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[Stencil]

Oh, spoilers btw.

So obviously we've all seen shots from this scene,

Spoiler

I get why it's iconic but you can hardly even see her bush,

but I had never seen the movie.
It does a good job at being a pretty standard Film Noir-esque detective flick. The weird thing about this movie is that there aren't the standard red herrings trying to throw you off of who the real murderer is. It's Sharon Stone. From the get go, and she even basically admits as much. Yeah, at the very end they make you think Beth did it for all of 2 minutes, great twist.
The thing that bugs me most are the characters. Let's take a look:

Beth

Catherine

and

this washed up loser

My problem is: Michael Douglas is gross. I don't see why he'd be found attractive, and I'm not alone in thinking that

Spoiler

(confirmed: girlfriend agrees)

. Yet I'm to believe that despite him slipping back into alcoholism, abusing and consistently emotionally exploding at these women, they're still chasing after him? It's kind of a trope of Hollywood to cast these old decrepit statues of men and have women 1/3rd their age fawn over them throughout movies, but this one is pushing it. I mean, he raped Beth, and then when he guns her down in the end she says "I love you" with her last dying breath. What the hell.

Also I'd be remiss not to get into details about the ending of the movie. Director Paul Verhoeven crams enough "twists" in the last 10 minutes of the movie to make M. Night Shyamalan blush.

Oh no, let's go save Gus, SURPRISE, it's Beth in the building! She's pulling a gun on you, shoot her! SURPRISE It was your Bart keychain, you wanted that back anyway didn't you. Back at the station SURPRISE! Beth was the killer all along. Let's go home and unwind SURPRISE! It's Catherine, she wants to kiss in bed. She's on top SURPRISE! She collapsed onto you, making the audience think she stabbed you, but you're not scared because she already did this move earlier in the movie. She might kill you now though, looks like she's reaching for something SURPRISE! It was nothing. Let's end the movie now *camera pans down* SURPRISE! She was actually reaching for the icepick on the floor.

So what the hell, Paul. Is Catherine the killer or was Beth? I don't even care.

After having watched the movie, I will say that I was mostly entertained throughout (despite my eyes being tired from all the rolling they were doing,) and I do have a newfound appreciation for Sharon Stone.

Do you guys like Basic Instinct? Did you buy the special edition DVD when it came out?
The case looked like ice, and it came with a replica icepick.

 

[MightyHedgehog]

Haven't seen it since it first hit VHS and before then, the theaters, but I thought it was a lot of fun. Sharon Stone's crotch shot on the big screen was hot and the definitive way to appreciate it which made the blurry VHS version a letdown. Wasn't as tight a film as Body Heat or as fun an erotic thriller as DePalma's Body Double or Dressed to Kill, but still a really well-made one. I guess I didn't have the issues you do with it, but I haven't seen it in a long damn time, either.