Who’s Afraid of Catherine Woolf?

Was somehow not expecting this to be Cruising for horny straight dudes.

93

Sex not just as power, but as the ferocity of power. Captures the energy and the sweat behind the curtains of Noir; a sticky, coked-up dance in early 90s garb. Sure, it's a Verhoeven picture, but all I see is Sharon Stone.

The dizzying camp VERTIGO take on an American giallo, so infatuated with its own perverse deconstruction of gross misogynistic desire that it barely feels rooted in any version of our own world. Douglas, Stone and Tripplehorne are all these bloodthirsty predators, fueled by their own need to feed on one another and constantly circling, never once slowing down or stopping because they’d probably become bored with existence if they did. Seeing this and DEEP RED within a week of one another on the big screen makes you pine for another boom in anti-real pulp mysteries; bloated bits of psychodrama that become showcases for cinema drunk visionaries to fracture and project years of dime store diversions through their own filmic fascinations. [35mm]

The Hitchcock and De Palma lifts are well known by this point but someone I thought of this time around: Welles -- I swear some of those shots of Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone walking up and down cliffs on the beach are taken from The Lady from Shanghai. Relentless, exciting, hilarious, subversive, and it probably sold a lot of fuckin ice picks!

One of the most notorious films of the 1990s is, in hindsight, one of the best films of the decade. “Basic Insticnt” has largely aged like a fine wine, and any moments that do now feel like a relic of its era, only add to the film’s overall charm. Paul Verhoven’s Hitchcockian direction gives this modern noir a timeless feel, Jerry Goldsmith’s sensous score adds to the film’s lurid eroticism, and Joe Eszterhaus’ amusingly lewd and manipulative script generated almost as much controversy as the film’s forcibly-trimmed scenes of controversial violence and sex. The truth is, 25-years-plus later, both still resonate, and an at-the-top-of-their-game Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone’s (in her breakthrough role) centerpiece sex scene is still arguably the hottest mainstream, major motion picture sex scene of all time. The rest of the cast all play along appropriately and winningly with the neo-noir material, and there are several other memorably shocking moments.  “Basic Instinct” is ridiculously entertaining.

"Don't have a cow, man." - everyone to Michael Douglas

SICK farken movie

I can’t think of a good joke about how the killers name is Catherine and she is blonde and that my name is also Catherine and that I am also blonde. That’s probably good though.

the true star of the show was the Bart Simpson keychain

The Trashy Erotic Thriller. Nothing compares to it and anything that tries to be like it falls embarrassingly short (coughBodyofEvidencecough).

Paul Verhoeven is the king of sleazy cinema

This is the only movie I've ever seen that lives up to my ideas as a 12 year old of what R-rated movies were like.

Listen to more thoughts on my podcast, The Shame Files: cinedelphia.com/shame-files-podcast-basic-instinct/

Really curious to catch Fatal Instinct at Weird Wednesday next week, if only because this film already feels like a parody of itself and I'm wondering how much funnier and more ridiculous an explicitly comedic version could possibly be.