On Screen: Fatal Attraction - Crisis Magazine Crisis Magazine A Voice for the Faithful Catholic Laity Subscribe Directed by Adrian Lyne A Paramount Release Fatal Attraction may be the first psycho/slasher horror movie made for the readers of New York magazine. It’s that smart and that shallow. Both its victims—a well-heeled lawyer and his wife and child—and its victimizer—a book editor for a successful publishing firm—certainly might be subscribers to the magazine. In between stalkings, stabbings, and various paroxysms, the characters eat in the coziest cafes, dance in the trendiest night spots, do business in the most Scandinavian modern of board rooms, and shop for houses in the best neighborhoods just outside New York City. The very look of the film, its spotless plastic decor and quick-silver editing, is that of the chic ads on TV that advertise sleek cars and Hanes pantyhose (“And then there are her legs.. . Ah, Jennifer’s legs. . . .”). In fact, the look and feel of the film’s early scenes are so “adult” that I suspected the filmmakers wouldn’t allow themselves the cheap tricks with which slasher films keep jolting their audiences. I was dead wrong.

There isn’t anything director Adrian Lyne and scriptwriter James Dearden wouldn’t stoop to use. They even revive that by now hoary device of having the villain, seemingly dead, leap out of nowhere for one last mad charge at the hero or heroine. (Remember Alan Arkin in Wait Until Dark?) Such relentlessness results in a base, mechanical triumph. You may either laugh in contempt at what’s happening on screen or you may whoop it up with the rest of the audience. You won’t spend any time peering at your watch or worrying as to whether you left you car’s headlights on. But, once the film is over, you may possibly feel a bit had. This queasiness doesn’t arise from the fact that you’ve been manipulated. Manipulation, after all, is what film thrillers are all about; it’s why one goes to them. But Fatal Attraction‘s makers have included elements that you usually don’t find in a simple thriller, and yet they haven’t used these elements to make a complex thriller. What they have achieved is a chic horror show in which psychological complexity initially captures your attention only to attenuate gradually and finally disappear as the violence accelerates.

Watching Fatal Attraction is like reading an issue of the New York Times Sunday Magazine only to discover that pages from the National Inquirer have been pasted inside. In the first third of the movie a young lawyer, Dan (Michael Douglas), whose firm advises a publishing company, meets and has what he thinks is a weekend fling with one of the publisher’s female editors, Alex (Glenn Close) while Dan’s wife and little daughter are away on vacation. The editor seems so hungry and hip that Dan assumes that she’s only seeking a diversion. That’s all he wants. Both speak the current jargon of self-exculpation perfectly: “We’re both adults, aren’t we?” But, by the end of the weekend, he begins to realize that Alex wants to be a permanent fixture in his life and will stop at nothing to achieve that. He tries to reason with her and finds the current jargon a bit inadequate for such reasoning. “You knew the rules,” he lectures. “What rules?” she asks. And she means it. Then Alex reveals that she’s pregnant. Things get grimmer, shriller, and finally violent. There are wonderful possibilities in this material.

Fatal Attraction, through the exploration of its two leading characters, could have been a study of the emotional boundary-jumping that sexual feeling often leads people into. The more one tries to compartmentalize sex, to keep it limited to some tiny safe area, the more danger there may be that it will find a subterranean channel into some part of our lives where it wreaks havoc. Emotions that we never realized we possessed may be triggered, making us behave in ways that later appall us. In the grip of sexual obsession, people can come to know themselves in the most painful way possible. But though the conventional character of Dan can be established adequately (though too tidily) in a few minutes of screen time, the more complex, volcanic Alex would have had to be taken very seriously by her creators in order that she be something other than a monster. Basic questions about her would have had to be explored dramatically. Who is this homewrecker and does she actually think of herself as a homewrecker? Where is she coming from and where is she trying to go? How many men before Dan have suffered her loving fury, and what did she learn from their advances and their retreats?

Does her career in the book world mean a great deal to her or is it just a way to pass time when she isn’t with men? Has she herself brought about her seeming solitude (we never see her with a friend of either sex) or have mere circumstances brought it about? Does the married state itself attract her or does she simply want to be close to one man, with or without marriage? In other words, what is the root of her fatal attraction to Dan? If director Lyne and writer Dearden had taken these questions seriously, they might have produced exactly what the subtitle of the film declares it to be: “a terrifying love story.” But what is actually achieved is a contemporary Grand Guignol featuring Vamp With A Knife. In an undeniably effective performance, Glenn Close, her eyes alternately gleaming and deadening, her golden hair constantly backlit by the cinematographer to produce an ironic halo, her mouth twisted slightly to one side, is just as much a ghastly and simple-minded figure of horror as Jason in the ski mask of Friday the Thirteenth.

Her liberated career-woman persona is just a come-on, away of playing upon the fears of people (of women as well as of men) that attractive, unmarried women nearing the end of their child-bearing days will descend like harpies upon happily married but jaded husbands. The violence with which Alex threatens Dan and his family is female predatoriness gone berserk. The shrewd cheapness of Fatal Attraction lies in the fact that Alex finally exists on screen only to commit this violence. Her creators aren’t interested in what drives this woman. They only use her to drive the audience into a state of delicious panic. By film’s end, the crowd is screaming for her blood and cheering when they get it. But what a shrewdly made piece of junk it is! The filmmakers keep tossing out hints that Alex isn’t just a monster but a complicated, weirdly fascinating case study (Freudians sit up) or a victim of our male-dominated society (feminists lean forward). But, in truth, Alex’s character is composed of nothing but a series of gimps. A gimp, as defined by critic Manny Farber, is a gimmick which the hack director, possessing no real insight into character, “need only jerk. .

