‘Single White Female’ at Thirty: The Legacy of the Women Stalkers of the 1990s 

AdvertisementsSingle White Female, released thirty years ago this August, is one of the most iconic entries into the erotic thriller genre that boomed in the late 1980s and 1990s. Bolstered by similar films like The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and Basic Instinct (the sixth highest grossing movie of 1992) as well as the classic of the genre, Fatal Attraction (1987) only a few years before, it became a cultural touchstone for films about women stalkers. Compared often to Basic Instinct, it succeeded at the box office but received lukewarm reviews, many of which claimed the film was a product of a formula that “[hadn’t] failed yet but inevitably [would],” making its inarguably potent legacy in thrillers more noteworthy. Single White Female, unlike other films in the stalker subgenre of the time, was unique for its choice to focus on a woman stalking another woman as opposed to stalking a man. In so doing, it tapped into a fraught cultural history of cinematic sexism and bi/lesbophobia dati...