I thought if might be fun for some of these weekend posts to recommend vintage movies I love that are probably available on streaming services so if you're home alone on Saturday night or looking to kill a couple of hours this might just fill the time nicely. (But if you're in Minneapolis come see my play, OUR TIME and me tonight. Here's where you go for tickets.)
Today's recommendation: BODY HEAT.
I’m going to start talking film noir in a few minutes but let’s cut to the chase – I love BODY HEAT for the sex. That’s why I went to see it, that’s why I went back to see it, that’s why I’m recommending it. There’s noir and great breakout performances but all that is a bonus. And you don't have to worry about getting caught surfing Pornhub.
BODY HEAT, released in 1981, marked the directorial debut of Lawrence Kasdan, who also wrote the film. Today he’s known as Jake Kasdan’s dad but back then he was writing STAR WARS sequels and INDIANA JONES movies – enough Hollywood currency to warrant a directing nod.
The movie is very noir. I don’t actually know the definition of that word but it seems to be the genre that encompasses night, mood, lust, guilt, illicit passion, double-crosses, triple-crosses, seduction, and if really done right – a hopelessly confusing plot. BODY HEAT satisfies all of that plus a lot of nudity!
The film stars William Hurt as Ned Racine, a two-bit lawyer in a small Florida town who meets Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner), an unhappy rich married woman. There’s an instant smoldering connection. They’re both horny, wildly attracted to each other, and share the same penchant for talking like a Raymond Chandler novel.
It’s hot (100 degrees at night), they’re hot (one reviewer actually used the word “slender” to describe her back then), and the heat is never turned down.
In short order Ned and Matty are in her mansion getting it on as often and graphic as possible. You are so wrapped up in the steamy sweaty animal sex that you don’t ask the question, “Hey, if she’s so rich and lives in a mansion, how come she can’t afford air conditioning?”
Matty eventually talks Ned into killing her husband (that’s how good the sex was) and the plot takes off. If this sounds a little like DOUBLE INDEMNITY that’s because it’s almost
a direct lift. But you never saw Fred MacMurray giving it to Barbra Stanwyck from behind.
Some notable other performances: Ted Danson as the tap dancing D.A. (this was well before CHEERS) is a riot and Mickey Rourke as an explosives expert (well before he went nuts) is riveting.
The ending gets very confusing and Byzantine so you might want to rewind and replay it a time or two. Just like guys will be rewinding and replaying the first part of the movie twenty times.
BODY HEAT – see it with someone you hope to get lucky with.
BODY HEAT, released in 1981, marked the directorial debut of Lawrence Kasdan, who also wrote the film. Today he’s known as Jake Kasdan’s dad but back then he was writing STAR WARS sequels and INDIANA JONES movies – enough Hollywood currency to warrant a directing nod.
The movie is very noir. I don’t actually know the definition of that word but it seems to be the genre that encompasses night, mood, lust, guilt, illicit passion, double-crosses, triple-crosses, seduction, and if really done right – a hopelessly confusing plot. BODY HEAT satisfies all of that plus a lot of nudity!
The film stars William Hurt as Ned Racine, a two-bit lawyer in a small Florida town who meets Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner), an unhappy rich married woman. There’s an instant smoldering connection. They’re both horny, wildly attracted to each other, and share the same penchant for talking like a Raymond Chandler novel.
It’s hot (100 degrees at night), they’re hot (one reviewer actually used the word “slender” to describe her back then), and the heat is never turned down.
In short order Ned and Matty are in her mansion getting it on as often and graphic as possible. You are so wrapped up in the steamy sweaty animal sex that you don’t ask the question, “Hey, if she’s so rich and lives in a mansion, how come she can’t afford air conditioning?”
Matty eventually talks Ned into killing her husband (that’s how good the sex was) and the plot takes off. If this sounds a little like DOUBLE INDEMNITY that’s because it’s almost
a direct lift. But you never saw Fred MacMurray giving it to Barbra Stanwyck from behind.Some notable other performances: Ted Danson as the tap dancing D.A. (this was well before CHEERS) is a riot and Mickey Rourke as an explosives expert (well before he went nuts) is riveting.
The ending gets very confusing and Byzantine so you might want to rewind and replay it a time or two. Just like guys will be rewinding and replaying the first part of the movie twenty times.
BODY HEAT – see it with someone you hope to get lucky with.
For fans of soap operas, Kim Zimmer replaced Kathleen Turner in the now defunct The Doctors, so it was amusing to see the two of them in the same scenes at the same time.
ReplyDeleteNot as much fun as the noir elements to guys, I admit. But amusing nonetheless.
