Customer Reviews

Body Heat

5 star:		(93)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(6)
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1 star:		(5)

 

 

The most important thing you need to know is that most of the women I know consider "Body Heat" to be the sexiest movie they have ever seen. Now, I do not feel that way, but I am pretty sure I can explain the difference in judgment. Then again, writer-director Lawrence Kasdan created sexual tension between Princess Leia and Han Solo, so we should not be surprised at what he can accomplish in a galaxy closer to home.

Attorney Ned Racine (William Hurt) is one of those lawyers whose life is in cruise control, the sort that usually find redemption in those John Grisham novels. Instead he meets Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner), a sexual siren with a well-to-do husband who leads him willingly down the path of damnation. Kasdan gets credit for taking 1940s film noir in which love goes terribly wrong and bringing it into the sexually provocative 1980s, but it is Turner who breaths the fire and passion into this film: Think Lauren Bacall's throaty voice put into the sculptured body of a sex goddess and covered in the sweat of a hot and humid Southern summer night. The plot takes some delicious twists and turns as well. "Body Heat" paved the way for every every other sick and twisted tale of bad love to come down the road since, from "Fatal Attraction" to "Basic Instinct" and beyond.

Most Romantic Lines: "You're not very bright, are you? I like that in a man." That pretty much sums up this film's idea of "romance."

If you like "Body Heat," then check out these other films on AFI's list: #49 "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and #84 "Double Indemnity." Why? Because they are also movies where a guy meets the sort of gal he would kill to be with--and he does.

Matty: "You're not too smart. I like that in a man"
Ned: What else to you like? Lazy? Ugly? Horny? I got'em all.
Matty: You don't look lazy.


Finally upgraded on DVD this top notch film noir looks better better than the previous edition on DVD. It isn't perfect (image appears a bit soft at times but part of that was intentionally due to the soft diffuse photography by Richard Kline the other part of that could be due to the interpostive negative aging)We can practically see the heat and humidity sweat through the TV screen. It also has some very nice extras for fans of the film. John Barry's sultry score sounds rich and creamy in the 5.1 remix on this disc.

William Hurt plays criminal lawyer Ned Racine who gets pulled into an affair with married woman Matty (Kathleen Turner). She has a solution to all of their woes when she suggests they murder her wealthy husband (Richard Crenna). Featuring strong performances from a top notch supporting cast including Mickey Rourke and Ted Danson "Body Heat" recalls films like "The Postman Always Rings Twice" with its noir plot but has its own unique twists and turns.

The previous edition had very little in the way of extras. This re-release includes three featurettes on the production of the film covering everything from pre-production to post -production. We find out for example that George Lucas personally agreed to underwrite any budget overruns but did so quietly without telling Kasdan and did it on his own accord. Also Alan Ladd Jr. insisted that Hurt shave his mustache as he felt it made him look too sleazy (precisely the point). Kasdan just went ahead and shot it his way. After they saw the dalies they never complained about it again. Other interviews include new comments from Hurt, Turner, Danson, Editor Carol Littleton, cinematographer Richard Kline and director Kasdan discussing various aspects of the production. Hurt has always marched to a different drum and that's evident in both the new and original 1981 interviews included with this set. He's certainly off-beat.We also get five deleted scenes and the original theatrical trailer. While it might have been nice to integrate some of the deleted scenes back into the film they wouldn't have benefited this already tightly coiled film.


This along with "The Big Chill" and Kasdan's revival of the epic western "Silverado" continues to be the highlight of his career as a hyphenate. Although he would go on to writer/direct other challenging and memorable films such as "The Accidental Tourist", "Grand Canyon" and "Wyatt Earp" (not to mention the underrated "I Love You To Death") "Body Heat" established his mastery of both the written word and fleeting image of cinema.

Lawrence Kasdan has done a lot of great stuff as a writer (a small, indie film called Raiders of the Lost Ark comes to mind) but in Body Heat he demonstrates a great touch with the 40's noir style as a director.

Kathleen Turner sizzles, and I mean sizzles, as a smart, ruthless, greedy, and incredibly hot married women who's can't hide her lying eyes. William Hurt is naive, innocent, and believably dumb as her intrepid lover/lawyer/sap.

