Blood, sex, and freedom: the erotic thrillers of Brian De Palma

You may feel either disgusted or excited by the recent news that a film inspired by infamous producer Harvey Weinstein is already in the works. What is undeniably thrilling – in simultaneously a good and a bad way – is that the screenwriter-director behind the project is none other than Brian De Palma.

Particularly in the 1980s, but sporadically throughout his whole career, this quintessentially American director has made several sexually-charged movies which, even if they rarely fit comfortably in the erotic thriller genre, have all depicted eroticism and sexuality in all their complexity. Inspired by his hero Alfred Hitchcock, but working in a more liberated moral climate, De Palma has never shied away from the uncomfortable aspects of sex.