Andrew Stevens seemingly took on the male lead in almost every erotic thriller of the 1990s. Reuniting with his Night Eyes 2 and 3 co-star Shannon Tweed, he plays Nick Richardson, the mystery man who exists only in the dreams of his character, Moira Davis. She’s been abused by her husband, Dr. Daniel Davis (Joe Cortese), for so long that she’s gone into this fantasy world, dreaming of Nick and the gorgeous house that he’s built.

What happens when she finds that house? Well, she does. Nick lives there. So what is fantasy, and what is real?

Directed by Stevens from a script by Karen Kelly (formerly one of the Hardbodies; she also wrote Body Chemistry 4: Full Exposure, Dead of Night, Poison Ivy: The New Seduction and another Stevens and Tweed movie, Scorned), this film gets called out in We Kill for Love because of how it takes the erotic thriller script, eschews much of the noir and becomes almost a fantasy film yes, I know, beyond the sex fantasy.

SubTorretto on Letterboxd had a line about this that I love: “Shannon Tweed has gorgeously lit sex dreams that devolve into her running down a passage of flowing curtains, a mix of horror, mystery and stunning beauty; it’s like she’s in an 80s Italian slasher.” Maybe that’s why I loved this so much, as it has the rich blackness of VHS-era Italian movies that I go crazy for. This event has the candelabras of the Italian gothic! Those dream sequences have the kind of fog that Fulci loved, minus the eye violence he adored so much more.

Other than the Gregory Dark films, this film stands at the pinnacle of the erotic thriller genre. It may not adhere to the genre’s rules, but its unique take and bold deviations make it significant.