A Basic Double Feature Instinct

Although I was an unabashed 10-year-old movie buff in 1992, I somehow avoided ever seeing the most controversial wide release of the year. This wouldn’t be so shocking if said film in question wasn’t directed by all-time favorite Danish import.

Despite the blind spot on my cinema brain that was Basic Instinct, my desire to finally watch Sharon Stone uncross her legs had little to do with any real curiosity. No, of course it didn’t. Me being me, I mostly wanted to watch this movie so that I could freely venture into far darker territory: its decade late universally maligned sequel.

One thing at a time:

Basic Instinct: In sexy San Francisco, a blond furiously ice picks her lover to death while riding on to her own orgasm. The detective on the case is none other than Nick, a recovering alcoholic smoker cokehead who’s obviously going to fall back on the bad habits of the elite because he’s played by Michael Douglas, a fine actor who can kind of ONLY play the type of white collar miscreant. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The chief suspect is the victim’s steady lover Catherine Tramell, a Berkley educated psychology major who now writes erotic crime fiction. Unless you were raised amongst the Amish the early 1990s, you probably know that Tramell is played by a post-Total Recall/Scissors but pre-Everything Else Sharon Stone as a sex-loving bisexual maybe sociopath who loves Hermes scarves but hates all brands of underwear.

It doesn’t take long for Catherine to take to Nick like my cat takes to moths, toying with his life and eating one wing at a time before becoming confused by the fact that it doesn’t actually taste good. Okay, maybe that’s Joplin and not Catherine, but the point is, Catherine starts worming her way into Nick’s life, people in Nick’s life start dying, fingers are pointed, genitalia is fingered, and we get to see what perennial brunette Jeanne Tripplehorn might look like as a blond.

Basic Instinct was quite the hit in 1992, a surprise blockbuster that sparked as many dinner party conversations as it did parodies. Viewed 20 years after its debut, the film doesn’t live up to its “Can you believe that!” hype, yet hasn’t necessarily aged terribly. The controversy regarding its portrayal of homosexual and bisexual characters as murderous villains seems petty today. Yes, all of its non-straight characters might indeed be killers, but that's because EVERYONE in Basic Instinct has blood on their hands. There's nothing homophobic about; it's just that in 1992, so few films featured gay themes that any high profile hit was grounds for praise or protest.

But I digress. Basic Instinct is what it is: a tacky noir that tries a little too hard to be sexy, but still emerges as a trashy mildly good time nonetheless. That’s mostly due to the fact that director Paul Verhoeven knows how to have fun behind the camera, and while her later career has its roadblocks, Sharon Stone absolutely nails the role of a sex-crazed sociopath who never met a man (or woman) she couldn’t manipulate.

Basicker Instinct: Flash forward an inappropriate amount of years to 2008, when Sharon Stone apparently REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to revive the role that made her famous. Of course, a character isn’t all it takes to make a sequel. There’s the tricky matter of a script, director, and leading man…none of which seems to be overly valued in Basic Instinct 2.

The film opens in cold, clinical London as Catherine, still blond and horny, crashes a luxury car into the river while her drugged out soccer star boyfriend du jour pleasures her to his death. Detective Angry David Thewlis suspects her immediately, but court ordered psychiatrist Michael considers her only a risk to herself.

And of course, his sanity and free life.

Just like Michael Douglas’ unlucky Nick, Michael gets ensnared in his new patient’s web of games.  It doesn’t take more than a few steamy sessions for his ex-wife’s sleazy lover who was—whaddya know!—writing an expose on Michael’s past to turn up strangled, for Michael’s past oversights as an irresponsible shrink to come to light, and for Catherine to insinuate herself in everything from a professional dinner party to his ex-wife’s bed.

In Basic Instinct, it was hard to keep your eyes off of Sharon Stone’s Catherine. The actress took hold of the character with just the right balance of open of sexiness and confidence that you could understand why men and women fell into her trap like lemmings.

In Basic Instinct 2, it’s STILL hard to keep your eyes off of Stone, but that’s more to do with wondering just how many virgins spilled their blood to keep her skin as firm as it was when Bill Clinton was on his first presidential campaign trail. Stone LOOKS amazing and can still wear a barely-there little black dress like a superstar, but her 21^st century Catherine is no longer sexy: she’s just annoying.

