Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "Basic Instinct" (1992). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

 

As the sexual hedonism of the 1970s rolled into the 1980s and began to peter out into the early 1990s, as, and one can argue sociologically, Generation X, the children of the counterculture baby boomers, who had an almighty great time with the said eras, began to form their own conservative sensibilities, despite some simulacrum spillover, showing up as an aesthetic homage.  "Basic Instinct" (1992) directed by Paul Verhoeven, was one of the last, and most iconic of the pychosexual drama's that our parents or grandparents would go and see from the 1960s,1970s into the 1980s.  Borrowing from Alfred Hitchcock's inspired psychodrama, and it would be Brian de Palma who was the most notable, as the director who fused into those sexual elements to melodrama, seen in his movies "Dressed to Kill" (1980) and "Body Double" (1984) of voyeurism and obsession gone awry.

The script was developed by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas in the 1980s, and was acquired by Carolco pictures, the stawart, before it became bankrupt, 1990s independent, yet blockbuster production company, owned by Mario Kassar, who passed away in 2019, and Andrew G. Vajna.  And aware of the success of the late science fiction writer Philip K. Dick somewhat adaption of "Total Recall" (1990), which was directed by Paul Verhoeven, showing Verhoeven's antithesis style, that had incorporated a lot more explicitness in his depiction of interpersonal violence, than some of his American colleagues, could not muster, apart from De Palmer and Martin Scorsese.  And Verhoeven, capable of upping the ante of sexual explicitness, as noted with his Dutch pychosexual thriller "The Fourth Man" (1983), clearly saw Basic Instinct as the movie that would fuse violence and sex, within the realm of melodrama that American audiences have never seen the likes of before.     

Casting Sharon Stone, as the psychopathic author and femme fatale, "Catherine Tramell", who writes her novels as ritualized killing manuals, to which Verhoeven saw Stone as the perfect, emotionally manipulative switch flipping, yes, psychopathic femme fatale spy in "Total Recall".  By adding sexuallity to the mix, where she kills her lovers with an icepick, in an ogasmic anticlimax (no pun), and with her manipulative genius, creates an alibi with her murder mystery books, and if possible, pinning the murder on someone innocent, in a calculated chain of events.  In this case, "Nick Cullen" (played by Michael Douglas), a hapless, and somewhat pathetic, San Francisco police Detective,  already with a checkered past as a cocaine user and alcoholic, who, as we learn early on in the movie, ended up killing, accidentally, some tourists in a shootout on a busy San Francisco street, is later utilized by Tramell as her next book subject, and, of course, her next murder.

"Basic Instinct" is now 33 years old, and offers a glimpse of the violent and often sexual explicit melodrama's, as mentioned, of the 60s, 70s and 80s, and still holds its weight today, with two notable sex scenes (one being a rape), and the other/s of Sharon Stone baring all, in her lead up to having sex with Douglas's character "Nick Cullen". There are a slew of potholes in Basic Instinct, but with stella performances by Stone, and Douglas, it is enough to forgive some of the more comical elements and almost supernatural manipulation by "Catherine Tramell" in her endgame of tidying up all the loose ends, including two murder's, with Cullen, accidentally shooting his lover, who Tramell frames as the killer all along.

So, sit back, chomp on the popcorn and enjoy Verhoeven's 1992 sex and violence fest, and watch for the scene, very early in the movie (before the sexual and violent mayhem), when "Catherine Tramell" is being driven to the San Francisco police HQ for her infamous leg cross, and vulva expose, and she explains to "Nick Cullen" what the 'suspension of disbelief means' to a writer, "it teaches you to be a good liar".  

And she was right.

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(A.Glass 2025)

All CHIAMUS Cult Cinema trailers/commentary to date: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search/label/Chiasmus%20cult%20cinema