From the sexy dawn of the contemporary erotic thriller in the early 1980s ("Dressed to Kill," "Body Double" and "Jagged Edge"), to the pinnacle 1990s desert noirs and steamy suspense yarns of the genre ("Basic Instinct" and "Indecent Proposal"), to its fizzling out in the early aughts ("Unfaithful" and "In the Cut"), a growing list of the lusty thrillers centred on adulterers, detectives with questionable tactics, and killers with sexy bods.