.and behold!— curious and exotic. . . images are flashed before the audience, pepping things up at the crucial moment, making you think such thoughts as ‘The hero has a mother complex’ or. . . ‘He chomps angrily on unlit cigarettes to show he comes from a Puritan environment and has a will of iron.’” Lyne and Dearden never run out of gimps. Thus: after Dan has playfully scared Alex in Central Park by pretending to keel over with a heart attack, she shames him by saying that her father died of a heart attack before her eyes. Dan looks stricken, but then Alex laughs at him: “I made it all up.” Several scenes later, while ransacking her apartment, Dan discovers a press clipping that reveals that her father did die in front of her, of — gasp! — a heart attack. Expected Audience Reaction: Oh, wow. No wonder she’s so sick! Buzz. Buzz. Electra complex. Buzz. Buzz. Wants subconsciously to punish her father for abandoning her. Buzz. Buzz. Identifies Michael Douglas with her father. Buzz, etc.

Thus: when an exasperated Dan confronts Alex, who’s been harassing him over the phone, and asks her what she really wants of him, Glenn Close looks him in the eye and, her voice iron with Victorian dignity, replies, “I want you to face up to your responsibilities.” Expected Audience Response: Oh, wow. She may be nuts but she’s only asking for what any woman asks of any man. Alex is like a modern Medea confronting Jason. Buzz. Buzz. See, there’s a real feminist undercurrent to all this. Buzz, etc. Thus: Alex, feeling neglected, sits alone in her walk-up while Dan has a reunion with his wife. She fiddles with a cord light switch and the overhead bulb keeps going on and off. We see her, then we don’t, we see her, we don’t. First in long shot, then in close-up. Her face seems divided into areas of dark and light. E.A.R. : Oh, wow. Is that ever sicko! I mean it shows the way her mind is all twisted and messed up and half of her is good and the other half stinks, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

In fact, Fatal Attraction is just one gimp after another, and to see how well they work (at however low a level) you have only to contrast this movie with one that had a very similar story: Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty For Me. There, the woman scorned, played by Jessica Walters, also murderously pursued the man who had trifled with her (Eastwood). But Eastwood, directing as competently as Lyne, used very few gimps in his story. His script was shamelessly manipulative but only in the way all thrillers are, playing fast and loose with coincidences, scary shadowy places into which innocent boobs wander, and last minute rescues. But Eastwood did not mess around with psychology or feminism. His villainess was a dragon pure and simple, and Eastwood probably cast Walters less for her acting ability than for the high-decibel screams she was able to emit with each knife thrust. Consequently, though audiences shrieked and applauded during Misty, they then went home and more or less forgot about it. It never received the awed reviews that Fatal Attraction is getting (“One of the most gripping, chilling, romantic movies in years . . .

filled with suspense, surprises, secrets. . .”), nor did it get a heated, mixed-up audience response. Fatal Attraction may be the subject of many an argument at many a dinner party but, compared with a really terrifying love story like Hitchcock’s Vertigo, it doesn’t exist. It’s a yuppie thriller. It gives an audience all that it expects. But a good thriller, like any good work of art, gives an audience precisely what it could never have expected. Movie Reviews by Edwin Jahiel A KISS BEFORE DYING (1991) *** Directed by James Dearden. Written by Dearden from a novel by Ira Levin. Photography, Mike Southon. Editing, Michael Bradsell. Production Design, Jim Clay. Music, Howard Shore. Cast: Matt Dillon (Jonathan) Sean Young (Dorothy and Ellen), Max Von Sydow (Copper Baron Carlsson), Diane Ladd (Jonathan's mother),et al. A Universal release. 93 min. Rated R (violence, adult situations).

Ira ("Rosemary's Baby" ) Levin's thriller "A Kiss Before Dying" was filmed in 1956 with Robert Wagner, Joanne Woodward, Virginia Leith, Jeffrey Hunter , Mary Astor, and George Macready. In the 1991 remake their counterparts are Matt Dillon, Sean Young, Sean Young again, nobody, Diane Ladd and Max Von Sydow. Jonathan is a psychotic, fortune-hunting student at the University of Pennsylvania; Dorothy is a co-ed (remember that term?) the daughter of a mining tycoon. She is also Ellen, her identical twin sister who is alienated from Dad, Carlsson the Copper Baron. Jonathan's mother is an abandoned woman. Jonathan grows up on the wrong side of the tracks and only feet away from them, dreaming of the Carlsson fortune as the copper company's cars roll by. Later, in college, he becomes Dorothy's ultra-secret lover, conniving marriage with the heiress. Finding out that he has made her pregnant -- therefore sure to be disinherited by her intolerant father-- he throws her from the top of the Philadelphia City Hall, making it look like suicide. All this in one of the fastest starts in thriller history.

Sister Ellen suspects murder but no one will listen. When she sleuths on her own, Jonathan strangles Dorothy's previous boyfriend, staging it like a suicide and making this new victim appear like the girl's killer. Months later Jonathan is in New York , as "Jay " and as Ellen's lover and co-worker in an agency for street people. When they marry he gets his coveted position with Carlsson . Slowly though Ellen gets suspicious of her husband, Jonathan suspects her suspicions , and the tension mounts... The book had holes, the 1956 movie had craters the size of the tycoon's copper mines. The remake too plays fast and loose with credibility. The difference is that Dillon and Young are better than their predecessors , hold your attention and distract you somewhat from the plot's illogicalities. But they still can't make all the gaps go away. Britisher James Dearden is the writer-director of a little gem, "Diversion," which won Best Short Drama at the 1980 Chicago Film Festival.

