Basic Instinct (1992)

In director Paul Verhoeven's glossy, neo-noirish erotic mystery-thriller - it was very controversial for its overt sexuality and depiction of two bisexual females as murderous psychopaths, and for its outrageous dialogue and convoluted, improbable and twisting plot by scriptwriter Joe Eszterhas. Threatened with an NC-17 rating, and reduced to R rating (with cuts), this flashy and dramatic film was then released with a more explicit 'Director's Cut' version for the video market, with the extra-steamy scenes. The notorious film received two Academy Award nominations: Best Original Musical Score (Jerry Goldsmith), and Best Film Editing.

The suspenseful, cat-and-mouse erotic thriller with psychosexual overtones between a hard-boiled detective and a deadly femme fatale was one of the top-grossing films of its year. With a budget of $49 million, it made a spectacular $117.7 million (domestic) and $352.9 million (worldwide). Star Sharon Stone's career as a sex goddess was revived in her copy-cat Hitchcockian murder-mystery role, similar to Vertigo (1958), as an icy, femme fatale blonde - a suspected ice-pick murderess whose latest novel was titled Love Hurts. Poster taglines broadcast: "A brutal murder A brilliant killer A cop who can't resist the danger," and "Flesh seduces. Passion kills."

Womens' groups called the film misogynistic, and gay-rights groups in San Francisco called it stereotypically-homophobic and gay-bashing - they charged that the main murderess suspect in the film was a denegrating portrayal since she was a mentally-unstable, psychotic lesbian and bi-sexual. The film was also criticized for permissiveness, steamy content (one scene of cunnilingus), exploitative nudity, its depiction of lesbian characters, and its scenes of bondage (especially with reversed roles).

A belated sequel from MGM - director Michael Caton-Jones' Basic Instinct 2 (2006) - was released almost a decade and a half later with 47 year-old Sharon Stone reprising her sexy murderess role, and it turned out to be a box-office bomb. On a huge budget of $70 million, it only made $6 million (domestic) and $38.6 million (worldwide).

• in the opening scene - a couple was reflected from all angles as they made love under a mirrored ceiling at about 2 am in the morning - the unidentified blonde female with her face obscured (the film's brutal ice-pick murder suspect, although it was quite clear later on who the murderess was!) was atop retired rock star Johnny Boz (Bill Cable), and elements of S&M were revealed when she tied his arms to the bedpost with a length of white silk sheet before writhing on top of him. Then, she reached back, reared up, and stabbed him to death with an ice-pick hidden in the sheets - later the cops noted the come stains on the bed: "He got off before he got off" - and there were 31 stab wounds on the body

Unidentified Blonde's Ice-Pick S&M Murder of Rock Star Johnny Boz

• troubled, burned-out SFPD homicide detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) was assigned by Lieutenant Phillip Walker (Denis Arndt) to "work the case" with Det. Gus Moran (George Dzundza); after checking out the crime scene, the two officers arrived at the lavish mansion-home of Boz' girlfriend Catherine Woolf-Tramell (a star-making and career-launching role for Sharon Stone), to question the crime mystery-novelist who lived at 162 Divisadero in the city; a blonde named Roxanne "Roxy" Hardy (Leilani Sarelle) descended a circular staircase from upstairs and introduced herself as Catherine's "friend" - the lesbian lover told them Catherine was at her multi-million dollar beach house at Stinson Beach (Seadrift 1402)
• the two detectives located the gorgeous, classically-blonde, bisexual beauty Ms. Tramell seated in a deck chair facing the water at her beach home, who greeted them: "I know who you are"; she already knew about the murder, and was unemotional - she coldly asked about how Boz died, and was told: "with an ice pick"
• at the same time in the department, Nick was undergoing therapeutic counseling as a recovering alcoholic and cocaine abuser with dark-haired police psychologist Elisabeth "Beth" Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn) in the Internal Affairs Dept. - they had previously been involved in an affair, and she appeared to still be in love with him
• further research revealed that the brutal, icy blonde, ice-pick prime murder suspect -- seductive, bi-sexual mystery writer Catherine was 30 years of age with "no priors, no convictions. Magna cum laude Berkeley, 1983. Double major: Literature and Psychology"; she was possibly linked to a suspicious boating accident in 1979 that killed her parents, and then inherited their assets worth $110 million; she was also a mystery novelist whose latest pulp thriller novel (Love Hurts) described a murder committed in a very similar way "about a retired rock and roll star who gets murdered by his girlfriend"
• during the investigation, Dr. Lamott (Stephen Tobolowsky) had profiled the suspect and explained the deviant behavior - either the writer was guilty of pre-meditated murder, or there was an obsessed, copy-cat killer wishing to frame the writer ("You're dealing with someone very dangerous and very ill")
• when Nick went to Catherine's beach house to pick her up and take her downtown for questioning, he noticed that she had laid out a newspaper article about how he had once - in the line of duty (while high on cocaine) - accidentally killed some innocent bystander-tourists under questionable circumstances and was considered prone to violence; as she dressed in a back bedroom, Catherine deliberately gave Nick a view of her stripping naked, and not wearing underwear
• in the infamous police interrogation scene, Catherine was brought to the station to be questioned (was her DNA taken?); she first smoked in the no-smoking area: ("What are you going to do? Charge me with smoking?") - and the police should have charged her for the infraction; she was a prime suspect because she was Boz's frequent 'f--k-partner,' and her most recent novel Love Hurts was a copy-cat alibi story: "The person who wrote this book is your murderer and acted out the killing described in ritualistic, literal detail"; she denied any guilt: "I'd have to be pretty stupid to write a book about killing and then kill somebody the way I described it in my book. I'd be announcing myself as the killer. I'm not stupid"
• during the interrogation, Catherine delivered an oversexed taunting line to Detective Nick Curran about his drug addiction - "Have you ever f--ked on cocaine, Nick? (long pause) It's nice" - and she also asked a question that revealed her knowledge of his past including an extra-marital affair: "Didn't you ever f--k anybody else when you were married, Nick?"; and then she openly crossed her legs - a full underwear-free view - to flirtatiously tease a panel of policemen facing her

