Overlook 2023 Film Festival – There isn’t another documentary quite like director Anthony Penta’s  We Kill for Love, or maybe any other documentary about erotic thrillers, for that matter. At nearly three hours long, this work is exhaustive in its examination of the genre, tracing its history, to its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, to its ultimate disappearance by the 2000s, once the VHS and direct-to-video boom imploded.

The sprawling documentary includes interviews with film historians, directors, critics, actresses, and actors. It credits the genre’s roots to film noir. The analysis of film noir is especially interesting, including the historical context. During the 1940s, more women moved into the workforce as men fought in WWII. Because of this, film noir explored various “crises of masculinity,” as one commentator puts it. The doc then addresses Hitchcock’s work and legacy, specifically films like Rebecca, Vertigo, and Rear Window, and the auteur’s voyeurism and blonde doppelgangers. These elements would become ubiquitous in the genre later on.

Other well-known films are explored at length, too, including Dressed to Kill, Basic Instinct, and Fatal Attraction. The commentary on Fatal Attraction is a real highlight, specifically the fact that test audiences absolutely hated Glenn Close’s Alex, which caused the director to shoot another ending in which she’s shot and killed. This is the ending we’re all familiar with, and it was only shot because test audiences saw her as a monster. There’s plenty of discussion regarding gender and sexuality generally, including the way some of these erotic thrillers challenged perceived gender norms and sometimes played out the female fantasy or had assertive sexual female characters, like Sharon Stone’s Catherine in Basic Instinct.

The middle of the documentary then focuses on the VHS, direct-to-video boom of the 1990s, when erotic thrillers populated the shelves at mom-and-pop shop video stores and Blockbuster. There’s also some analysis given to Showtime’s rise as a major network because of its investment in erotic thrillers. This put it in major competition with HBO in the 90s. By this point in the doc, several films are mentioned, one right after the other, but many of which have been lost to time, after the direct-to-video boom went bust. The documentary’s closing act explores the various reasons for this. Anyone into cinema generally will likely find the final 20-30 minutes intriguing as the documentary analyzes why mom-and-pop video stores went out of business. The doc lists various reasons for this, including market saturation, DVDs, the impact of Blockbuster’s decisions, among other reasons.

It’s evident that Penta has a passion for this genre, but at nearly three hours long, this documentary is a lot to take in. This at times feels like a dissertation that explores just about everything there is to examine on this very specific topic. Still, We Kill for Love is the only tribute of its kind to erotic thrillers, a genre that dominated the 1980s and 1990s and at one time, made big bucks. For cinephiles, there’s enough positives here to warrant at least a one-time watch.

6.5 Out of 10