144 Kinky Movies: Trends of Terror

By Steve Hutchison

Kinky movies involve fetishism, bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics. In this edition of Trends of Terror, film critic Steve Hutchison reviews 144 kinky movies and ranks them. How many have you seen?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Hutchison
• Release date: Mar 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781778871436

Steve Hutchison

Artist, developer and entrepreneur in film, video games and communications Steve Hutchison co-founded Shade.ca Art and Code in 1999, then Terror.ca and its French equivalent Terreur.ca in 2000. With his background as an artist and integrator, Steve worked on such games as Capcom's Street Fighter, PopCap's Bejeweled, Tetris, Bandai/Namco's Pac-Man and Mattel's Skip-Bo & Phase 10 as a localization manager, 2-D artist and usability expert. Having acquired skills in gamification, he invented a unique horror movie review system that is filterable, searchable and sortable by moods, genres, subgenres and antagonists. Horror movie fans love it, and so do horror authors and filmmakers, as it is a great source of inspiration. In March 2013, Steve launched Tales of Terror, with the same goals in mind but with a much finer technology and a complex engine, something that wasn’t possible initially. He has since published countless horror-themed books.

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#1

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

1992

A vampire holds a lawyer captive inside his castle and seduces his girlfriend.

8/8

Epic classics, the first Dracula and Nosferatu movies were good but experimental and therefore pardonably flawed. They never fully explored who their archvillain was written to be and took liberties. Here’s another take on the Bram Stoker novel that claims to stick close to the original. It will please many. It’s about two hours long and makes the most of each minute.

There’s plenty of room for character exposition ensured by some of the greatest actors of their respective generations. The ambiance is thick, the tension palpable and the romance tragic. It’s a period piece with cinematography both ground-breaking and retro. Some superposition effects are on the lazy side, which is odd for a production of this caliber.

The score adds a sad touch to the film, especially in backstory flashbacks concerning Dracula. While many modern adaptations of the story tend to glorify an inquisitive protagonist, 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula makes Keanu Reeve’s Jonathan Harker curious yet vulnerable. Moreover, Dracula is genuinely scary, here, and resorts to hypnotism as he did in the old days of cinema.

#2

From Dusk Till Dawn

1996

Two criminals take a family hostage in order to cross the Mexican border and take refuge in a bar for the night.

8/8

What starts off as a viciously witty crime and road movie turns into something completely unexpected around the half-way point. Character exposition is cleverly delivered through a very important subplot that tricks the mind into caring for something that is ultimately trivial. Outlaws and bullies eventually turn into an asset and their evil becomes relative as they face a must stronger threat.

Acting-wise, you get the cream of the crop. Each of the spoken lines is scripted in a calculated fashion. This is horror filmmaking of the highest quality, with many cameos, fine photography, generous effects and plenty of good looking gore. The keyword here is cool. The characters’ testosterone level finds a purpose in the second half, as all hell breaks loose.

See, you’re watching two brilliant films in one. You’ve got gangsters, gadgets, one liners, prosthetics, animatronics, nudity and implicit rape wrapped into an unlikely surprise box. A series of intricate atmospheric sets are presented to us in succession, mirroring the different subgenres From Dusk Till Dawn alludes to and the many emotions it takes us through.

#3

Return of the Living Dead III

1993

A teenager struggles not to feed on humans and spread her curse after being brought back to life by a toxic gas that turned her into a zombie.

7/8

Strongly inspired by Romeo and Juliet, this Return of the Living Dead marks the franchise’s will to reinvent itself. None of the actors are making a return and a new formula is introduced. The key element, here, is that one of the two main protagonists, Julie, is slowly becoming a zombie and incidentally letting us in on the curse. We get to live the transformation from a more serious human angle.

The script lives up to the twisted concept’s potential. You haven’t seen sexy until you’ve met a girl delaying a progressive undead curse through self-mutilation and implicit sadomasochism. Her darkly sexual character design makes her both an interesting protagonist and threat to her boyfriend. As superheroes would, and to make us care for her, she only feeds on criminals and spares the innocent.

You’ll be pleased to find the same make-up and practical effect quality as the previous films, but filmed differently. There is obvious effort in delivering a story with depth, for the first time. The characters are well-written and no longer an easy caricature. Although the film has its share of cheese, the writing is smart, cohesive, and the actors perform wholeheartedly.