Revealing Police Interrogation Sequence
"Have you ever f--ked on cocaine, Nick?"
	Leg-Crossing Show

• after taking a polygraph test that she easily passed, Nick drove her back to her home in San Francisco; he complimented her on her ability to fool the polygraph
• the frazzled Nick resorted to drinking (after a period of abstaining for 3 months) with his police pals in a SF bar, where Lt. Walker mentioned how Nick seemed to be taking an inappropriate personal interest in the pretty suspect; Nick's aggressive antagonist Lt. Martin Nilsen (Daniel Von Bargen) ribbed the violence-prone Nick (with the nickname "Shooter") for again drinking heavily due to the pressures of his job; police psychologist Beth entered the bar, confronted Nilsen to calm the situation down, and left with Nick to go back to her place

Lieutenant Phillip Walker (Denis Arndt) Commenting Upon a Frazzled Nick in a SF Bar

Also, Nick's Antagonistic Lt. Martin Nilsen (Daniel Von Bargen)

• in a controversial, aggressively-brutal, misogynistic, near-rape love-making sequence, Detective Curran forced himself on Beth, pinned her arms up on the wall, kissed her forcefully, ripped her dress open in the front, and draped her over the sofa as she protested: "Nick, stop, no!"; he approached her from behind for sex; afterwards, as they laid side by side together, Beth confessed that she had known Catherine as a college classmate: "I met her at Berkeley. We were in some of the same classes"; then, she set the record straight: "You weren't making love to me"