“So. Is this where we’re gonna DO IT?” she purrs to Michael in his psychiatrist’s office with all the aggression of a kitten in anger management. Perhaps it was because she missed her old pal Paul Verhoeven, but Stone seems to channel Elizabeth Berkley’s Showgirls performance as inspiration for her over-the-top Catherine. What came off as sexy and daring in 1992 just feels forced and sad two decades later.

It doesn’t help that Catherine’s target is a pasty loaf of stale British scone bread. Actor David Morrissey doesn’t get a whole lot to work with but he also never finds anything extra to give. A scene that echoes Michael Douglas’ rough-sex rape-not-rape-cause-she-kinda-likes-it moment with Tripplehorn offers none of the shocking sexiness of the prior film. In this case, Michael brings home a colleague to have old fashioned missionary sex with her…until he spots Catherine’s picture on her latest book jacket sitting on his nightstand and then…and then…TURNS HER OVER TO TAKE HER FROM BEHIND.

I know, we should all be blushing. It’s positively INSANE.

And that’s the limit of Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction’s risk addiction. Yes, there’s an orgy, but somehow, it’s boring. I never thought I’d have to use ‘orgy’ and ‘boring’ in the same sentence twice in one year, but thanks to this and the otherwise good Night of the Scarecrow, it seems I checked one thing off my bucket list.

Directed by Rob Roy maker Michael Caton-Jones, Basic Instinct 2 could have been something truly memorable in a starstruck trashtacular Wild Things vein. Instead, it has this false confidence that it’s the sexiest thing of all time because its lead gets naked and constantly talks about it. But as Showgirls proved in such a more entertaining fashion, sex isn’t sexy when it’s shoved in your face.

Had Basic Instinct 2 understood that, it could have either a) finessed its dialogue or, more wishfully b) understood that it had the potential to be a camp classic. As it stands, I don’t see anyone hosting a midnight screening or dressing up like Catherine Tramell 2 for costume parties anytime soon. It’s just not fun enough.

High Notes

The first film features a pretty nifty car chase through a fairly crowded country road, the kind of car action that could actually HAPPEN behind the wheel of normal (if risk-loving) human beings

In 2, there’s one shiny spot and that’s Charlotte Rampling’s wise therapist. Without ever hiking up her designer skirt, Rampling is somehow more alluring and fascinating than a full frontal Sharon Stone

Low Notes

Aside from everything else about 2008 Catherine Tramall, the fact that the woman can’t read a No Smoking sign is just obnoxious. Step into MY office and light that cigarette bitch. I dare you.

Lessons Learned

Playing games goes with a degree in psychology

London streets are completely empty after dark

As you approach a very tense man who’s waving a gun with crazy in his eyes, try to avoid reaching into your pocket, even if you just want to return his keys or check for your parking ticket. Some gun-waving lunatics might get ideas that you don’t have time to disprove

Coke and Pepsi aren’t the same things

When your boyfriend is found murdered, the smartest thing you can possibly do is to call your ex-husband with a grudge before the police. Seriously, why would you even think about doing things the other way around?

The Winning Line

“Even Oedipus didn’t see his mother coming.”

I’m sure this is supposed to sound erotic. Really it just leaves me feeling bad for Jocasta’s sex life

Rent/Bury/Buy

Basic Instinct is a recommend, simply because of its place in pop culture. The DVD is loaded with extras, including making-of featurettes and an enjoyable commentary from the always fun Verhoeven and his Director of Photography, future Twister and Speed director Jan De Bont. Its sequel is ALSO heavy on the special features, but suffering through the main feature is a taller order than you might think. I ADORE bad movies, but Basic Instinct 2 commits the ultimate sin of awful cinema: it’s boring.

The Harrington Kind

Don’t you love discovering entire filmographies of good directors you never knew anything about? A few weeks ago, I enjoyed a double feature of Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? and What’s the Matter With Helen?, two “Grand Dame Guignol” flicks by Curtis Harrington. Both were fairly fabulous, and not JUST because both featured Shelley Winters. Hence, it made perfect sense to continue the Harrington path.

Quick Plot: Gang rape!

What? Don’t look at me like that. It’s how the movie starts!