I dont' want to spoil too much of the plot, but it's dark, atmospheric, and well directed with great lighting that only the dvd shows well. The vhs version is terrible. Pan and scan ruins films like this one, and shadows used this effectively need dvd.

You'll like this film if you like noir, or if you just like exciting murder/romance stories, or even if you just like steamy love scenes. It's got it all.

"Body Heat" is one of my all-time favorite thrillers. It's literate, suspenseful, well-acted, beautiful photographed, reasonably believable, and very, very sexy. What more could you want?

The movie is an excellent example of film noir; however, since it was released thirty years after that genre's heyday, some critics originally dismissed it as a "Double Indemnity' knockoff. Indeed, it does closely resemble that Billy Wilder classic, and, as Roger Ebert noted, it's hard to make a modern film noir. Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such movies didn't have this label applied to them. The filmmakers didn't know they were creating something unique in these mostly `B' pictures. These films were most likely a byproduct of Post-WWII cynicism. Still, the genre has been successfully revived from time to time. Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye" (1973) comes to mind.

I think writer/director Lawrence Kasden would readily admit that his movie is partly a homage to all those earlier dark thrillers, but, even so, he takes the genre and makes it his own. The many ways he conjures up the image of heat serve as a textbook for novice filmmakers who need lessons in style. Ditto the way he depicts the numerous sexual encounters between William Hurt and Kathleen. We see lots and lots of skin and sweat, but there is not a single frame of gratuitous nudity, at least as I define the term. Ditto the way that every subordinate character is there only to move the plot along, yet at the same time is a memorable one.

Kathleen Turner shows here, in her first movie, why she became a major star in the 1980s. She is sultry and sexy, a true femme fatale. She has bits and pieces of Lana Turner, Veronica Lake and Barbara Stanwyck in her, but, with that incredible voice, she is a one of a kind. She becomes her character, Matty Walker. From the moment we first see her, we are fascinated, intimidated and uneasy. This in one smart, powerful woman.

On the surface, it seems like the story is all from Ned Racine's [Hurt] point of view, but it is equally Matty's tale. As Racine, Hurt is great. He doesn't play Ned as dumb, he plays him as vain and lazy. This is the perfect choice. Matty takes full advantage of his deficits, and by the time he figures it all out, it's far too late. Had he been merely stupid, she would have come off as merely cruel, rather than as complex and calculating.

Oh, and the plot? I don't want to say too much. The locale is South Florida during a dreadful heat wave. Ned is a womanizing attorney whom nobody respects but everyone likes. One night he is hanging out at the beach and sees Matty. Its lust at first sight. She plays it cool and hard to get. He persists, and one night she relents. She lets him know she's not just beautiful. She's rich and unhappily married. His wheels start spinning. He comes up with a plan to solve all their problems. At least he thinks he's the one who came up with it.

I highly recommend this movie to people who love a good adult thriller. The DVD has almost no special features, and I hope one day Kasden and others will be involved in a special edition. But it's a very inexpensive DVD that's well worth the money. The film transfer is very decent. I believe the movie originally was in stereo, but these tracks seem to have been lost. Since it's a character-driven piece, this doesn't affect one's enjoyment of the film, though hopefully the tracks will one day be restored.

I've seen a few Blu-Ray discs that aren't much of an improvement over the DVD, but this is a rarity, a Blu-Ray that actually looks bad. I already traded in my DVD and it's been a few years, so I can't see if it looks any better, but this is no improvement. The colors are faded and washed out, the picture is generally blurry and limp, and it's really not much different than watching an old VHS tape.

Some interior scenes, particularly those that take place in the diner, are completely washed out by bright sunlight coming in through the windows. These scenes look downright terrible. The rest of the movie is barely adequate.

If you already have this film on DVD, I'd recommend saving your money and avoiding this purchase. I have about sixty Blu-Ray discs and this is the first one I genuinely regret buying.

A noirish mystery from the time when William Hurt was an icon of you-know-what, and soon after, Kate Turner was too? I've never been that impressed by her acting ability, but here her limitations map perfectly onto the role of an insincere woman who pretends to be in love merely to entrap William Hurt into her scheme.

From the captivating eroticism, oops romance, to the windchimes, to the sultry background score, to the water condensed on the side of the tub, to every detail of the plot, this film is picture perfect.

