Throwback Thursday — Pride Series: A 90’s Thriller With Lesbian Heat!

Mobsters, money, and dykes, oh my!

Hey Fleshbot fans! I’m back with another fun pick for this Pride month Throwback Thursday! Lesbians were having a moment in the mid to late 90s. Melissa Etheridge came out right after releasing her album Yes I Am (1993). Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997 on her TV show. 1997 also saw the launch of the Lilith Fair, which was obviously for all fans, but included a lot of queer women artists, more than had ever toured together before. I could go on and on. And 1996 saw the release of Bound, a neo-noir crime thriller which was the directorial debut of the then pre-transition Wachowski sisters, who would go on to make The Matrix and many other films. Let’s get into it!

As the film opens, ex-con Corky (Gina Gershon), is looking like a whole-ass snack in her beater shirt and other Hollywood-butch garb and heading to an apartment where she will be doing repair work while its resident is out of town. In the elevator she meets her super femme neighbor Violet (Jennifer Tilly) and Violet’s mafioso boyfriend Caesar (Joe Pantoliano) and let’s just say Violet’s head is quite turned and she’s definitely not with Caesar for love. She makes an excuse to visit later and bring Corky some coffee and the two have some steamy sex on several occasions whenever they can make time and Caesar is out.

It seems Violet is getting kind of fed up with being with a criminal whose life involves money laundering and torturing people, but she needs some help to escape her situation and who better than her hot new girlfriend with a criminal skillset to work on that with her? The two hatch a plot to steal two million dollars from the mob for Violet to start over. It goes as expected when you involve mobsters, a bunch of money, and people who use torture as a valid method of getting what they want. I will not spoil the ending for you, of course!

This is an exciting story with a bunch of sapphic goodness and it was a trailblazing film at the time. Susie Bright worked as the intimacy coordinator on the film and even had a cameo, so you know these actresses actually convinced us as women who love to fuck women. Definitely give it a watch!

Bound can be found (at press time) for streaming on Paramount+ and various sites for digital rental and purchase.