Nick's Near Rape of His Therapeutic Counselor Beth Garner

• the next morning in the bureau office, Nick was instructed to tail Catherine - he pursued her black 1991 Lotus Esprit SE sports car in his cheaper 1986 Dodge Diplomat on a winding and treacherous road during a tense and thrilling car chase from Stinson Beach on US Rte. 1 to a Mill Valley house on Albion Rd. (owned by Hazel Dobkins (Dorothy Malone)); at twilight, Catherine departed from the home and he again attempted to follow her, but was blocked by traffic and unable to keep up with her; he later found her at her Stinson Beach home, where she seemed to strip naked in her red-lighted bedroom for his viewing pleasure
• using office computers the next day, Nick discovered that in 1956, housewife Hazel had inexplicably murdered (by stabbing) her husband and three children, and was imprisoned for 9 years at San Quentin Prison [Note: But San Quentin was a male-only prison!]; the detectives had called Berkeley and learned about an unsolved similar homicide of a psychology professor named Dr. Noah Goldstein - Catherine's counselor when she was a student there: "There was a murder in '80. A professor, in his bed, multiple stab wounds with an icepick"
• Nick revisited Catherine's home, where he saw her table covered with newspaper clipping of his past history - she explained that she was using them for a detective character in her next book; when asked, Catherine also described why she had befriended Hazel Dobkins: "She helped me understand homicidal impulse"; Nick was a little unnerved when she used an ice-pick to break up chunks of ice for drinks, and when she taunted him about being high on cocaine (and addicted) when he killed two tourists while on duty; she also teased him further about his wife knowing about his cocaine addiction - something that drove her to commit suicide (in addition to his extra-marital affair with Beth)
• Catherine also flaunted her bisexuality when she introduced her openly-lesbian girlfriend "Rosy" to Nick, kissed her and fondled her nipple, and then stood with her arm around her, asking: "You two have met, haven't you?"; disgusted by Catherine's obvious display of affection for Roxy, Nick stormed out
• Nick barged into Beth's office - telling her that he suspected that she had given access to his own private and confidential psychiatric file to his adversarial co-worker Nilsen, who had then presumably shared the contents of the Internal Affairs file with Catherine: ("She knows things about me that I only told you (Beth)"); Nick then proceeded to assault Nilsen in his office and they had a violent altercation; later that night, Beth came to Nick's place and they continued to argue with each other - and they basically broke up; before leaving, she explained her reasoning for letting Nilsen read her file's session notes about Nick's possible discharge - to provide a second opinion about her evaluation of him
• later in the night, after Nick had become drunk and had fallen asleep, he was notified by phone to visit a recent crime scene - Lt. Nilsen had been found murdered by a .38 gunshot to the left side of his head, sitting in his car in an alleyway; Nick seemed to have a clear motive to eliminate Nilsen, but Nick defended himself, using Catherine's own reasonable alibi about how he wouldn't be that stupid to kill Nilsen: ("I'm gonna storm into his office in front of everybody in the middle of the day and kill him that night? I'm not that dumb"); pending the outcome of a psychiatric evaluation, Curran was ordered to go on leave; he spoke briefly to Beth, who avoided telling him any details about her college days' association with Catherine at Berkeley: "I hardly knew her. She gave me the creeps, though. I don't know why"
• Nick began to suspect that Catherine was responsible for the death of Lt. Nilsen, and that she was also guilty for the boating accident that took the lives of Catherine's parents: ("The boat blew. There was a leak in the fuel line. There'd been two previous repairs. They had a five-mil policy on both of 'em")
• after Nick left the department, he found Catherine sitting on his front stoop; inside as he prepared drinks with an ice-pick, and then watched her with the ice-pick, she invitingly asked: "Do you have any coke? I just love coke with Jack Daniels"; she gave him a gift of one of her paperback books - The First Time; before leaving, she invited him to follow her after midnight to Johnny's decadent club
• in the crowded nightclub disco with pulsating music, Nick noticed Roxy and followed her into the Men's Room where Catherine was seen sniffing a powdery substance (cocaine) with a black man in a toilet stall, as Roxy straddled Catherine; the two lesbian lovers returned to the dance floor as an aroused Nick voyeuristically watched them touching and French-kissing on the dance floor to taunt him; with a beguiling look, Catherine turned with her back toward Roxy, permitting her female lover to touch her breasts through her clothes; however, then Catherine left Roxy (causing her to become insanely jealous) and became Nick's dance partner; she rubbed her butt against his crotch; he turned her, suddenly grabbed her ass, pressed her toward himself, and then started kissing her on her neck and lip; feverishly, they consumed each other in the middle of the writhing, turning bodies of other dancers
• there was an abrupt cut back to Catherine's mansion in SF - an infamous, intimate, graphic, aggressively roughhouse sex scene between Nick and Catherine on the bed where Johnny Boz had been ice-picked to death during sex; when she reached for a white silk scarf under the pillow and bound his hands to the bedposts, there was a violent edge to their climaxing - Nick was both frightened and excited by her; afterwards, in the bathroom, a naked Nick was startled by the sudden appearance of leather-clad Roxy behind him; she was expressionless, but obviously enraged after watching them have sex together; she threatened: "If you don't leave her alone, I'll kill you"; speaking to her "man to man" to further incite her with a homophobic comment, Nick boldly bragged about his recent sexual conquest: ("I think she's the f--k of the century")

