Bob Rafelson Brought A Transgressive Streak To The Glory Days Of The Erotic Thriller

The director Bob Rafelson, who died this week at 89, left an indelible mark on the film culture of the ’60s and ​​’70s. He co-created The Monkees, the playful show that debuted the soon-to-be-iconic prefabricated band, responsible for many of the decade’s catchiest hits, and made his feature directorial debut with Head, a legendarily weird psychedelic film featuring the band, in 1968. He also produced essential films of the time like The Last Picture Show and Easy Rider, and helped jumpstart the career of none other than Jack Nicholson, working with him multiple times. Five Easy Pieces, the 1970 film he directed starring Nicholson, remains one of the most influential works of that storied New Hollywood era. This bohemian, freewheeling period of filmmaking is unquestionably Rafelson’s greatest legacy, but an underrated aspect of his filmography is his contribution to a later genre that’s not as highly regarded—the erotic thriller. 

The erotic thriller took shape in the ’80s and exploded in the ’90s. Rafelson’s 1981 remake of the film noir classic The Postman Always Rings Twice is one of the earliest examples of the genre, making the sexuality of the original more explicit and playing on the red-hot chemistry of Nicholson (who else?) and Jessica Lange. His next feature, Black Widow, was released in 1987, and remains a hidden gem in his storied career. Starring Theresa Russell as a femme fatale who marries men and kills them for their money and Debra Winger as the federal investigator who tracks her down, Black Widow (no relation to the Marvel movie, by the way) is an excellent example of the erotic thriller’s seductive aesthetic, and shows that Rafelson’s contributions to our cinematic conception of a decade reach into the often-maligned ’80s.  

With the delicious tagline “She mates and she kills,” (a line that’s even said in the actual film) Black Widow establishes itself from the get-go as trashy yet elegant. The film is a game of cat and mouse that makes fine use of Russell’s smoky-voiced charisma, and opens with an enticing shot of her green eyes reflected up-close in a mirror as she applies eyeliner and puts on sunglasses. In the first half of the film, her character, Catharine (though she goes by many different names) puts on different personas, complete with different hair, outfits, and accents, as she goes through husbands in scarily quick succession. One of her early husbands/victims is Dennis Hopper, in a bit part as a toy tycoon with a moody, stylized office. Hopper’s presence, brief though it may be, feels like a clever callback to Rafelson’s counterculture days, and the shot of him and Russell in that office shortly before his demise could’ve come from a druggy vision, as the two of them go into a room piled high with toys and radiating with blue and green light.

Shades of green and blue appear throughout the film. The Justice Department office where Winger’s character, Alexandra, works, is bathed in an oppressive fluorescent green glow, and later scenes taking place in Hawaii (and shot on location) emphasize the naturally blue/green palette of the locale. An early, green-tinged close-up of Russell shifts focus between her eyes and her dramatically manicured hands as she methodically prepares a poison-filled syringe. Her nails and lips are blood-red, and the contrast with the green creates a dark, mysterious atmosphere that builds on the neo-noir style Rafelson perfected in The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Alexandra becomes obsessed with tracking down Catharine, and the way her colleagues dismiss her insistence that Catharine is a murderer only strengthens her resolve. A sequence in which Alexandra projects photographs of Katharine in her various guises against a dark wall is further proof that the film is at its best when focused on visuals over narrative. As the projector clicks away, Alexandra stands against the images, her body interlaced with Katharine’s, and there’s an eerie sense of the two women starting to merge into one. In a 2009 interview, Rafelson said, “If I had been making the film in France, those two women would have completely been in love with each other. As it is, we got as close as we could to what would be acceptable in an American movie.”

In Hawaii, the women go scuba diving together (of course they practice mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on each other in their lesson before) and the underwater photography adds another dose of trippy visuals. Late in the film, in an unsubtle bit of symbolism, Alexandra gives Catharine a black widow necklace on her wedding day. In response, Catharine kisses her. The kiss is brief but transgressive, making one wonder how Rafelson would’ve approached the material if he were free from studio considerations and could do something closer to the hypothetical French version. Black Widow may not be Rafelson at his most liberated and influential, but it’s fascinating to consider that between this film and The Postman Always Rings Twice, his contributions to cinema extend into the commercial gloss of the ’80s.

Abbey Bender is a New York-based writer with bylines in The Washington Post, The Village Voice, Nylon, Sight & Sound, and other publications.