I can be as randy as the next guy, but I thought this movie was way over the top. I saw this when it first came out, and when the scene came where (NO SPOILER) Ned does a dramatic gesture to finally have his way with Matty, the audience broke out in derisive laughter.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder. I haven't seen this movie in ages, but will have to watch it again in light of all the '40s film noir movies I've seen since. In the past few years, my wife Laura has become a huge film noir buff (her second CD, "Necessary Evil," was inspired by film noir, has a cover designed to look like a film noir poster with her as Rita Hayworth, and I wrote Raymond Chandler-style liner notes for it.) She's also a devoted fan of Eddie Muller and "Noir Alley" on TCM. It's worth DVR-ing every week, if you enjoy these sort of dark movies.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with Our Time Ken, 7:30 at the SPNN Production Soundstage in beautiful St. Paul.
ReplyDeleteThere is a Q & A to follow and you can ask Ken Saturday Questions. I'm in Canada and can't be there but if I was in Minneapolis I would ask Ken about writing without his partner, Mr. Issacs.
How will you make it on your own
This world is awfully big, Ken this time you're all alone
But I know you're going to make it
And start another legacy without David
Your talent is all around, no need to waste it
You can have St. Paul, why don't you take it
You just might make it after all
Ken stands in the middle of an intersection in downtown St. Paul and throws the script to Our Time up in the air........freeze frame.
I wanted to put that up because this is the last time I will be commenting on Ken's blog and I wanted to leave letting Ken know how much I love and respect him and his work.
I'm leaving because after reading today's post I immediately called 911 and requested an ambulance to take me to the nut house here in Niagara Falls, where I will spend the rest of my natural life. Here's why. I know I can no longer function in this world without the continual mental image of Fred MacMurray banging Barbara Stanwyck from behind! Hey folks I didn't bring this up, it's not my fault. Yea maybe I've crossed the line here at times, but today this is all Ken's fault. Ken wrote it. I loved My Three Sons, I loved The Shaggy Dog, I loved Son of Flubber, watching those were like Christmas for me. Now it's ruined by the image of Steve Douglas waiting for Robbie, Chip and Ernie to leave so he can bang one of his co-stars shaggy doggie style, and probably pay Uncle Charlie to film it like he was Bob Crane. Good-bye forever Ken, you bastard!
I'd rather imagine MacMurray and Stany getting it on, thank you. (So would my Edward G. Robinson "little man.")
ReplyDeleteBody Heat is a 10, and not just for the sex. It's the most diabolical script ever. The conclusion will bend you're mind.
ReplyDeleteBody Heat was a great fun movie. I've seen it several times ....on VHS. I wonder how good it looks on 4K?
ReplyDeleteOn another note: I started watching Abby's, where apparently a lot of people know your name. I was wondering what you thought of the idea of actually showing the live studio audience coming out of the breaks. I can't imagine Cheers or Will & Grace doing that even though they stated "they are filmed in front of a live studio audience." One of the old Gary Shandling shows broke the 4th wall. Gary would really work the idea and actually walk off the set and talk to the crowd or take a golf cart between sets.
For me it makes Abby's seem more like watching the filming of a play where there is no suspension of disbelief expected.
Fun fact: Matty's friend (and the REAL Matty) was played by Kim Zimmer, who had succeeded Kathleen Turner as Nola Dancy Aldrich on the NBC soap opera, "The Doctors." (By the way, Turner left TD in order to star in "Body Heat," which the rest of the "Doctors" cast thought sounded like a porn film, according to Alec Baldwin's (ex-Billy Allison Aldrich) autobiography.)
ReplyDeleteMy daughter's favorite sitcom was Friends. So I showed her the beginning of Body Heat (before it gets steamy) so she could see what Chandler's father looked like in the 1980's. She couldn't believe her eyes, and I never felt older.
ReplyDeleteBody Heat was and is great and there was talk of a sequel but Turner did not want to do it. If there was a remake, who would you cast in the roles? I nominate Hayley Atwell as Mattie Walker. Maybe Ryan Gosling as Ned Racine. And I would love to write that sequel.
ReplyDeleteSo it looks like the title of your play GOING GOING GONE has cursed the MLB season so far.
ReplyDeleteHow powerful are you....really?
(And in relation to one of my earlier comments here, attendance is up 4% so far):
https://nypost.com/2019/04/11/mlbs-home-run-nightmare-worsens-with-no-end-in-sight/
Break a leg tonight.
Did you fire your agent too?
ReplyDeleteI know there are many movies that call themselves "noir," but to me you can't really call it noir if it's not in black and white. These relatively newer films should be referred to as "noir style." Not everyone will agree with me about that. But, nudity and sex are always better in color. (Colour for those of you in the B.E.) And yes, Kathleen Turner was very hot back then. Get it? Hot? Never mind.
ReplyDeleteM.B.
I am just barely old enough to remember when BODY HEAT was in theaters, and being hyped as a steamy, scandalous film. I don't normally go in for that kind of thing (I think most people's sex lives are enough of a fucking mess as it is), but now my interest in piqued.