Detective Nick Curran with Catherine Tramell in Her SF Apartment

• in the morning, Catherine was gone and Nick soon found her with Roxy back at the beach house; Catherine warned Nick about using frighteningly-good sex as excitement, and for still pursuing her as a murder suspect: "You shouldn't play this game....You're in over your head....You won't learn anything I don't want you to know....No, you'll just fall in love with me"
• Nick met up with his partner Gus in a country-western bar and then in a diner, where Gus expressed concerns about Nick's violent and passionate love that would put him in jeopardy; the investigation had found that Nilsen was paid a large sum of money as a bribe - possibly by Catherine - to view Nick's file
• outside the bar, Nick found himself the target of Roxy's black sports car who unsuccessfully attempted to kill Curran by ramming him with her vehicle - she died of a broken neck in a car crash during a game of chicken after her car overturned; at the scene, Lt. Walker ordered Nick to appear in Dr. Garner's office at nine o'clock the next morning; during psychological questioning, Nick made a mockery of the proceedings before stalking out; Beth cautioned Nick about getting too deeply involved with Catherine: "She seduces people. She manipulates people. She'll do anything she can"
• at the beach house, Nick found Catherine grieving Roxy's death: ("Everybody that I care about dies") but she was possibly feigning sorrow; Nick comforted her, and then after another round of sex with her in the beach house in front of the fireplace, Nick suggested that the jealous Roxy was also behind the death of Johnny Boz

Nick Comforting Catherine After Roxy's Death

Roxy - As A Juvenile, She Murdered Her Two Brothers

• Catherine casually described her own bad-luck college-days (UC Berkeley grad 1983) and her lesbian affair with a miffed and obsessed female: ("I don't have luck with women. There was this girl I met when I was in college. I slept with her once. She started following me around, taking my picture. She dyed her hair, copied my clothes. Lisa something, Oberman. It was awful")
• after Roxy's death, her file in the Cloverdale Police Dept. revealed that as a juvenile at age 16, Roxy had committed fratricide - she had murdered her two brothers "on impulse" with a razor - there was no motive except that she was presumably envious of the attention given to them by their parents; Nick's partner Gus Moran connected the fact that Catherine associated herself with psychopathic, family-killing females - the paroled Hazel Dobkins and now Roxy; Gus gave advice to Nick about Catherine: "Well, she got that magnum cum laude p---y on her that done fried up your brain!"
• later, Nick checked up on the name Lisa Oberman at the UC Berkeley records office, but there never was a Lisa Oberman registered at the school; the next time Nick saw Catherine, she defended her innocence to Nick and explained how she got her characters and ideas for her books from real-life killers (such as Roxy and Hazel Dobkins); then, she corrected his misunderstanding of Berkeley student Lisa Oberman's last name - it was Hoberman!
• Nick discovered through DMV records that Dr. Garner was the elusive "Lisa Hoberman" who had lived in Salinas in 1987; in the early 80s, her driver's license showed her as a blonde

Name of Berkeley Student in 1983: Lisa Oberman - Non-Existent	Catherine to Nick: "I said Hoberman"
Revelation: Lisa Hoberman = Elisabeth Garner	Beth/Lisa As a Blonde Berkeley Student in the Early 80s