Later he expanded that subject in the scenario of director Adrian Lyne's "Fatal Attraction," a 1987 feature which is flawed, blatant, not uninteresting however, yet cannot hold a candle to "Diversion." Dearden is the first to agree, as he did in private as well as responding to a question at a Cannes Festival press conference. [You might wish to read my review of "Fatal Attraction." It also details "Diversion"] Next Dearden made "Pascali's Island," in 1988, scripting from someone else's novel. This is an excellent, colorful, unusual work, but sadly, it failed because of poor and limited distribution . "Kiss" is obviously a much more commercial venture, and it does have problems of verissimilitude. Yet it is good film-making, with good pacing , characterizations, production values and with clever touches. ( Curiously, its U.S.A. was recreated inside British studios.) If there's less than meets the eye in the coincidences and gaps, there is more to "Kiss" than one notices at first sight. Dearden belongs to a film-conscious generation, and what's more, his father was a famous movie-maker.

Adroitly, Dearden Junior blends the style of 1940s and 1950's films noirs with several homages to Alfred Hitchcock , some devious, others obvious, like Ellen watching "Vertigo" on TV; or like references to "Psycho," notably in a steamy sex scene inside a steamy shower, and a close-up of the drain . Dearden improves on the 1956 in many ways. Among them, by making Dorothy and Ellen twins, which reinforces Ellen's feelings of foul play , since twins are said to have mysterious affinities. Or by eliminating the ludicrous Jeffrey Hunter character, the weakest point of the earlier movie. There is some gore in Dearden's version but by contemporay standards the graphic violence is restrained, as when a dismemberment is only implied by a suitcase with a grizzly cargo. Dearden's other bag --of tricks this time -- finds him stressing Hitchcockianly suspense over surprise in a plot where the menacing details keep your attention well, less through zapping effects than in observing Jonathan and Ellen.

And even then, the best part of the movie is not so much Jonathan's fiendishness or Ellen's detection, but the gradual rise and fall of Ellen's attitude toward her husband. The 1956 film was and still is overrated . The new version is vastly superior to the original and stands nicely on its own feet, even if they wobble. Copyright © Edwin Jahiel DVD Savant Blu-ray Review: Fatal Attraction Fatal Attraction 1987 / Color / 1:85 anamorphic widescreen / 119 min. / Street Date June 9, 2009 / 29.99 Starring Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Anne Archer, Ellen Hamilton Latzen, Stuart Pankin, Ellen Foley, Fred Gwynne, Meg Mundy, Tom Brennan, Lois Smith. Cinematography Stanley R. Jaffe, Sherry Lansing Directed by Adrian Lyne Reviewed by Glenn Erickson All connected with the 1987 hit Fatal Attraction come off looking good, thanks to good judgment and some powerhouse acting.

As luck would have it, Paramount's tale of a garden-variety extramarital affair gone wrong struck home with a wide range of viewers, despite the lack of a really satisfactory ending. Anyone in a committed relationship will immediately identify with the film's depiction of the emotional and moral consequences of playing around. Helped of course by the attractive stars, writer James Dearden expresses the excitement and danger when two consenting adults break the rules. The horrorshow that follows revisits moralistic melodrama conventions, finishing off with a battle to the death, suburban style. Fatal Attraction is a prime example of a movie that became a sensation through word-of-mouth. The picture made husbands squirm while examining the rights of the woman scorned. In the two screenings I witnessed, general audiences switched allegiance more than once during the picture. They cheered the early actions of Glenn Close's assertive lover as an expression of outraged female pride. But by the final act, their loyalty had shifted to Anne Archer's wronged wife. The violent climax was celebrated as a purging experience -- a battle between female furies out for blood. I think this was the first time I heard a woman in a movie theater shout back at the screen.

Fatal Attraction begins as a simple story of upscale infidelity. Married attorney Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) crosses paths with book editor Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) on a rainy Manhattan afternoon, and pretty soon they're having lunch and telling each other that they're both adults. A torrid one-night goes wrong when Dan says it's time to go home. Veering between cool self-possession and delirious fits of emotion, Alex cuts her wrists as a ploy to keep Dan from leaving. Alex is unable to accept the notion that she'll no longer "be a part of Dan's life". Using passive and aggressive brands of psychological blackmail, Alex harasses Dan with phone calls, sudden visits and demands for meetings. Her no-strings seduction turns 180°, becoming, in her estimation, a serious relationship in which Dan is not fulfilling his part of her bargain. Alex reports that she is pregnant and demands to know how Dan will deal with his responsibility in the matter. When he doesn't respond to her satisfaction, Alex makes threatening moves -- contacting Dan's wife Beth (Anne Archer) and even threatening his young daughter Ellen (Ellen Hamilton Latzen).

Dearden's script as directed by Adrian Lyne gives us plenty of hints as to an author's message behind all this, yet never chooses sides (until the final scene, that is). We begin with images of male - female discord. A Nickelodeon TV show pictures a woman being drenched repeatedly in slime. Dan seems slightly neutered by some of his fatherly responsibilities. He consults on a proposed book by a predatory female author who apparently sleeps with politicians. Alex deeply identifies with the opera Madame Butterfly, seeing herself as a tragic figure. It's easy to pigeonhole Alex Forrest as a harpy from Hell, but that would be a mistake. Alex and Dan meet on more or less equal terms, and it's entirely possible that she at first sees him only as a casual lay. But they also spend time together as lovers, making a personal connection. Dimwit that he is, Dan dismisses the weekend as harmless fun. Alex has already made the commitment to have Dan for her own, and, being an empowered modern woman, isn't about to give up that goal. Dan seems even more foolish when he doesn't recognize that Alex is willing to go to extremes -- even harming herself -- to get her way.

