Take a seat for a look at how this 90s not-very-erotic thriller hindered the filmmaker’s comeback. 

Every month, The Spool chooses to highlight a filmmaker whose works have made a distinct mark on the cinematic landscape.
The funny thing about William Friedkin is that if you ask six people what their favorite Friedkin film is, you’ll get six different answers. These hot and cold responses marked Friedkin’s career overall, one that, for all its faults and stumbles, was never predictable or boring. He had no trademark and refused to be pinned down. 

This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the works being covered here wouldn’t exist.

After the aggressively negative critic and audience response to 1980’s Cruising, William Friedkin took a curious “hell with it, I’m going to do whatever I want” approach to projects. None of what he directed over the next decade, save for To Live and Die in L.A., came close to receiving the kind of acclaim his early 70s career did. If anything, it seemed as though he had given up his precise, occasionally unreasonable eye for perfection in favor of churning out the most generic cable-friendly nonsense possible. 

At the end of this era in Friedkin’s career was 1995’s Jade, which attempted to ride the tails of the early 90s high-budget erotic thriller trend that began with 1992’s Basic Instinct. I say “attempted” because it’s an erotic thriller that shockingly lacks both eroticism and thrills. Insurance seminars provide more excitement than Jade. I’ve had pelvic exams that were sexier than Jade. Though there are several scenes in which actors press their bodies together in a loveless simulation of sexual congress, they might as well be doing crossword puzzles for all the heat they generate. I haven’t even gotten to the absurd mystery or the monocle-dropping “twist.” 

Friedkin was brought on board to direct a script by Joe Eszterhas. As an auto mechanic would say, well, there’s your problem. Eszterhas also wrote Basic Instinct, and, based almost entirely on the success of that (though absolutely no one would claim that the writing was its strongest aspect), became one of Hollywood’s hottest assets for a thankfully brief time. It quickly became apparent that Eszterhas was a one-trick pony, writing one limp thriller after another in which the idea of sex, let alone women wanting and participating in it, seemed gross and unpleasant. There was also a nasty misogynistic streak running through them, in which the female characters were often conniving and duplicitous, or at least leading secret lives in which they let their filthy little freak flags fly in a way meant to shock and appall the audience. 

Though Friedkin reportedly rewrote most of the script, it still has Eszterhas’s stench all over it. The end result is so slapdash and incoherent that, according to an interview with co-star Michael Biehn, not even the actors understood what was happening. It can’t even settle on what the hero does for a living. That’s David Corelli (David Caruso, trudging through every scene looking like the Saddest Boy Who Ever Lived), described as an assistant district attorney but also the lead investigator in the gruesome murder of a fabulously wealthy San Francisco businessman found skinned and nailed to a wall, Kyle Medford. That’s understandable because when you find a fabulously wealthy San Francisco businessman skinned and nailed to a wall, you really want someone with a keen and observant enough eye to note, “This is rage.” 

Corelli uses those Columbo-like deduction skills to uncover a mystery that involves political corruption going all the way up to the Governor of California (Richard Crenna, visibly embarrassed), blackmail, a prostitution ring, and some cultural appropriation that exists for the sole purpose of making a white woman seem more “exotic.” Much of the evidence in Medford’s murder, including fingerprints found on the weapon, points to psychologist Trina Gavin (Linda Fiorentino). She also happens to be both Corelli’s old college girlfriend and his best friend’s wife, defense attorney Matt Gavin (Chazz Palmintieri). Don’t be concerned about conflicts of interest or anything, because nobody else seems to be. 

Trina cries when she has sex with her husband, which is understandable because Palmintieri plays him like a lizard wearing human skin. In her free time away from being a psychologist and a member of San Francisco high society, though, she maintains a sexy secret life. As the titular “Jade,” Trina was the most prized member of Kyle Medford’s passel of high-class call girls. She’s popular with clients not just for her stunning beauty and cool intelligence, but because of her willingness to engage in a sex act that’s so repugnant, such an affront to God Himself, that no one can bring themselves to say it out loud. 

Both Friedkin and Eszterhas clearly found the subject matter of their own movie distasteful, which is a bit of a stumbling block when you’re trying to make an erotic thriller.

Folks, it’s anal sex. 

You read correctly. The same thing that inspired the internet novelty song “What What (In the Butt)” is treated here as something so beyond human decency that even seasoned big-city cops can only speak about it with hushed, vague phrasing. And here lies the primary issue with Jade, other than the acting, the writing, and the pacing. Both Friedkin and Eszterhas clearly found the subject matter of their own movie distasteful, which is a bit of a stumbling block when you’re trying to make an erotic thriller. To soothe their own ruffled sensibilities as much as the audience’s, they attribute Trina’s willingness to take it in the backdoor to “hysterical blindness.” Because surely no normal woman could ever desire such a thing for which numerous accessories, unguents, and soothing balms exist to make it both easier and more pleasurable for everyone involved. 

Though for a while Linda Fiorentino specialized in playing ball-breaking femme fatales who were always in control of every situation, here her character is punished, humiliated over and over for the mortal sin of being slightly kinky. Just a skosh. Her lovers clumsily hump away without looking at her. In one baffling scene, she’s forced to wear a pantyhose over her head like she’s about to rob a 7-11. The only man she may actually love turns her down. The man she’s stuck in a miserable marriage with is both chronically, openly unfaithful and a lizard wearing human skin. During the climax (not that kind), she’s knocked around and nearly raped because of course she is. And in the end, she’s still stuck in that miserable marriage, only now with the knowledge that her husband is – spoiler – the actual murderer. 

Let this be a lesson to you, ladies: only engage in sexual relations in the missionary position with the lights off, as the Lord intended, or else bad things will happen to you. 

Friedkin stated that Jade is among his best work from this period, and I remain unsure if he was joking when he said that. Though its sexual politics are the predominant issue, it’s hardly the only issue. The murder mystery is far more convoluted than it needs to be, setting up numerous implausible red herrings and then revealing that the real culprit is the person you thought it was the whole time. At no point does Matt not seem like someone who would skin and nail a guy to a wall (and wear the skin over his lizard body), so the supposedly stunning wha-wha-whaaaaaat moment feels as unearned as the classical music on the soundtrack trying to add a touch of elegance to the whole thing. 

The best you can say for it being a Friedkin movie is that there is a car chase. Alas, it’s a laughably slow car chase through a Chinatown parade because this is exactly the kind of movie in which “we’re in Chinatown now” is indicated with a bunch of people running around under a giant dragon puppet. I will say it is the only time David Caruso looks anything other than exhausted and uncomfortable. Unfortunately, the sequence is so incompetently shot that it looks like he’s more angry at the people who dared to throw a parade in the middle of his car chase than the person he’s chasing. 

With just a few tweaks, Jade could have easily turned into a parody of erotic thrillers. Instead, it’s inert and bizarrely Puritanical, made for an audience scandalized by the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. It’s the lowest point of William Friedkin’s career. The good news is that he could only go uphill from there. It was a long journey past Rules of Engagement and The Hunted, which are merely forgettable, but he eventually made it with Bug and Killer Joe, his final features and among his most interesting. Joe Eszterhas, on the other hand, would go on to write An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn and then one more movie no one saw, before mostly retiring from show business and becoming a Catholic. Hopefully, he’s asked forgiveness for Jade.