• Nick confronted Beth who reversed things and blamed Catherine for their obsessed relationship during college; she also downplayed her own bisexuality: "I slept with her once in school. I was just a kid. I was experimenting. It was just that one time. She developed a fixation on me. She styled her hair like mine, she wore the same kind of clothes I did. It scared me"; Beth begged Nick to believe in her, and condemn the evil in Catherine: "God, do you really think that I could kill someone? I mean, I never even met Johnny Boz. What about Nilsen? What possible motive would I have to kill Nilsen?...She's evil, she's brilliant"; Nick became suspicious of Beth's credibility, but truly, he didn't really know who to believe -- Beth or Catherine?
• during another conversation with Gus, Nick discussed how Beth could be the guilty one, not Catherine; Beth's motivation to kill was in part due to her mysterious past, bisexuality and secret deviant obsession with Catherine; she also had possibly killed Lt. Nilsen when she learned that he had throroughly researched her brief marriage-history in Salinas, and she might have felt that she had to silence him
• the next time Nick saw Catherine, she tempted him by stripping in front of him, but told him it might be their last time, because she was almost finished with her latest book (titled "Shooter" - Nick's nickname); he proposed an ending for her and the detective (himself!) - the detective in her story fell for the female killer but didn't die: ("They f--k like minks, raise rugrats, and live happily ever after"); she firmly disagreed - it wouldn't sell without a death: ("Somebody has to die")
• after Nick did more sleuthing at the Salinas Medical Clinic where Beth had worked and claimed she was married for a short time to a doctor named Dr. Joseph Garner, he learned that Beth's husband was killed about six years earlier; more details were supplied by the Monterey County Sheriff (Jack McGee) - it was an unsolved drive-by shooting - Garner was shot with a .38 caliber revolver, but Beth was never considered a suspect; about a year earlier, Lt. Nilsen had also asked questions about the Garner murder
• back at Catherine's beach home, Nick read a few lines of a printed page from her latest finished novel about a fictional detective based upon Nick: "Shooter raced into the...pounded the button for the...up the staircase...his partner's dead body...elevator, legs sticking out..." - Catherine told Nick that she was finished with her research, her novel, his character, and him too!; Catherine told him again that he would die at the end of the story
• Nick joined his detective partner Gus for a planned meeting with Catherine's 'roommate freshman year' in an Oakland office building (suite 405); Gus was promised the full scoop on Catherine and Lisa Hoberman; once they arrived, Gus took the elevator to the 4th floor, and as he emerged from the elevator, he was savagely bludgeoned in the neck and jugular vein by an ice-pick-wielding hooded, blonde figure covered in a raincoat - just as it had been described in Catherine's book
• suspecting something might happen, Nick rushed in and took the stairs to the 4th floor, where he saw Gus' bloodied corpse and his legs extending out of the elevator; he grabbed Gus' gun from its holster and heard a noise in the hallway - where he confronted Beth; she claimed she had an answering machine message to meet Gus there; overly-suspicious Nick shot her to death when she innocently reached for something in her pocket (a key chain with a Bart Simpson ornament - the key to his own apartment!); she murmured "I love you" to him as she died
• Lt. Walker and a homicide team converged on the area; a blonde wig, hooded raincoat, and bloody icepick were found on the stair landing above the fourth floor; the raincoat had stenciled letters on the back: "SFPD"; did Beth have time to ditch the items and clean up the blood splattered all over her right arm?
• in the conclusion, incriminating evidence was found in Beth's apartment that implicated her in the deaths of her own husband, Lt. Nilsen, Boz, Moran, and her own husband, although questions still remained about how she was implicated and her complicity (she might have been framed with some items planted there by Catherine?):
  • a hidden .38 revolver (used to kill Beth's husband and Lt. Nilsen?)
  • copies of Catherine's two books (The First Time, and Love Hurts)
  • magazine clippings and photos of Johnny Boz with Catherine Tramell, and of her ex-fiancee - a boxer killed in the ring; also pictures of the 1983 Berkeley graduating class (including Lisa/Beth and Catherine in their caps/gowns)
  • an icepick (used to kill Johnny Boz and Gus Moran?)
• follow-up investigations revealed that the raincoat was Beth's size, and that she must have heard Nick and dumped the stuff on the stairway; there was no suite 405 in the building, and Catherine Tramell's roommate in her freshman year died of leukemia two years earlier; Lt. Nilsen's files were missing the Berkeley campus police report and any information about his investigation into Beth in Salinas; the .38 found in Beth's apartment was the exact weapon used to kill Nilsen; the icepick was the same brand and model as the Boz murder weapon; both of Beth Garner's answering machines had no message from Gus on them; the tape on her apartment answering machine was unused; Johnny Boz's psychiatrist remembered that Dr. Garner and Boz met at a Christmas party at his house a year earlier; it appeared the case was clear-cut and shut
• the film's final scene cemented Nick's complete take-over by Catherine's manipulative temptations; it paralleled the opening sex-murder sequence and extended the ambiguity of Catherine's murderous instincts; Catherine was making love to SF police detective/lover Nick in his apartment, and in the midst of their coupling with her on top, she stretched backwards and reached behind herself, then suddenly came down on top of him; her whole body stretched across his - and both of them went motionless - as she (and he) climaxed;

Final Sexual Sequence in Nick's Apartment: Parallel to Film's Opening Scene

• then, after a cut, fortunately for him, there was continued movement as they hugged and kissed each other; they were seen lying next to each other in bed, both staring up; he was smoking a cigarette; she curled away from him toward the outer side of the bed: Catherine: "What do we do now, Nick?" Nick: "We f--k like minks, raise rugrats. We live happily ever after"; her right arm reached over the side of the bed (was she picking up an icepick?), as she retorted: "I hate rugrats." He revised his epitaph: "We f--k like minks. Forget the rugrats. And live happily ever after" - and by doing so, he possibly saved his life since Catherine hated the idea of having children

The Ice-Pick Under the Bed

• she half-turned and twisted around, watching him turn his body away to put out his cigarette; the music built - was she holding something in her hand?; they looked at each other for a long moment; she reached out with her hand, pulling his neck and face toward her own body for another kiss; the screen darkened for a moment, and then returned
• as they kissed more passionately as she pulled him down to her body, the camera slowly descended - this time lowering further below her side of the bed to the floor; the camera came to rest on a close-up of the murder weapon - a thin, steel-handled icepick; the finale of the ambiguous film arbitrarily left the inexplicable question of the guilt and/or innocence of the main character still up in the air --?