Somehow, I got this far into a month of erotic thrillers without doing a Gregory Dark movie. Well, as it is, I’m close to seeing all of his non-adult films. And yes, you know, I’ve seen all of the Dark Brothers movies and wish someone was willing to unleash a 4K of one of them. Today is not about dreams, however. It’s all about Animal Instincts.

Joanna (Shannon Whirry; Entertainment Weekly referred to Whirry and Dark as “the Dietrich and Von Sternberg of the soft-core set”) is in a sexless marriage with police officer David Cole (Maxwell Caulfield). They love each other, but he can’t get it up, and seeing as how he’s married to Shannon Whirry, he really should see a doctor. She ends up sleeping with the guy who comes to fix their cable. He watches — trivia note, Paul Vatelli’s I Like to Watch was the first adult movie I ever saw — she gets it on. Soon, he’s as hard as Chinese algebra, ready to doodle-bop, crush guts, play Chesterfield rugby and bend her over a barrel and show her all fifty states.

The problem is that they start inviting all sorts of men—and women—Delia Sheppard needs something to do, right—over and the mob, in the form of William (David Carradine), finds out and tries to use them to get some scandal leverage on politician Fletcher Ross (Jan-Michael Vincent). I love it when a suburban romance turns into sleaze and this movie knows exactly the kind of movie it should be. Plus, as gorgeous as Whirry is, she also knows how to act, as does most of the cast, which puts this above the normal saxophone sex scene slapdash sinema.

Did I cast this movie? It has Mitch Gaylord from American Rickshaw and John Saxon in it. Yes, if you want to connect actors, you can use Gregory Dark to link John Saxon to Brittany Spears, Madison Stone, Jamie Gillis and WWE superstar—and now right-wing mayor—Kane.

Dark doesn’t stray much from his adult movies, as Kelly Royce appears. The same year, he’d make Mirror Images, Secret Games, Night Rhythms and just one XXX movie, The Creasemaster. Did I even have to look up that it starred Tiffany Mynx on IMDB? No, of course I didn’t. And man, Erika Nann is in Animal Instincts, and she makes any movie better, such as her role as the queen in Legion of Iron.

Written by Georges des Esseintes and Jon Robert Samsel, who worked with Dark several times, this was shot by Wally Pfister, who would go on to work with Christopher Nolan on Memento and Inception, as well as shoot the movies I’m more into: Amityville: A New Generation and The Unborn.

I want to call out Radio Times for talking down on this, saying, “Director Gregory Hippolyte, who became one of the genre’s leading directors, presents the many couplings with some panache, but he can’t hide the fact that this is really just Emmanuelle for the 1990s.” Come on. This has nothing to do with the plot of this movie,e and this review came directly from someone who didn’t know a single thing about erotic thrillers and just needed one to relate it to. Do your research. Your one-handed research.