Even in a simple discussion about a heart attack, Alex feels she must come out on top -- she must be in control at all times. Fatal Attraction isn't just about a ba-a-a-d woman: its portrait of a philandering husband is guaranteed to make men uncomfortable. No-fault no-muss sex in our culture is largely a myth, even without resorting to obvious moral arguments. Whether they admit it or not, both men and women seek "significant" relationships. If they feel they're being used, they suffer deep pain and humiliation. For married Dan it's all just an adventure, and he takes Alex's claim of a similar attitude at face value. Why deny one's self a good thing? The beautiful and carefree can delude themselves that nothing matters, as long as they have other companions and fun times to tide them over. But unless they're complete moral and emotional ciphers, the need for loyal companionship catches up to them too. Of course, most of us will think Dan completely nuts for cheating on Beth, a convincingly wonderful spouse and partner -- he should start each day giving thanks on his knees that she's there.

At a certain point Alex stops being the wronged party and transforms into a definite threat, not just to Dan but to everything we hold dear. We rather expect that Beth should have seen something coming but we're crushed for her when Dan fesses up to his basic betrayal of trust. That's when Fatal Attraction goes all melodramatic-Guignol on us. Even the film's excesses are handled well. We're in Baby Jane territory when a certain long-eared pet meets an unhappy end. The bubbly bunny clearly stands in for Alex's unborn child, an unappetizing thought. We can't help feel Alex's pain as she sees Dan reacting with his happy family -- wifey Beth has Dan, Ellen and even a pet bunny. Alex has zip. (Spoiler) Fatal Attraction ends in a bloody combat that pleases audiences but does harm to its story. Dan has surely learned his lesson but the finale places him back on top, with Beth again committed to him and the Wicked Witch of the West Side banished to perdition.

Considering the emphasis the movie places on the Gallagher's super-duper new house, the finale plays out like a Family Circle -- approved version of Straw Dogs : we the holders of the property deed and the marriage license will defend our turf to the bitter end. The family that slays together ... Then again, Beth Gallagher has already been put through the mill imagining what Alex might have done to her young daughter. It seems unfair to criticize her actions in any way. Audiences were delighted when Beth Gallagher, the film's blameless party, strikes back in defense of hearth and hubby. I should imagine that if I cheated, and if my girlfriend came at me with a Norman Bates Cutlery Special, my wife would still fight on my behalf. : I sincerely hope. Fatal Attraction's compromised ending isn't exactly the Revenge of the Yuppie Scum, but I'm sure there are viewers who see it that way. Fatal Attraction (1987) - Connections - IMDb Fatal Attraction (1987) Connections Showing all 272 items Based on a short film made for British TV which 'James Dearden' (qv) wrote and directed.

Remade as Moonlighting: Fetal Attraction (1988) (TV Episode) title reference Cheers: Bar Wars (1988) (TV Episode) Mentioned by Carla. Cheers: Feeble Attraction (1989) (TV Episode) Title reference Porkpie: Fatal Distraction (1996) (TV Episode) Title reference. Barbara: Rivals (1999) (TV Episode) Mentioned by Neil. Spaced: Art (1999) (TV Episode) The shot of a swinging lightbulb turning on and off. Smallville: Obsession (2004) (TV Episode) Chloe says Alicia's 'going all Glenn Close' on Clark.

Smallville: Pariah (2005) (TV Episode) Lois references the events of the film using the line, "Alicia's name came up more than once in a bunny-boiler-kind-a-way." Jeopardy!: Episode #22.5 (2005) (TV Episode) correct response in "My Fear Lady" category Gilmore Girls: Partings (2006) (TV Episode) Rory quotes the line "I won't be ignored, Dan." Standoff: Heroine (2006) (TV Episode) "Boiled bunnies" are mentioned in a stalker conversation. 30 Rock: Fireworks (2007) (TV Episode) Liz mentions it Peep Show: Handyman (2007) (TV Episode) Jeremy asks what Mark would say if hypothetically Sally asked to have sex with him and he says "If she promised she wasn't a Glenn Close type and had a recent clean AIDS certificate?" V. Murdering Seductresses: Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction Analyzed « Dangerous Ladies Jeanne Tripplehorn……….Dr. Beth Garner Dr.

Beth Garner Roxy Plot Summary The film’s protagonist is police detective Nick Curran, who is investigating the murder of a wealthy former rock star. Johnny Boz, the rock star, was killed during a sexual encounter, when the woman he was with stabbed him multiple times with an ice pick while climaxing (a really graphic scene is shown of this). Catherine Tramell becomes involved in the crime as the star suspect. The beautiful and seductive Tramell is a wealthy crime writer, who often writes about crimes before they are committed. Catherine not only wrote about the rock star’s murder in the same way that it occurred in reality, she was actually having a sexual relationship with the rock star during her writing! Nick leads the case and has to have a lot of personal contact with Tramell, which begins their very intense sexual relationship. Tramell begins to write a novel about a detective who gets killed—needless to say, Curran is scared for his life! However, Curran cannot seem to let go of Tramell and is drawn in by her wit, charm, beauty, and fearsome seduction. The plot is further complicated by a variety of characters.

Tramell has had a tumultuous affair with a woman named Roxy, who becomes very jealous of Nick for his relationship with Tramell. On the same note, Curran is having a sexual relationship with his therapist, Beth, who later turns out to have had a homosexual affair with Tramell in college. Then for comic relief, Curran’s best friend Gus has lively banter with Curran about leaving Tramell alone. Tramell makes the movie even more of an excitement. One cannot forget the famous interrogation scene where she flashes the police her naked crotch. The whole way through, Tramell’s fearsome demeanor has the audience believing that she committed the murder. On the same note, Tramell has always been surrounded by death—her parents were killed, her lover/college professor was stabbed with an ice pick, and her boxer boyfriend was killed in the ring. However, by the end of the movie, Curran shoots his therapist believing that she is the true murderer. The audience is somewhat content with this outcome—until the end of the film. Here Tramell looks under the bed and lays with Curran talking about their future together.