ReplyDeleteGoing to track down the film and watch it soon. I have the feeling I'll either love it or absolutely hate it. Which is perhaps the film's point.
Great movie.
ReplyDeleteAnd a great line written for Hurt: “maybe she’ll try to fuck me to death “
I always thought Body Heat was more a rip-off of The Postman Always Rings Twice than Double Indemnity, but then, their plots are at base the same. Since Cain had basically one plot (Sultry bitch seduces sexy young chump into killing her husband for her), he stole from himself, so I suppose that made Kasdan think it was somehow OK for him to just steal Cain's plot. Body Heat is a highly entertaining movie; I saw it in theaters 3 times when it came out, and I've watched it again within the last five years. It's very good. But it does not have an original thought or beat in it beyond, "Let's put the sex onscreen, and do noir in color."
ReplyDelete"Noir" literally means "black." "Film Noir"means "Black Movie," referring to darkness, both of light and of plot. Noir is properly done only in black & White. Body Heat is visually full of warm colors (to keep communicating the heat), but not full of black.
Even putting the sex up front is stolen from Cain. Ever read The Postman Always Rings Twice? (It's barely 100 pages. You can zip through it in slightly more time than it takes to watch one of the three films of it.) When Frank and Cora kill Nick, it turns them on so much that they fuck in the dirt beside Nick's dead body hanging out of the car. Believe me, the on-page sex in Cain is hot. Putting the sex onscreen was very "Cain."
In 1982, my high school journalism class went to San Francisco for a journalism conference. It was my first trip away from my parents and the first time I had been on an airplane since I was a baby. That trip stayed with me forever, in part because of my memory of sitting on the wharf eating clams. I fell in love with San Francisco and still love it.
ReplyDeleteBut imagine hundreds of high school kids in the twin towers of the Hilton with only a few elevators; some of the kids got the bright idea of emptying tubes of toothpaste on the staircase banisters to make things even tougher. My classmates still claim I jumped over two beds when one of them said there was a naked woman in the other tower, which is a ridiculous claim to make; I jumped on each of them.
But we discovered we could watch movies for $5 and one of them was Body Heat. We watched it. I mean, we really, carefully watched it. We watched five others, too. Then at checkout we saw a sign that it was $5 PER MOVIE. Our teacher--and a wonderful one she was--was scared to death of flying and already had taken a valium, so she didn't notice the extra cost. Maybe we could have hired her to kill the husband.
"Film noir" like "screwball comedy" is hard to pin down because the people making those movies, in those movies heydays, were unfamiliar with the terms. As far as 1930s filmmakers were concerned, screwball comedies were romantic comedies. It was film historians in the 1960s, noting a subtle satire of the upper classes in some of those films (which were after all made during the Great Depression) who first started calling them "screwball". And as far as 1940s filmmakers were concerned, they were just making mostly crime dramas. It was French film critics of the late 1940s who coined the term "film noir" (literally "black films", less literally "dark films") to distinguish that Hollywood product from the more feel-good variety, such as the MGM musicals from the same period. By the 1960s, the term "film noir" had been adapted by American film historians as well.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I'm just talking the film genre's heyday. For a film noir movie made after, say, 1960, chances are the filmmakers were well aware of the term, as I'm sure Kasden was, and may have even meant it as a homage.
BODY HEAT is one of the best movies from the 1980s.
ReplyDeleteAt the time, many reviewers connected it to the Billy Wilder movie, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, which is also about knocking off the husband. Turns out they aren't that similar. However, DOUBLE INDEMNITY should be seen at the least for the performance of Edward G. Robinson.
BODY HEAT also has one of my favorite out-of-place scenes. Before the murder, Ned Racine is in Miami working a real estate deal or setting up his alibi. He steps out of a building...and coming up the empty street is a man in a clown's outfit driving an old red convertible car. Racine/Hurt is dumbfounded. He does not give the impression he knows what that means. It's the "universe" showing what he has become. It can be read as a warning, but it goes unheeded.
Look, I can be flexible. After all, my all-time favorite book was the subject of a landmark obscenity case so severe that at one point the BBC refused to let a literary critic mention the TITLE on the air. I also have no problem with people finding a work sexy. But as noted here, the plot of BODY HEAT is a clear swipe. For some of us, there's nothing less erotic than plagiarism.
ReplyDelete@Mike Bloodworth
ReplyDeleteLeave Her to Heaven (1945) with Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, and Darryl Hickman is generally considered to be film noir, and in that movie you get to see a disabled young man take a swim in glorious technicolor.