#4

Bride of Chucky

1998

A woman steals a possessed doll used as evidence in a murder investigation and reanimates it using voodoo magic.

7/8

Chucky was never so funny! In fact, he was purely terrifying in the first film because his presence was only suggested during the first half, making his reveal more shocking at the moment he was fully exposed. He only gradually became the clown he is through sequels. The animatronics are now slightly better, but this is a comedy with only few scares that benefit from them.

The franchise is following its natural course. It could have taken any other tangent, but the doll is so iconic that it adopted the same route other popular horror monsters have: humor. Bride of Chucky is a strong slasher with a competent cast comprised of popular names. The performances are flawless, like most aspects of the film. The only real drawback for the fan is the lack of eeriness.

We get gore and creative kills, though. We get a new doll called Tiffany, too. Her significant entrance is marked by memorable moments that elevate her character to a status similar to Charles Lee Ray’s, the serial killer who initially transferred his soul in the Chucky doll. This is the first time children are not a stake, but the politically correctness denatures an otherwise faithful sequel.

#5

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II

1987

The ghost of a prom queen terrorizes the students of a high school.

7/8

The first Prom Night was down to earth and wasn’t surreal the way Halloween was. It was a whodunit with a masked killer, but he was obviously human. Prom Night 2, as its name implies, takes place around prom night. This said, like 1976’s Carrie; another great prom night themed horror movie, this sequel contains a strong supernatural aspect crucial to the story.

Mary Lou Maloney is designed as a resilient and magical horror icon in the likes of Freddy Krueger, Pinhead or The Tall Man as a late attempt at generating a sustainable franchise. The new plot is unrelated to the original film’s and it hurts in no way. It is dark, gory, smart, sexy and kinky. It cleverly links the 80’s with the 50’s, two decades that aren’t so different when it comes to cinema.

Different generations of actors come together and all offer convincing performances. Everyone is cast to perfection, too. The writing and directing are not only irreproachable, but much above average for a genre film so much of its time. Prom Night 2 stands out most because it creates trends rather than surfing on the expected cliches and tropes instigated by previous horror successes.

#6

Night of the Demons

1988

On Halloween night, partying teenagers stir up spirits inside an abandoned house after a seance.

7/8

Like all marketable horror films of the 80’s, Night of the Demons is an inexhaustible source of cheese, gore and partial nudity, has a strong gimmick and a catchy sonata. Few movies summarize quintessential b-horror like this one, though. It combines tropes of many major subgenres, namely haunting, possession, slasher and witchcraft. By genre tradition, it features teenagers in their 20’s, too.

Several aspects of the film make it one of the best horror productions out there. Contrary to vampires, zombies and werewolves, demons are an ill-defined antagonist in horror movies. In Night of the Demon’s case, they are as vocal, magical and virulent as Evil Dead’s and as physically threatening as 1985’s Demons’. In all three instances, the invasion is limited to a confined location.

The dialogue is disorganized and the acting exaggerated, yet the end product is so unique that it might as well be considered a deliberate directorial decision. The characters are dumb. The subplots are silly when not downright hilarious. The ambiance is highly pertinent for a Halloween setup and the style is so cohesive that Night of the Demon’s cursed land comes out as a suspension of reality.

#7

Night of the Demons 2

1994

Teenagers unknowingly carry a demon curse from a haunted house to their school on Halloween night.

7/8

1988’s Night of the Demons was self-contained. Against all odds, Joe Augustyn performs a tour de force, here; powerful enough to bring back all the elements that made the original a classic, and carries the action from the haunted house to a Catholic boarding school; the second next best context for sexually frustrated teenagers. This is pretext, of course, for brattiness and blood…

The only thing the original had that the sequel doesn’t is script purity. The arc was simple, and so were the characters. The writing is more layered in Part 2 and not as lively, but continuity is ensured by creative minds. As a sequel, it succeeds in further exposing the virulence of its creature with little redundancy: they are re-established as sexual demons that rely on fluids to possess.

Aside from centering on religion and the occult, the film meets every standard set by the original: deliberately bad but not terrible actors, imaginative practical effects, shock value, teen hormones and a lot of partying. Night of the Demons 2, like its predecessor, is more entertaining than intellectual, more humorous than dramatic, but manages to mix comedy