The audience believes the film to be over, until the film does a double take and we see that it is actually an ice pick under the bed! Controversy of the film The film struck a nerve with various groups and has been the subject of much controversy. The film, which was originally labeled NC-17 for its graphic violence and sexuality before the director “tweaked the angles,” has been criticized for its depictions of sexuality and violent murder scenes. However, the film got the most backlash from the gay and lesbian community who were angered by the film’s depiction of women who engage in same-sex relationships as accused or actual psycho-murderers. However, other prominent members of the gay, lesbian, or bisexual community have stood by the film. Advertising for the film Trailer for Basic Instinct Film Poster and Cover for Basic Instinct The movie’s advertising clearly focuses on the cultural intrigue surrounding femmes fatales. This is clearly shown through an examination of the poster. Stone’s menacing yet alluring eyes are the central focus of the poster, while we can only see half of Douglas’ face. Not only that, the poster highlights Stone’s clawlike fingers that are clenching Douglas’ back.

Clearly, Stone is supposed to be both the temptation for the audience and the source of fear. The trailer works to the same effect. The most interesting parts of the film are when Stone is shown, in all of her seductive glory. When Douglas’ is the central focus, it is only to move the trailer along to the more desirable character–Sharon Stone. The Interrogation Scene Watch the Scene Here Much insight into the properties of the femme fatale and the alluring nature of this figure embodied in Sharon Stone can be gathered from this section of the film. The much discussed interrogation scene in Basic Instinct (1992), the scene that made Sharon Stone a star, is a prime example. When Catherine Tramell is brought in for questioning by the police, she is supposed to be the one in the hot seat as a team of male detectives grill her. Instead Catherine remains calm and collected while the men are reduced to sweaty, blabbering fools after she briefly uncrosses her legs and they get a glimpse of her pantieless crotch” (reel knockouts: looks that kill 62). The main point that comes across in the scene is that Catherine is a bombshell–a dangerous one.

She has the policemen all but drooling in her presence, through her seductive appearance and conversation. She has both the policemen and the audience imagining her sexual encounters and is bold enough to say that she likes “hands and fingers;” the audience can only begin to imagine why! At the same time, this scene shows both Catherine’s intelligence and her flair for manipulation. She is always a mile ahead of all the policemen, and has them thoroughly confused during the questioning. Even more shocking than her seductiveness, manipulative nature, and dangerousness is Catherine’s total sexual liberation. Not only does she talk about hands and fingers, she also singles Nick out and talks about having sex on drugs, and flashes her vagina to the policemen! The scene where Stone flashes her private parts to the camera is forever embroiled in the mind’s of the audience. Nothing screams sexual liberation and danger at the same time like this scene in the movie!

Critical Analysis Sharon Stone’s Tramell as Femme Fatale: The Ice Pick “In Stone’s work we can investigate the intersections of thirty years of recent feminism with the archetypal Hollywood figure of female violence, the ‘spider woman,’ or femme fatale…the femme fatale incorporates violent tendencies posing as vulnerability, voracious heterosexuality, rampant mendacity, and inscrutability to males” (reel knockouts stone aesthetic 126) The women in Basic Instinct only kill to subvert patriarchy and the family: Castration Fear The women in Basic Instinct kill in order to fight against restraints put on them by their families and society. The movie features three women, who in one form or another, have this as their killing aim: “In Basic Instinct, women kill in acts of rage directed specifically against men and the family. Tramell is not the only murderess in this film; she has befriended two women, Roxy and Hazel, who have killed their entire families.

When Curran discovers Roxy’s bloody history, he asks what her motive had been and his partner, Gus, explains, “This young farmgirl got tired of all that attention going to her little brothers, so she fixed them. Just like old Hazel Dobkins fixed her whole family, except young Roxy here didn’t use a wedding present: she used Daddy’s razor.” This explanation is interesting on several counts. First, Gus interprets Roxy’s killing as motivated by jealousy of her male siblings, invoking a patriarchal family structure that favors boys over girls. Second, the language that he uses-”so she fixed them”-positions the crime as, symbolically, a castration enacted by appropriating “Daddy’s razor”; again, he constitutes her anger as directed against men, against the phallus. Finally, he reveals that Hazel, Tramell’s other murderous friend, killed with a knife she had received as a wedding present, thus connecting her rage to her marriage. Even Tramell has killed her parents, although Curran cannot prove it.

It is no wonder, then, that when Curran proposes that they “fuck like minks, raise rug rats, and live happily ever after,” Tramell’s only response is “I don’t like rug rats.” In the three cases, female violence is enacted within and directed against the family-specifically, the men of the family” (Sherwin) Catherine kills men because she is sexually bored of them (reminiscent of Josephine in City Crimes by George Thompson): Dead Rock Star Tramell moves from one man to the next, using them when she feels like it and killing them when they are expendable. When talking about Boz, she “liked fucking him”–past tense. She didn’t anymore, so Boz gets the ice pick to the face. Catherine isn’t one to stay in a sexually dull relationship (like some of the women in Thompson’s texts): “Catherine might still be the psychokiller. According to Antonio Weinrichter, what saves Curran is his satisfactory sexual performance–”the fuck of the century”–as they both rate their first sexual encounter.

As long as he can keep it up, he has nothing to fear, but, just in case, Catherine always has her own very special dildo at hand (25). Weinrichter settles, therefore, for Catherine’s criminal personality, but he also suggests that it is Nick’s fear and anxiety about women that produces that criminality” (Deleyto) The violence of the movie actually represents a male fear of castration by women: Catherine and Nick Many studies on Basic Instinct have focused on the ice pick as a castrating force for the men Tramell kills. However, this application can be treated more universlly for femme fatales in that they all in some way or another illicit a fear of castration in men: “This irrational fear attributes to women a universal desire for revenge, a desire which, in this film and other texts, is never explained or justified. ‘The message of the film appears to be that for the unsuspecting man, caught in the throes of orgasm, death may come at any time’.