Great. Now I have an image of Fred MacMurray giving it to Barbara Stanwyck while solving the problems of Chip, Robbie & Ernie as they wander into the room with their issues [and they'll have a whole new set of them after seeing what he's doing] and Uncle Charley comes in and bitches at him about messing up the bedsheets and asking when is it going to HIS turn with Barbara or should he just join in.......
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally I just watched a different Lawrence Kasdan movie yesterday. SILVERADO is not nearly as innovative and clever as BODY HEAT but still a lot of fun. Kasdan succeeded by cramming every genre-specific cliché known to man into his Western and then letting his enthusiastic all-star cast take care of the rest. The solid cinematography and the excellent film score complete an entertaining flick. A Western that features John Cleese as a weaselly sheriff can't be dull.
ReplyDeleteConsidering all that sex, I won’t admit this to many, but the image that stuck with me from the film was Ted Danson tap dancing. What? Did I just see a tap dancing D.A?. It actually made him human and believable. He was an immediate star in my head. Oh yeah, and all that sex.
ReplyDeleteWent to a screening of both movies in L.A. a few months ago for the very reason that one is pretty much a remake of the other.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest laugh came when Fred MacMurray drove up to Barbara Stanwyck's Glendale home Glendale as he narrated: "It was one of those California Spanish homes everyone was nuts about ten or fifteen years ago. This one must have cost somebody about THIRTY THOUSAND BUCKS..." [present-day L.A. audience roars] "...that is, if he ever finished paying for it."
So, is LA Confidential a film noir?
ReplyDeleteThe fabulous Emma Thompson, an Oscar winner for acting and screenwriting, believes writers don't get enough respect in H'wood:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/14/emma-thompson-attacks-hollywood-lack-of-respect-for-writers
Ken, I know we're all suffering superhero fatigue, but I recommend Shazam. It's a really funny movie. Zachary Levi has buckets of charisma and great comic timing.
ReplyDeleteSorry this is unrelated to topic. I want to ask you a question about an extra that appears repeatedly in both Cheers and Frasier. Is there a way inwhich I can send an image of the extra so perhaps you can recognize her and explain why she was in so many episodes? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteLoosehead - easy answer: L.A. Confidential is a neo-noir. And a great one, at that.
ReplyDeleteThe era of classic noir lasted from 1941 (The Maltese Falcon) to 1959 (Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles.)
All noir style movies after 1959 are considered neo-noir. This is what film scholars tell us anyway.
Defining film noir isn't easy because it involves looking at a number of factors, and not every factor will be in play for every film that ends up classified as a film noir. In the classic noir era, thematically a noir was a crime story told from the criminal's point of view; stylistically, it means the film used visual tropes derived from German Expressionism (like chiaroscuro lighting), a visual style grounded in lack and white photography. Which is why the noirs of the classic era were primarily B&W movies, with exceptions such as "Leave Her to Heaven."
One theory is that the classic noir era was a response to the trauma of WW II. After the horrors of the rise of Fascist oppression, worldwide slaughter, Hitler and the Holocaust, a genre that featured doomed characters engaged in struggles with authority that ended bleakly became more palatable to audiences. Some of the great noirs ("Act of Violence" or "The Stranger" for example) engage fairly directly with people dealing with the aftermath of WW II.
Neo-noirs, as I understand it, are crime movies made with the same overriding sense of fatalism as the classic noirs, but these are generally color films, being made in an era after the studios largely abandoned B&W as a standard. Body Heat is a famous neo-noir, as is Altman's The Long Goodbye. Or the Coen's Blood Simple. "One False Move" is a good one from the 80s that isn't talked about so much these days. The Last Seduction, starring Linda Fiorentino, was another good one. "L.A. Confidential" is one of the best, and a great movie by any measure. The gold standard, the greatest neo-noir of them all, is of course, Chinatown.
Noir Alley is one of the best series TCM has ever offered. Eddie Muller is a national treasure, and he's the guy to ask if you really want to know about film noir.
One interesting bit of trivia about "Body Heat" is that George Lucas essentially served as an Executive Producer on the film (remember that Kasdan was mainly known for "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and two "Star Wars" films at that point). According to "Skywalking", the authorized biography of Lucas, he decided not to take screen credit either for himself or for Lucasfilm because he didn't want all kinds of headlines about the "Star Wars" guy producing a sex movie.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteIn much the same neo-noir vein, The Last Seduction is currently on Amazon Prime.
Loved the soundtrack to Body Heat as well.......
ReplyDeleteKen, she was setting him up as her mark/someone to take the fall BEFORE they ever had sex--she didn't just decide to kill her husband because the sex was *that* good.
ReplyDeleteAnd honestly, I'm no genius and get confused at convoluted plots but this one wasn't all that tough to follow if you pay attention.
LOVE Body Heat!
Lawyers and law students watch the movie because it demonstrates the common law rule against perpetuities. Unlike the rest of you perverts.
ReplyDelete