For some reason, the male lead always seemed to be played by Andrew Stevens. More often than not, they starred such genre mainstays as Shannon Whirry, Shannon Tweed, and Tanya Roberts. These movies were ostensibly made for married couples looking to spice things up on a Saturday night, but in reality they were mostly rented by the target-rich demographic of horny, drooling teenagers like myself. And every week, those shelves seemed to groan a little louder under the collective weight of all of the titillating new titles being churned out by shlocky straight-to-video companies chasing the skin-and-sin bubble before it would eventually burst. Thirty years ago, the erotic thriller was at the apex of what would be a relatively short-lived, albeit glorious, golden age.

The Lingering Terror of 'Silence of the Lambs'.

'Caligula' Wasn’t Supposed to Be a Porno.In those days, it called to me like a siren’s song. It was like a softcore Maginot Line demarcating the border between reputable movies and disreputable ones. But there was one last row of alphabetized tapes that usually stood right in front of that beaded curtain: the “erotic thriller” section.

Finally, at the farthest end of the store was a beaded curtain leading to the adult section-a dimly-lit grotto boobytrapped by hanging windchimes that announced to the management (and everyone else in the store, including quite possibly your parents’ friends) that you were trespassing into a taboo underworld you weren’t supposed to visit. Behind that were rows divided by genre (drama, romance, foreign, sci-fi, action, horror, etc.). Upon walking in the front door, you would be met by a rack of new releases. If you were a teenage movie nerd back then, you figured out pretty quickly that the layouts of these stores were all pretty much the same, whether they were in Tampa or Tempe.

Back in the early ‘90s, when home-video was as critical to the bottom lines of Hollywood studios as streaming platforms are today, mom-and-pop VHS rental shops were as ubiquitous as Starbucks locations.

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