Yet the attitude to the castrating woman is ambiguous: she arouses fear of castration but also a simultaneous masochistic desire for death, pleasure, and oblivion” (Deleyto) Lessons Learned from Catherine Tramell Catherine in Control of Her Sexuality Tramell is an interesting and captivating figure because of her role as a strong woman with power over men and sexuality: “Her most impressive attribute is not her propensity for murder, which is common among femmes fatales, but her cold assertion of a diverse palate. Asked if she is sorry a lover has been killed, she replies, ‘Yeah, I liked fucking him.’ She offers neither explanation nor apology for her bisexuality and never indicates that she values one sex or gender over another. She also deviates from noir models in refusing to assert her power through deceptive conflations of desire and love. Only a lazy egotism convinces Nick that their affair is more than a sadomasochistic partnership. But as with many noir heroes, his cynicism is a flimsy mix of scar tissue and pretense.

Though he feigns Catherine’s lack of sentiment by calling her ‘the fuck of the century,’ he alternates such glibness with softer profe-sions of love and tacit yearnings for reciprocity” (Andrews 66). she “reveals the threat that an independent, working, bisexual woman represents to man, as well as the fragility of the control that man can exert over her” (Sherwin) Fatal Attraction (1987) Fatal Attraction is a thriller film, directed by Adrian Lyne and written by James Dearden. Cast Ellen Hamilton Latzen……….Ellen Gallagher Ellen Gallagher Plot Summary Movie Poster and Cover for Fatal Attraction Dan is a married lawyer and fahter living in Manhattan when he meets Alex Forrest, a successful editor for a publishing company. When Dan’s wife and daughter go out of town to look at suburban homes, Dan has an affair with Alex, which promises to be a one time occurrence for both of the parties. However, Alex hasn’t had quite enough of Dan, and wishes for their affair to continue. Dan refuses to take part in any of Alex’s advances, so Alex threatens to kill herself. Dan still rejects Alex.

Then Alex informs Dan that she is pregnant with his child. Dan is beside himself and says he will pay for Alex’s abortion. This infuriates Alex and she refuses. This is where the plot becomes very violent. Although the Gallagher family move to Bedford, Alex will stop at nothing. She stalks Dan at home, pours acid on his car, kill’s Dan’s daughter’s pet rabbit by boiling it in a pot, and kidnaps Ellen (the daughter) from school and takes her to an amusement park. After Dan realizes what has been happening, he beats Alex in his angered state. However, this does not hold for long because Alex turns the fight around and almost kills Dan through the use of a knife in the kitchen. Dan gives up his fight and Alex sees this as a sign of defeat so she moves towards her obstacle—Dan’s wife. Alex attacks Beth with the knife, but is saved when Dan comes and almost drowns Alex. Dan believes Alex to be dead, but Alex resuscitates, only to be shot in the chest by Beth. The film ends with a focused shot of a family portrait.

Advertisement for the film Trailer for Fatal Attraction Much like the trailer for Basic Instinct, the trailer for Fatal Attraction highlights the menacing yet seductive aspects of Glenn Close’s character. The beginning of the film shows how Dan first meets Alex through “a look.” The trailer clearly poses Dan as the victim of the femme fatale who can subjugate a man to her desires through solely a glance. However, the trailer does show Alex as more of a menacing figure and less of a seductive figure than the character of Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct. Both women, nonetheless, do possess a certain “sexiness” and “maliciousness” at the same time. Critical Analysis: Fatal Attraction (1987) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A married man's one-night stand comes back to haunt him when that lover begins to stalk him and his family.

Director: a list of 48 titles created 03 May 2011 a list of 30 titles created 22 Jul 2011 a list of 24 titles created 17 Jul 2013 a list of 25 titles created 11 Dec 2014 a list of 23 titles created 8 months ago Search for " Fatal Attraction " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 6 Oscars. Another 7 wins & 16 nominations. See more awards » Videos A violent, suspended police detective investigates a brutal murder, in which a manipulative and seductive woman could be involved. Director: Paul Verhoeven A computer specialist is sued for sexual harassment by a former lover turned boss who initiated the act forcefully, which threatens both his career and his personal life. Director: Barry Levinson A married couple try everything to get each other to leave the house in a vicious divorce battle.

Director: Danny DeVito A millionaire offers $1,000,000 to a young married couple for a night with the wife. Director: Adrian Lyne A remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic Dial M for Murder (1954). Director: Andrew Davis Two NYC cops arrest a Yakuza member and must escort him when he's extradited to Japan. Director: Ridley Scott A New York suburban couple's marriage goes dangerously awry when the wife indulges in an adulterous fling. Director: Adrian Lyne A romance writer sets off to Colombia to ransom her kidnapped sister, and soon finds herself in the middle of a dangerous adventure. Director: Robert Zemeckis This is the sequel to "Romancing the Stone" where Jack and Joan have their yacht and easy life, but are gradually getting bored with each other and this way of life. Joan accepts an ... See full summary » Director: Lewis Teague A woman advertising for a new roommate finds that something very strange is going on with the tenant who decides to move in. Director: Barbet Schroeder A woman gets involved in an impersonal affair with a man.

She barely knows about his life, only about the sex games they play, so the relationship begins to get complicated. Director: Adrian Lyne A borderline personality disordered defense worker frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society, begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them. Director: Joel Schumacher Edit Storyline Happily married New York lawyer Dan Callagher has an affair with his colleague Alex, and the two enjoy a love weekend while Dan's wife and kid are away. But Alex will not let go of him, and she will stop at nothing to have him for herself. Just how far will she go to get what she wants? Written by Sami Al-Taher <staher2000@yahoo.com> See All (230) » Taglines: On the other side of drinks, dinner and a one night stand, lies a terrifying love story. See more » Genres: 18 September 1987 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Affairs of the Heart See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia Glenn Close still has the knife she used in the movie hanging in her kitchen.

