The current exception is "Traces of Red," a sexy thriller starring James Belushi and Lorraine Bracco that opens Nov. 11.

He says that in appearing in the film, produced by Carolco Pictures, he wanted "to do a more dangerous, sexy thriller" than he has done since that hit.

"Cold as Ice" by Mark Allen Smith and Mr. Eszterhas's "Basic Instinct" are examples of the sexy thriller - Hollywood's favorite current genre.

In 2010, she played in a second film directed by Jean-Marc Barr and Pascal Arnold coming out in June 2011: American Translation, a sexy psychological thriller.

I think the feeling was that it wasn't in a clearly defined genre-it had too many literary pretensions for a sexy thriller, and for a literary novel it was too thrillerish.

Latest in a long series of sexy thrillers.

They also snap up the sexy Japanese animated thrillers called anime, about "the adventures of giant mechanized inter-dimensional sword-swinging ninja babes," as the Web calls it.

"We were going from a Holly Hunter drama to a story for kids to a sexy thriller," he says.

Mark Gill, the former Miramax marketing chief and now head of its Los Angeles office, said: "It is a sexy thriller.