BODY HEAT

(August 1981, U.S.)

When I think about how young and sizzling hot Kathleen Turner once was and how terrible she looks now...well, it's just such a damn shame that some people have to get old! I suppose saying something like that is not very P.C., but it's my blog and I'm not afraid to be occassionally not very P.C. if I want to!

Anyone who's ever seen BODY HEAT already knows how heavily inspired the story was by the mother of all American film noir classics, DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944). However, beyond the borrowed plot of two secret lovers plotting to murder the woman's husband and collect the insurance money, BODY HEAT has a true power that transcends its original sources. Not only was it the erotic thriller (or the "Basic Instinct") of its time, but the debuts of virtual unknowns William Hurt and Kathleen Turner also propelled their acting careers. In fact, Turner managed to build a career on adventurousness and frank sexuality born of robust physicality (even as Jessica Rabbit in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?). There is also the added element of a scorching Florida heat wave that is touched up as an element that can make ordianry people do crazy things. BODY HEAT also propelled the directing career of Lawrence Kasdan (did you know he wrote THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RETURN OF THE JEDI and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK?).

Getting back to classic film noir for a moment, BODY HEAT does not disappoint in its own right. Hurt's Ned Racine is just as sleazy as any 1940's or 1950's lowlife detective and Turner's Matty Walker, as the beautiful femme fatale, is just as diabolical as Lana Turner or Barbara Stanwick ever was. One of the great differences in BODY HEAT, though, is that if you're seeing it for the first time, you actually believe that Matty is truly in love with Ned, even as they are planning to commit murder together. As the pieces begin to twist and unravel in the aftermath of the murder and we begin to see how and why Ned was set up by his steaming sexual squeeze, we still see signs that Matty's love for him was genuine, right up until the very end when she fakes her own death in a rigged explosion so she can frame her lover for the murder of her husband and get away clean with all of his insurance money.

Even after all of that twisting and turning intruigue, there is still one remaining sign that Matty, as viciously scheming as she was, was capable of true love. Just look at the final shot of her face when she sits on the beach of an exotic paradise island; it's full of regret and sorrow. She's filty rich, yes. She's gotten away with murder, yes. But she'll never rejoice or find any happiness over what she's done. She'll simply live a life of riches and meaningless sex.

(actually, come to think of it...)

Favorite line or dialogue:

Ned Racine: "Let's say that she's living as this other girl, this person from her past, so that only one person in the whole world who knows who she really is, and then just when she got me on the line, she's finally going to collect, that person shows up. That girl finds her and threatens to expose her, so Matty starts paying her off. Maybe she ever promised to cut her in on Edmund's money. Now she's gotta share it with two people. But then Matty sees a way to get rid of both of us at once...at the boathouse. A way to solve all her problems and get clear with no one looking for her. And, Oscar, she was right, too, because I would have NEVER stopped looking for her. Matty killed this other girl and put her body in the boathouse. It was so perfect and so...clean. You find two bodies, me and this girl, two killers, dead. Case closed."