Basic Instinct

Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas steam it up in Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 explicit and (at the time) controversial erotic thriller, with the former playing a wealthy, eccentric and morally bankrupt writer who is a suspected serial killer while the latter is a troubled homicide detective who eventually falls for his suspect – and by doing so endangers his life and those close to him.

We’re off to a no-holds-barred start when retired rock star Johnny Boz has kinky sex with a mysterious blonde in his opulent luxury bedroom. As the wild sex is about to reach its climax (ahem) the blonde woman (whose face is covered by her mane) ties him to the bedpost with a white silk scarf before savagely stabbing him to death with an ice pick hidden underneath one of the bed sheets.
It doesn’t take long for the mutilated corpse to be discovered and San Francisco homicide detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) and his team arrive on the scene to start their investigations – cue for some corny jokes (“He got off before he got off…”) and the usual searching for fingerprints, drugs (yep – cocaine displayed on the bedside table) etc. Nick quickly establishes that the prime suspect is the dead man’s bisexual girlfriend Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), a successful and super-rich crime novelist who writes under the nome de plume Catherine Woolf. She was the last person with whom Johnny Boz was seen alive after leaving a disco on the night of the murder and what’s more, her latest novel mirrors the crime.

When Nick and his colleague, Detective Gus Moran (George Dzundza), decide to pay Catherine a visit they are coldly greeted by a young woman called Roxy (Leilani Sarelle) who turns out to be a ‘girlfriend’ of Catherine. Roxy informs the cops that Catherine is in her beach house (more like a cliff top mansion). When Nick and Moran arrive Catherine, sitting in a deckchair on a terrace overlooking the ocean, is already in the loop and provocatively lets them know that the murdered man was not her boyfriend and she didn’t love him but that she liked f*****g him! In fact, chain-smoking Catherine – smart as a whip and obviously very sure of herself – plays a cat and mouse game with Nick from the go. In no time she’s sussed him and already knows that he has a troubled past when, high on cocaine, he had accidentally killed two tourists during a bungled undercover operation. Since the unfortunate incident he has been attending counselling sessions with colleague and on-off lover Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), a fact that Catherine is also aware of and will no doubt use to her advantage sooner or later. Unable to extract any vital information from the eccentric author, Nick and Moran leave the beach house – however, some days later and on order of Nick’s superior, Lt. Walker (Denis Arndt), Catherine is brought in for interrogation – cue for the infamous ‘no knickers’ scene! Irritating and provoking the attending detectives in equal measure, Catherine – who by the way holds a double masters degree in psychology apart from numerous other degrees - passes a lie detector test at her own behest and so the police are forced to let her go, though it goes without saying that Nick makes it his personal mission (very personal in fact!) to follow up further clues… and all clues inevitably lead back to Catherine. Nick even suspects the foxy author of having bribed Internal Affairs Lt. Nielsen (Daniel von Bargen) – a man he’s constantly at loggerheads with – into giving her info from Nick’s confidential psychiatric file which in turn had been given to Nielsen by Beth, though she had been pressured by him to do so.

Of course, Catherine has a field day with Nick’s psychiatric file and intends to use details from it for her new novel – even making Nick aware of it – but when Lt. Nielsen is found dead from a gunshot to his head the fingers point at Nick. Due to his increasingly violent outbursts and erratic behaviour, Lt. Walker has no other option than to ask Nick to temporarily ‘take a break’ which he does though it doesn’t stop him from pursuing Catherine – both privately and in his capacity as a homicide detective. As the Catherine lures Nick ever closer into her spider’s trap, Roxy is becoming increasingly jealous and, in a fit of rage, attempts to run him over though her heated action causes a fatal crash and her consequent death. Distraught, well, in as far as Catherine is capable of such emotions, she seeks solace in Nick’s arms but it’ not before long when more trouble is brewing… namely when it transpires that Dr. Beth Garner is also not what she seems to be and that, in fact, she knows Catherine Tramell from her university days and – infatuated – had a lesbian fling with her… Suffice to say the stage is set for a bloody climax with an ending that’s obvious to some but still open for interpretations to others.

Basic Instinct caused its fair share of controversy upon its theatrical release not just because of the steamy sex scenes (especially those between Douglas and Stone) but because Gay Rights Activists took offence to the film’s depiction of a bisexual woman who turns out to be a psychopath… Seeing how Sharon Stone simply played a character in a film, one can hardly go along with the activists claim.
This neo-noir thriller boasts strong performances from its leads and the chemistry between Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone is a strong and believable one. Admittedly the film would be just as exciting if it did contain less nudity, in fact sometimes it feels the many gratuitous sex scenes hamper rather than enrich the plot.

BASIC INSTINCT has just been released in a brand-new 4K restoration on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital and the 2-disc set contains an array of generous bonus material including featurettes, documentary, trailer, interviews plus audio commentaries.