gathers help to tell great stories of their experiences with these movies. Those who worked on the titles in focus of the documentary become authoritative voices in the field of these thrillers. The device that Penta sets up Michael Reed portraying the archivist, a non-verbal character spooling through the interviews and film clips in a long-shuttered video store, is sweetly inspired but in practice contradictory to the procedural approach its talking heads segments satisfy. Interview subjects providing their privileged information moves in a semi-informal direction in what ultimately feels like a research topic video (the beginning credits even call the documentary “A Video by Anthony Penta”).

This still rides on the waves of exhaustive genre cinema documentaries like Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched or the In Search of Darkness series, but instead of breadth it hyper-fixates on an inquiring, deep-diving voice that ultimately loses track of the audience it seems to want to convince of its argument. The result is a feature documentary mostly for insiders as a whole, but those either new or just getting into the style of films here may feel overwhelmed by the second half. It is without a doubt compelling and, even in the face of its shortcomings, succeeds in opening the door to topics that celebrate taboo that society naturally wants to steer away from. It can only get more inclusive from here.

*video stores are gone for the vast majority of us in America but there are a stalwart few that are still among us. Some digging might reward you with some surprising results.

We Kill For Love is currently available On Demand courtesy of Yellow Veil Pictures. The film will also be available on Blu-Ray on September 26, 2023 which you can learn about here.