But the main draw to the film is easily the terrific writing, it actually has a plot (a respite in itself!) and the final few scenes of the movie weave an intriguing web for all the loose ends of the movie. Five minutes before the credits, we're sure the story is over and we're into the wrapup -- after all, we've seen movies like this before -- but then, in one final killer twist, everything is upended, and we see that the there is much more to this plot than we had realized. The clues had been there, but in the end, we discover that we've been as gullible as William Hurt's character, and we're bowled over by the truth that's finally revealed.

Very well-thought-out scheme that'll leave you thinking for a while. Get it if you can!

This is a very cleverly contrived sexploitation thriller, penned and directed by the talented Lawrence Kasdan. It stars Academy-Award winner (Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1985) William Hurt with a mustache and a dangling cigarette as Ned Racine, a not overly bright Florida lawyer smitten by Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner in her steamy film debut) a rich housewife with a husband she hates, and a yearning to breathe free. Shades of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, both triangle murder tales made into film noirs.

Kasdan is cribbing, but I forgive him since in some ways his film is an improvement on both the novels and the films they inspired, plus his is a kind of satire on those films with numerous witticisms. I especially liked it when Matty describes her husband, Edmund, a hard-nosed and successful financier played repulsively by Richard Crenna: "I can't stand the thought of him. He's small and mean and weak." Ned gives this some serious thought and then kisses her on the head like she's a good little girl.

Not too much later, after the first mention of the murder, immediately in the very next scene, Kasdan does a little foreshadowing with lawyer Ned visiting the jail. The steel door clangs shut behind him, startling him and causing him to jump in fright. I also liked the fog on the night of the murder, and I especially liked it when Ned, after putting the body in the trunk, closes the lid to reveal Matty standing there directly in our line of sight, a kind of visual witticism. I also liked the scene in which the lawyers are sitting around the varnished wood with Matty and the woman she has shrewdly cheated, and the lead lawyer asks if anyone would like to smoke. Everybody (except Ted Danson) eagerly and immediately lights up. Ted says he'll just breathe the air. This is a little in-joke satire by Kasdan on the fact that Hollywood movies of the day were financially encouraged by the tobacco companies to show the players happily puffing away as often as possible.

William Hurt really is excellent, almost as good as he was in Kiss of the Spider Woman, and that was very good indeed. Turner is completely believable as a voracious and greedy femme fatale with a wondrous criminal mind. The dialogue is sharp and clever throughout; especially interesting are the dueling "pick-up" rejoinders by Ned and Matty when they first meet. Noteworthy is the performance of Ted Danson of TV's "Cheers" fame as a prosecutor in black-rimmed specs. He has some spiffy lines of his own and he does a great job, as does Mickey Rourke as Teddy Lewis, Ned's fire-bombing buddy.

The plot twists are in some sense anticipated, but the exact nature of their unfolding is fascinating to watch. Indeed, Kasdan's snappy direction of his diabolically wicked tale is practically seamless. This is not to say that it was perfect. I have to point out that the scene in which Matty is in the tub with Ned and he dumps more ice cubes in to cool her off is a little on the contrived side since they surely had air conditioning. She claims to a natural body temperature of 100, reminding me of the classic rock lyric, "I'm hot-blooded, check it and see/I've got a temperature of a hundred and three." Also Matty's seduction of Ned was a little too fortuitous. I don't think she would have left so much to chance. But I liked the beginning anyway because it led us to believe that this would be a tale of sexual obsession (which in part it is) and not just an adulterous murder thriller. I also could not, even though I rewound the video, catch what was said in the final scene. (Probably that's just my ears going the way of the waist line.)

Rest easy: this review will not give the plot or the ending away. As you probably know by now, Lawrence Kasdan's "Body Heat" is rich in *film noir* elements of the kind rife in 1940s cinema: curling cigarette smoke, whiskey for two, late afternoon sun filtering through jalousies and so on. The plot could be construed as 1940-ish too, as two lovers (played by William Hurt and Kathleen Turner at the height of her oomph) conspire to do something very, very illegal that supposedly will put them on easy street.

