Erotic Horror Movies

We all know that to have sex anywhere near the set of a horror movie is to invite certain death. You see it everywhere: slashers—Friday the 13th and Halloween spring to mind—as well as zombie movies, psychological thrillers, gialli, and (obviously) the spoofs like Scream. Two hapless teens sneak off to make out, it gets heavy, and someone gets impaled - and not in the fun way, either.

Such moments are a classic trope we're all familiar with, but some movies make that feeling of sweet, innocent teenage bonerdom the whole focus. Erotic horror movies are seldom actually
erotic in any real way—there are exceptions of course, like Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)--but rather they use the notion of sex as a jumping off point into the most obscene and vulgar shit you can imagine.

It's hard to talk about super messed up sex horror without bringing up the New French Extremity right away: never before has an entire genre been centered around watching young beautiful women eat eachother's faces off mid-coitus. Baise-moi (2000), Trouble Every Day (2001), Demonlover (2002), Sheitan (2006), and Raw (2017) all explore the depths of human depravity in that languid, pretty, and super depressing way that French filmmakers do.

Warning: this stuff is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. The bleak, unflinching attitude of the New French Extremity movement is present in Kim Ki-duk's 2000 twisted arthouse nightmare, The Isle, as well. Less of an erotic horror movie and more of a horrifyingly unerotic, dark drama about the sexual malaise of a ultra-rural Korean fishing retreat it's worth a watch on one of those nights where you'd otherwise just throw Blue Velvet (1986) on again.

In a lot of ways, one could say that erotic horror is a subgenre of body horror. Things like Contracted (2013) and Thanatomorphose (2012) deal with a sex-related transformation from beautiful, innocent, put-upon young women into alien, lover-slaying monsters. Teeth (2007) does that too, symbolically criticizing the effects of religious repression on a young woman's sexuality.

It Follows (2014) is similar, in that its main villain takes the shape of a sexually transmitted monster/curse. Probably the best movie on this list and one of the best horror movies of this century, It Follows is also the least violent and least X-rated of these by a country mile and if you haven't seen it, shame on you. It's difficult to define what exactly qualifies as an erotic horror, so if you think we missed something, feel free to track it down in our library, rate it, and let us know what you thought.