When Basic Instinct was being filmed in San Francisco in 1991, gay activists picketed the shoot, vehemently protesting against screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven’s apparent determination to portray lesbians as potential ice-pick-wielding psychopaths. On the movie’s release the following year, the protestors then attempted to give away the ending, despite the fact that no two viewers seemed able to agree who the killer was.
Sixteen years later, with the movie reissued on DVD for the umpteenth time, Basic Instinct remains manipulative, tacky, risible and offensive in its portrayal of people of every sexual persuasion, but it’s clear that, slice the plot how you like, it is Sharon Stone’s bisexual murder suspect rather than Michael Douglas’s libido-driven straight cop who comes out on top.
Of course, Stone’s kinky millionaire novelist is nothing more than a wet dream in the minds of Eszterhas and Verhoeven, but the actress brought such cool swagger to the role that her head-turning, leg-crossing performance turned her into a star.
Time, sadly, hasn’t been so kind to Douglas. A decade and a half later, the glimpse of his saggy naked bottom after one of the duo’s sex scenes remains shocking. Almost equally scary, though, is the sight, during the film’s nightclub scene, of the v-necked knitwear he sports while strutting his less than funky stuff. Now that really was a crime.