See more » Goofs Alex's head tilts the opposite way when she tries to persuade Dan to not leave after he confronts her. See more » Quotes See more » Crazy Credits Barbara Harris is sometimes credited under the name Barbara Iley. In the final credits here, under 'Party Guests', she is credited under both names. See more » Connections Prelude No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 28 (uncredited) One Of The Most Memorable Movies Of The '80s 28 January 2007 | by ccthemovieman-1 (United States) – See all my reviews You don't hear much about this film anymore, but in its day, this was the most-talked about movie of the year. It was a 'favorite topic of conversation about the office water cooler' for a number of weeks. At the time, it was a shocker. Nowaways.....who knows? As we become more and more desensitized to violence, sex and profanity, it takes a lot more to shock us. Still, this movie had memorable moments that have stayed with us who first saw it at the theater 20 years ago.

Most of those memorable scenes, if not all of them, involve Glenn Close's character, "Alex Forrest." Man, this is a woman who would not be denied what she wanted: in this case, married man Michael Douglas. No sense going into all the details. Everyone knows them by now, anyway. Looking back, I think the film was a good lesson for men (or women) thinking about cheating on their spouses and assuming nothing bad will happen as a result. Men may commit more crimes, but that old adage about a "woman scorned" certainly is demonstrated here in spades! Douglas' character, "Dan Gallagher," certainly can attest to that, but he is anything but a sympathetic character. Both actors do a superb job in here, but kudos also to the rest of the Gallagher family, played by Anne Archer (wife "Beth") and Ellen Hamilton Latzen (daughter "Ellen.") Also, the cinematography shouldn't be overlooked. The widescreen DVD certainly brought out how nicely this film was shot and directed. This two-hour film keeps your attention all the way. The only thing I would change is the language, toning it down a bit.

Otherwise, it's a classic thriller and one of the most famous films in the '80s. 45 of 52 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes 11 Surprising Facts About ‘Fatal Attraction’ | Mental Floss 11 Surprising Facts About ‘Fatal Attraction’ YouTube Like us on Facebook Written by James Dearden and directed by Adrian Lyne, 1987’s Fatal Attraction showed just how dangerous sex could be. Michael Douglas plays Dan Gallagher, a married man who has a weekend-long affair with single career woman Alex Forrest, played by Glenn Close. When he breaks off their affair, Alex goes a little nuts. Despite drawing the ire of feminists and frightening men everywhere, the film grossed an impressive $320 million worldwide , earned six Oscar nominations (including one for Close), and ranks number one in the “ Psycho/Stalker/Blank from Hell ” genre. Here are 11 scintillating facts about the movie. 1. THE MOVIE IS BASED ON THE SCREENWRITER’S SHORT FILM. In 1980, Fatal Attraction screenwriter James Dearden wrote and directed a short film called Diversion.

“I was sitting at home thinking, ‘What is a minimalist story that I can do?’ My wife was out of town for the weekend, and I thought what would happen if a man who has just dropped his wife at the railroad station rings this girl who he's met at a party and says, ‘Would you like to have dinner?’” he told The New York Times . “It’s a little fable about the perils of adultery. It is something that men and women get away with 99 percent of the time, and I just thought, ‘Why not explore the one time out of 100 when it goes wrong?’” Fatal Attraction producers Sherry Lansing and Stanley Jaffe saw the short and asked Dearden to elaborate on the story. “To turn it into a mass-audience film, I knew there would have to be an escalation of the psychological violence, which in the end becomes physical,” Dearden explained. He says he wasn’t trying to make a social statement about AIDS, but he was trying to say “we can have the most intimate sexual relationships with somebody we know nothing about.” 2. GLENN CLOSE WANTED TO PLAY AGAINST TYPE.

By the time Fatal Attraction came around, Glenn Close was a three-time Oscar nominee who had never been asked to play a sexy role. “When Glenn made it known she was prepared to test, I became fascinated with the idea of using her,” Adrian Lyne told People . “She’s a person you’d least expect to have this passion and irrational obsession. When she and Michael tested, an extraordinary erotic transformation took place. She was this tragic, bewildering mix of sexuality and rage—I watched Alex come to life.” Close recalled her nerve-racking audition to Entertainment Weekly : “My hair was long and crazy. I’m very bad at doing my hair. I got so nervous, I took a little bit of a Valium. I walked in and the first thing I saw was a video camera, which is terrifying, and behind the video camera in the corner was Michael Douglas. I just said, ‘Well, just let it all go wild.”’ A year after Fatal Attraction’s release, Close kept the sexiness going in Dangerous Liaisons, which garnered her yet another Oscar nod. 3. ADRIAN LYNE WANTED TO DO A DIFFERENT TYPE OF SEX SCENE.

According to Lyne, the only thing audiences remember about the movie is the spontaneous and somewhat goofy kitchen sink sex scene. “But what people take away from the movie is not Glenn Close putting acid on the car or even the last 10 minutes when they are flailing around in the bathroom,” he told MovieMaker Magazine . “What they remember is Michael f*cking her over the sink early on—which was like 30 seconds—and another 30 seconds of them making out in the elevator … but there’s another two hours and five minutes! And I guess it worked or they wouldn’t have gone to the movie.” In John Andrew Gallagher’s book Film Directors on Directing, Lyne said he didn’t want the love scene to take place in a bed “because it’s so dreary, and I thought about the sink because I remembered I had once had sex with a girl over a sink, way back. The plates clank around and you’ll have a laugh. You always need to have a laugh in a sex scene.” During filming he yelled at the couple, praising them.

