In his biography of the emperor Tiberius, the Roman historian Suetonius paints a shocking portrait of the tyrant as a dirty old man, telling how Tiberius created a sinister pleasure island on the isle of Capri where he committed brutal outrages – and collected pornography.
Instead, it is the sinister pleasure the voyeur feels when exhibiting power over his victims.
But other qualities have an edge, more kink than quirk, such as the way he keeps a full bladder ("his bricked-up bubble") for quasi-sexual pleasure, or the increasingly sinister cast to his refrains.
The black magician also took pleasure in the suffering that his sinister practices apparently brought to local villagers.
"His knowledge and experience are so wide and deep, from an unexpected film or the sinister aspects of an organic cafe to the pleasure of ancient architecture.
There is pleasure, but also a shadow of menace -- an inkling of the sinister in the midst of abundant, lovingly manufactured delight.
What begins as a novelty that gives him pleasure, ends up pushing Dutilleul toward more sinister pursuits.
For all its strict aesthetic formalism (Kim studied painting in Paris), there is a lingering sense that the film has arrived by accident and that its tender pleasures are mere by-products of an altogether more sinister endeavour.
Sinister and sensual, overwrought and overwritten, Titus Groan is a guilty pleasure - a dank, dripping Gothic cathedral of a novel.
Weaver learns that even his own identity has been stolen to serve the organization's sinister ends: a fellow Tourist, a cold-blooded assassin who derives "real pleasure in planning a murder," has employed it to eliminate a nosy reporter in Budapest.
It was a pleasure to feature Beth Austin's work on the cover of Sinister Wisdom 106: The Lesbian Body.
