Body Heat (1981)
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan
During an extreme heatwave, a beautiful Florida woman and a seedy lawyer engage in an affair while plotting the murder of her rich husband.
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What critics compared Body Heat to
You’ll also detect echoes of Rosemary’s Baby (questionable psychiatrists involved in Manhattan highrise hijinks) and the 1981 Body Heat (an attractive couple whose passion turns toxic).
That world is only a savvy backdrop for what screenwriter Scott Z. Burns has accurately characterized as a twisty adult thriller in the vein of "Double Indemnity" or "Body Heat."
See it by all means — especially if you love “Body Heat” and “The Usual Suspects” — but be careful who you trust.
Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat may have codified onscreen sex (not to mention the “erotic thriller” template) for normies in 1981, but Lyne’s Flashdance , 9 ½ Weeks , and Fatal Attraction were important cultural flash points that not only attracted audiences in droves but inspired a host of imitators of their grown-up content and muscular visual language.
It’s possible, while streaming “Deep Water,” to feel a stab of nostalgia for the big-screen heyday of the Hollywood erotic thriller, a genre to which Lyne and several others — the Lawrence Kasdan of “Body Heat” and the Paul Verhoeven of “Basic Instinct” among them — made indelibly sweaty contributions in the ’80s and ’90s.
The would-be mastermind who’s nowhere as smart as he thinks he is has long been a staple of the noir murder mystery, with Double Indemnity and Body Heat being classics of the genre.
Psycho is a touchstone (as is Body Heat ), though Fincher utilises suspense as a smokescreen for social critiquing.
I kept thinking of William Hurt and Kathleen Turner in Body Heat (1981).
Douglas is always believable as the half-rotten hero, Jeanne Tripplehorn is a real find as his ex-lover, and Stone (who played Arnold Schwarzenegger's devious wife in Verhoeven's "Total Recall") comes through with the kind of dazzling icy/hot performance that made a star of Kathleen Turner in "Body Heat."
In this regard, the film is a perfect bookend to Body Heat , which doesn't even try to hide the fact that it's nothing but Double Indemnity with Kathleen Turner's tits on display, only where Body Heat was still trying very much to be erotic (and succeeding), Basic Instinct is too cerebral and curdled to really land on that level, and it's not aiming to, I don't think.
But the script, by Joe Eszterhaus (which reportedly got Hollywood into a bidding war and ultimately sold for the record-breaking price of $3 million), is a rag-tag mishmash that recycles everything from "Dressed to Kill" and "Body Heat" to "Cruising" and even Eszterhaus' own "Jagged Edge."
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Is it the former neo-noir sexpot of ''Raging Bull'' or the former neo-noir sexpot of ''Body Heat''?
Kelly, the hot daughter of blue-blood trophy wife Sandra Van Ryan (Russell, apparently playing Kathleen Turner in "Body Heat"), keeps inviting herself into his jeep or his home.
“Sex Tape” was directed by Jake Kasdan (son of “Big Chill” and “Body Heat” director Lawrence Kasdan) and its screenplay is credited to Segel, Kate Angelo and Nicholas Stoller, all purportedly adult native speakers of English.
Not just any eye contact but the sort of prolonged stare that Kathleen Turner might have given to William Hurt at some point in “Body Heat.’’
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Before showing the film, I spoke for a few minutes as follows: As usual, I want to take a quick look back at last week’s film, Body Heat before saying a few words about Fargo by Joel and Ethan Coen, the movie we’re going to see tonight.
(You can see the heavy influences of films like “Body Heat” and “Basic Instinct” throughout.)
Bearing some similarities to “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Body Heat,” “Malice,” “Diabolique,” and even “What Lies Beneath,” the plot continues to thicken, adding complication after complication to turn the scenario into one of paranoia, deception, and intrigue – as well as uncommon humorousness and an odd amount of luminous daylight shots.