However (provided you can forgive the fact that the air-conditioning is almost always broken or non-existent in this small coastal Florida town), "Body Heat" is no mere exercise in style or nostalgia. The legal trouble Hurt gets into is solved high-tech style. And today's MPAA ratings allow the lovers to show some serious skin, not merely allude to it with symbols and suggestive dialog. If this is forties, then it's forties with the pants off.

What mattters most, of course, is that this movie is a well-told, sexy and stylish thriller that adults will enjoy, and it hasn't a slack moment or the slightest plot crack in it. There is some violence, but it's necessary violence, not gratuitous bang-bang in a vain attempt to sharpen up a weak plot. The sex, too, reveals the more intimate side of the two lead characters (or so we think!).

Not only are Hurt and Turner terrific, you will enjoy the supporting cast, too, especially Richard Crenna and a barely-recognizable pre-"Cheers" Ted Danson as the local D.A. I'm really surprised the DVD is so cheap, but why look a gift horse in the mouth? It's true that the production standards of "Body Heat" onto DVD could have been better, but it still looks better than my VHS copy. I like "Body Heat" so much I haul it out every year or so just to marvel at the overall package of style, suspense, atmosphere, dialog, and, um, sex.

Body Heat is one of my all time favorite movies. I am a big fan of film-noir, of which Body Heat was a modern exemplar as well as an example of a time when adults made movies for other adults.

Since other reviews amply explain the plot, I will restrict my comments to the DVD. I do want to say that part of the magic of this movie is the pitch-perfect casting from William Hurt as the over-matched, incompetent lawyer, to the gorgeous and sensual Kathleen Turner as his femme fatale, to even those acting in smaller roles such as the Ted Danson as the dancing DA and Mickey Rourke as an expert arsonist for hire. There is not a bad casting decision here, nor a wasted scene.

The Deluxe Edition DVD provides several worthwhile extras. Most notably, interviews with Kasdan, Hurt, Turner, and Danson shot recently, provide a great deal of insight into the intent of the movie, how the actors were selected, why the movie was shot in Florida instead of New Jersey as originally planned, and some of the obstacles that had to be overcome (the cold weather!, Alan Ladd's objection to Hurt's mustache, Turner's shyness about filming nude during the sex scenes, and so on). Most interesting to me was the explanation of what Maddy Walker (the Turner character) was feeling at the end of the movie in the final scene. The movie always seemed ambiguous to me with respect to whether she really cared for Racine or not. The documentary provides some insight from Kasdan's and the actor's perspectives.

The axed scenes are also of interest. I almost always agree with the decision to exclude scenes when I have seen them on DVDs and this is no exception. However, it is interesting to see how the story was originally planned and that there was actually a failed attempt to murder Maddy's husband prior to the successful attempt. It is also nice to see Turner in a sexy stewardess outfit (in the movie the Racine character has a thing for women in uniforms).

The sensuality of John Barry's wonderful jazzy score can not be emphasized enough. The score is, as Kasdan remarks, a character in the movie.

In short, the Deluxe Edition is worth the extra few dollars over the regular edition for any Body Heat fan. Would that they made movies like this today!

I don't want to age myself--but I fell in love with this movie when it came out some 25 years ago. I have owned both the VHS and the cheapie DVD and have seen the film dozens of times through the years. While I was thrilled to see a Deluxe Edition headed my way--in truth, the features don't really seem all that Deluxe. Disappointing, really, but with this film I'll take anything I can get.

I love this film for many reasons. First, I like that it is a throw-back/homage to some of the classic noir films of the 40's. The script is razor sharp with crackling dialogue, I can recite whole passages by heart. It's a super intelligent screenplay written for adults, and you don't see enough of that these days.

"You're not too smart, are you?"
He indicates "no".
"I like that in a man."
"What else you like?--Ugly? Lazy? Horny? I got 'em all."
"You don't look lazy."

William Hurt is fabulous as the not-so-bright lawyer in question, and Kathleen Turner was discovered in this--one of her most lingering performances. Sexuality abounds, and these two have never been hotter! One sex scene, in particular, has been copied and emulated countless times since--where he breaks through the glass to get at her. But it's not exploitative--it's real passion for adults. The whole film is just SMART!

The score is hypnotic, and the plot twists suitably to keep you intrigued. Kasdan made a perfect little movie that has more than survived the test of time.