“If they know that they’re turning you on, it builds their confidence.” He used a handheld camera to film it “so there was no problem with the heat going out of the scene.” 4. CLOSE HAD A HUGE PROBLEM WITH THE NEW ENDING. Two endings of the film were shot: The first had Alex planting Dan’s fingerprints on a knife and then killing herself while Madama Butterfly played in the background. Test audiences felt unsatisfied, so Paramount decided to re-shoot the ending and make it more violent. They had Dan’s wife, Beth (Anne Archer)—the only untainted character—shockingly shoot and kill Alex as a statement on preserving the American family. “When I heard that they wanted to make me into basically a psychopath, where I go after someone with a knife rather than somebody who was self-destructive and basically tragic, it was a profound problem for me because I did a lot of research about the character,” Close told Oprah . “So to be brought back six months later and told, ‘You’re going to totally change that character,’ it was very hard. I think I fought against it for three weeks. I remember we had meetings.

I was so mad.” In Entertainment Weekly , Close said she thought Alex was a deeply disturbed woman, but not a psychopath. “Once you put a knife in somebody’s hand, I thought that was a betrayal of the character,” she explained. The main reason the ending was changed was because moviegoers wanted revenge. “The audience wanted somebody to kill her,” Michael Douglas told Entertainment Weekly. “Otherwise the picture was left—for lack of a better expression—with blue balls.” Though audiences wanted Alex dead, Douglas saw that as a compliment. “You were so good in the part that everybody wanted you to be killed,” he told Close on Oprah. In hindsight, Close thinks they did the right thing in changing the ending. “Bloodshed in a dramatic sense brings catharsis,” she told Entertainment Weekly . “Shakespeare did it. The Greeks did it. That’s what we did. We gave the audience my blood. It worked.” 5. THE MOVIE CAUSED THE PHRASE “BUNNY BOILER” TO BECOME A PART OF THE LEXICON. In probably the most disturbing scene in the movie, Alex boils Dan’s kid’s pet bunny. The phrase is listed in Urban Dictionary and on the U.K. site Phrases.org .

Urban defines it as “after a relationship break-up, the person who wants some kind of revenge, like stalking, or harassment,” and Phrases says, “an obsessive and dangerous female, in pursuit of a lover who has spurned her.” Close herself was uneasy about the scene. “The only thing that bothered me was the rabbit,” she said on Oprah . “I thought it was over the top.” 6. CLOSE HAD THE KNIFE SHE TRIED TO KILL MICHAEL DOUGLAS WITH FRAMED. In the theatrical ending of the movie, Alex comes after Dan with a knife but doesn’t succeed in getting away with murder. Close told Vanity Fair that she framed the fake knife, and that it’s hanging in her kitchen. “It’s all an illusion. It’s a cardboard prop!” she said. It’s also a rather creepy reminder of the film. 7. THE MOVIE SAVED MORE THAN A FEW MARRIAGES. The film shows what happens when a married man lets his guard down and embarks on an affair, only to have it destroy his life. “That movie struck a very, very raw nerve,” Close told Daily Mail . “Feminists hated the movie and that was shocking to me.

They felt they'd been betrayed because it was a single, working woman who was supposed to be the source of all evil. But now Alex is considered a heroine. Men still come up to me and say, ‘You scared the s**t outta me.’ Sometimes they say, ‘You saved my marriage.’” 8. CLOSE WOULD PLAY ALEX DIFFERENTLY TODAY. One of the reasons the film was so controversial is the negative way it depicted mental illness. Psychiatrists have said Alex suffered from erotomania, a condition in which a person wrongly believes a person is in love with them. Close spoke to two psychiatrists in preparation for her role, and neither said Alex’s behavior—especially the bunny-boiling—was because of mental illness. “Never did a mental disorder come up. Never did the possibility of that come up,” Close told CBS News . “That, of course, would be the first thing I would think of now.” She also said, “I would have a different outlook on that character. I would read that script totally differently.” 9. DEARDEN ADAPTED FATAL ATTRACTION INTO A PLAY, WITH THE ORIGINAL ENDING INTACT.

In 2014 a stage version of the movie went up in London, starring Natascha McElhone as Alex and Kristin Davis as the long-suffering wife, Beth. Dearden reimagined the script in making Alex more sympathetic, Dan more blameworthy, and returning to the original ending. “[I] wanted to return to my original conception of the characters in a sense to set the record straight,” Dearden told The Atlantic . “Because while Alex is undeniably borderline psychotic, she is also a tragic figure, worn down by a series of disappointments in love and the sheer brutality of living in New York as a single woman in a demanding career. So whilst remaining faithful to the storyline, I have introduced the ambivalence of my earlier drafts … nobody is entirely right and nobody entirely wrong.” 10. DEARDEN AND CLOSE DON’T BELIEVE ALEX IS A MONSTER. “Alex is emphatically not a monster,” Dearden wrote in The Guardian . “She is a sad, tragic, lonely woman, holding down a tough job in an unforgiving city. Alex is not a study in madness.

She is a study in loneliness and desperation.” He goes on to write that he regrets “that audiences shouted ‘Kill the bitch!’ at the screen … Did Fatal Attraction really set back feminism and career women? I honestly don’t believe so. I think that, arguably, it encouraged a vigorous debate from which feminism emerged, if anything, far stronger.” Close doesn’t see Alex as monstrous either. “I never thought of her as the villain, ever,” she said on Oprah . 11. A TV VERSION OF FATAL ATTRACTION IS IN THE WORKS. Last year it was reported that Paramount will bring the film to the small screen in what’s described as “a one-hour event TV series.” Mad Men producers Maria and André Jacquemetton will executive produce and write the show. Deadline said the plot will entail how “a married man’s indiscretion comes back to haunt him,” just like in the movie. The show will air on Fox, but no specific details have been released on the cast or when it will air. More from mental_floss...

Question: James Dearden wrote which book, made into a famous film directed by Adrian Lyne, in 1987?
Answer: Fatal Attraction