Be gay, do crime! A brief history of the lesbian thriller

An excellent new development for anybody who is completely fed up of lesbians being denied electricity in favour of tightly-winched corsets and exchanging yearnful glances by candlelight ‒ after a glut of admittedly brilliant queer period dramas, it looks like 2024 officially belongs to the sapphic crime thriller. French lesbians sharing lingering hand holds in Portrait of a Lady on Fire? A miserable Kate Winslet scrubbing at a crusty old ammonite while pining after a geologist’s wife? No longer: brooding historical stories are officially taking a back seat in favour of raucous crime thrillers and sapphic, gun-wielding villains hellbent on wreaking supremely gory revenge on the hetties.

Though it feels like there’s a new wave building steam, queer crime has been a movie staple for decades; from using sexuality as shorthand for villainous tendencies, to carving out spaces for some of cinema’s best queer heroes and villains. The best of the whole bunch has to be Bound, the debut feature from Matrix directors Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski. It arguably set the bar for the depiction of lesbian relationships on-screen, and decades before intimacy coordinators became common on TV and film sets, the siblings hired the feminist critic and editor Susie Bright to consult on the sex scenes between ex-con plumber Corky and mafia-affiliated Violet, which unfold amid a saturation of bloody, gangster-fuelled violence. It’s a proper classic.

And now, it’s arguably the leading touchstone for the muscle-popping new film Love Lies Bleeding, out on May 3. Ahead of its release, here’s a look back at the other criminal capers that have paved the way.

Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

In this Thirties rom-com, Katherine Hepburn stars as Sylvia, the queer-coded sidekick to her criminal dad as he indulges in a spot of black market lace-smuggling and goes on the run. In order to fly under the radar, she disguises herself as Sylvester (genius!) and together with an ever-expanding rabble of fellow crooks, the gang barrel around cooking up new schemes. Along the way, both men and women fall head over heels for her amid the gender confusion. Directed by George Cukor (who was gay; an open secret in Hollywood) Sylvia Scarlett was a Box Office bomb, but has since been reappraised as one of the queerest films of the Golden Age.

Faster! Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

This ridiculously over-the-top sexploitation B-movie from Russell Myers follows a trio of bloodthirsty go-go dancers who cause mayhem with a string of killings and kidnaps in the California desert. Sure, it features a pervy abundance of gratuitously heaving bosoms. Yes, the dialogue is laughably bad, so much so that it borders on camp. But thanks to its centring of powerful women, it has since been reclaimed as a cult classic, despite being a commercial failure. John Waters famously declared that it was one of the greatest films ever made, and crowned the gang’s leader, the leather-clad butch Varla, as “one of the best villains in screen history.”

Female Trouble (1974)

And speaking of John Waters, the influential director has made a number of queer criminal capers in his time. The best of the bunch, the crude and surreal Female Trouble, follows Dawn Davenport (played by Divine) ‒ a troublemaking highschooler who goes on the run after her family refuse to buy her a pair of cha-cha heels for Christmas. While hitch-hiking, she becomes pregnant with her child Taffy, and much to Taffy’s increasing disapproval, she embarks on a bizarre spree of violence, murder, and criminality alongside a modelling career. Though she’s eventually captured by the police after gunning down her own audience during a bonkers nightclub performance, and is later sentenced to death, she still finds time to have a lesbian love affair with fellow inmate Earnestine, and delivers an Academy Award-worthy acceptance speech from the electric chair. Iconic levels of villainary.

Basic Instinct (1992)

Paul Verhoeven’s erotically-charged neo-noir thriller follows detective duo Nick and Gus as they attempt to solve the brutal murder of Johnny Boz; a washed-up rocker who has been stabbed to death with an ice pick, mid-sex no less. They soon discover the twisted culprit: drippingly wealthy heiress and sadistic arch-villain Catherine Tramell (played by Sharon Stone in one of her most iconic roles). The depiction of Tramell (who is bisexual; many of the other women in the film are also queer) prompted protests from the LGBTQ+ community at the time, and six people were arrested after heckling Stone during a hosting appearance on SNL; the film has clear misogynistic undertones, and paints queerness and something dangerous, violent, and fearsome. Still, for better or worse, the box office smash is a key milestone in Hollywood’s increasingly liberal depictions of sex on screen.

Set It Off (1996)

‘96 was a strong year for lesbian crime films, with bank robbery heist Set It Off bringing the spirit of Thelma and Louise to Nineties Los Angeles. It centres on best mates Stony, Cleo, T.T., and Frankie; four Black women who are all sick of institutional racism, sexism, and rampant classism, and cook up a scheme to get rich quick. Played by Queen Latifah, lairy leader Cleo has to be one of the most iconic butch characters of all time, and her final defiant showdown with the cops throws the ultimate curveball.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive makes the cut on account of its menacing, somewhat male-gazey queer sex scene (and the psychadelic visit to Club Silencio that follows) between Betty and Rita, but beyond its surrealistic stylings, and cast of hitmen, mobsters, and creepy lookalikes, this is essentially a film about unrequited lesbian desire.

D.E.B.S (2004)

A ridiculously fun parody of 2000 action-thriller Charlie’s Angels, D.E.B.S centres on a crew of teenage police protégés who are selected for a secretive paramilitary squad after acing a secret test hidden in their SAT exams. The squad ‒ Amy, Max, Dominique, and Janet ‒ are dispatched to hunt down Lucinda Reynolds, aka. Lucy in the Sky, but their ruthless takedown derails when Amy gets the hots for her supposed nemesis. The two end up in cahoots and Lucy begins repeatedly ‘capturing’ Amy in order to have regular hook-ups; for much of the film, the rest of the team are none the wiser as they scramble to rescue their friend, over and over again. D.E.B.S walked so Killing Eve could run!

The Handmaiden (2016)

Park Chan-Wook’s dark and disturbing period piece is an adaptation of lesbian literary classic Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters, but switches its original setting in Victorian Britain for early 20th Century Korea under Japanese colonial rule. The action begins with a con man’s plan to fleece Japanese heiress Lady Hideko by coercing her into marriage, committing her to a mental asylum, and making off with the money. As part of the scheme, he hires well-practiced pickpocket Sook-hee to help plant some seeds, but unfortunately for him, she and Hideko end up falling for each other. A twisty, turny plot of deception and murder ensues.

Drive-Away Dolls (2024)

Ethan Coen’s willfully absurd road-trip thriller is an absolute riot. Sure there are more holes in this plot than a block of emmental, but that’s part of the fun of a crime flick that hinges upon one of the silliest schemes of criminal extortion imaginable. Maragret Qualley stars as Jamie, a devil-may-care serial cheater who tags along on a road trip to Florida with her uptight best mate Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) after getting dumped. Coincidentally, they end up behind the wheel of a drive-away service car with some hilarious hidden cargo, and mayhem unfolds.

Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

Directed by Saint Maud’s Rose Glass, the thriller stars Kristen Stewart as Lou, a chain-smoking gym manager who is bored out of her mind in the middle of rural Nevada… until, that is, the arrival of mysterious, super-ripped stranger Jackie (Katy O’Brian) who is travelling through town to a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas shakes things up. The pair quickly strike up an incredibly intense relationship, but it’s soon derailed by a rapidly unravelling revenge arc that takes turn after supremely gory, gasp-inducing turn.