Terry (John Savage) is a somewhat unwilling participant who ends up in jail anyway. Two years later, the young musician returns home to his overbearing mother Thelma (Lady In a Cage’s Anne Sothern) and her boarding house filled with old women and a trouble-in-the-making wannabe model named Lori (a young Cindy Williams). Next door lives Louise (The Manipulator’s Luana Anders), a lush of a librarian harboring a crush on the able-bodied Terry.

What does a young man do after a few years in the joint? In 1973, the answer was ‘clean pools and dodge the advances of middle aged women.’ 

See, Terry is an attractive but confused kid with the kind of childhood Freud would throw an ice cream social to discuss. His unusual upbringing by the single and daffy Thelma (whom he never refers to as Mom) has left him with more than a few issues regarding the opposite sex, particularly those with a few decades over him. 

When Mom--er, Thelma--tosses out a comment about how Terry’s rape(ish) victim should be run off the road, he takes it upon himself to do just that. After all, a boy’s best friend is his mother so far as movies have thus far taught me.

The Killing Kind is a strange film, one more designed as a sort of character study than plot-heavy horror. Though the mood is much darker than the other Harrington films I’ve seen, it’s clearly right in step with his oeuvre. Once again, we have the frays of a mother/son relationship leading to violence (a la Helen), oddly toned humor (a la Roo), and a bevy of middle aged women with plenty of juice left. There’s almost something vaguely Pedro Almovodar-esque in Harrington’s fascination with certain themes of sexuality, repression, and mismanaged parenting. Nowhere is this more evident than in The Killing Kind’s ending (no spoilers, chill out) where we finally see just how devastating an unchecked inappropriate mother/son relationship can be.

High Points

Sothern’s complicated blousiness and Savage’s understated awkwardness go a long way to crafting the complicated, sad, and more than unhealthy bond between mother and son

Holy ‘70s home design! Busy wallpaper! Shag carpeting! Shag couches! Shag haircuts! The Killing Kind is kind of a visual feast!

Low Points

Look, we get that Terry’s sexual nature is all messed up due to Thelma’s overmothering, but a dream sequence where he’s dressed like a baby while lying next to a naked Lori as a batch of older women point their fingers and cry “Shame!” is a bit obvious, no?

Lessons Learned

If someone tells you that you have an interesting face, it really just means that you’re not pretty

When peeping, leave the pets at home

Everybody spends time behind bars these days

Too Close To Home Alert

It’s a tad discomforting to watch a film about a crazy cat lady while one of your own felines sleeps on your knees and the other has wrapped herself around the back of your neck in the adorable boa style she so enjoys

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Killing Kind is something different, a ‘70s study in sexual dysfunction with some gutsy performances and black humor. It has its flaws, but much like the similarly underseen and underdiscussed Visiting Hours, it also makes for a fairly fascinating character study of a psychologically damaged killer. The DVD includes an informative interview with Curtis Harrington who has some old school stories of Paramount backlots and how his friendship with the likes of Kenneth Anger helped to get him recognized as someone worth bankrolling. I don’t know that The Killing Kind is worth a blind buy, but it’s certainly something different and fit for a thoughtful rental. 

Just not when you’re feeling overly sensitive about being a cat lady.

MaskMaker In the Woods

So, here’s the thing about MaskMaker: 

Have you seen Cabin In the Woods?

If you haven’t, then you should probably skip down to the Rent/Bury/Buy section for a summary that doesn’t spoil a seemingly unrelated masterpiece to this decently made but minor slasher. But for the smart ones here who have already seen Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s horror comedy, you’ll understand that it’s hard to view such standard dice up the pretty people fare without thinking about The Ancient Ones.

Quick Plot: A young college couple majoring in economics takes a drive to a secluded old farmhouse for Jennifer's birthday weekend, where the perky coed learns the musty but antique-filled homestead is now hers. Some guys buy flowers, others, engagement rings. Evan, on the other hand, paid $10,000 for some property and put the grant in his lady love's name. Sure, the local hardware store is run by Michael Berryman and the only other customer offers ominous warnings of the house’s backstory, and yes, the remote location offers little to no cell phone coverage (as pointedly remarked upon to silence audience objection before it starts) and oh fine, there’s a dead pig’s head chilling out in the vintage refrigerator with what can only be genetically mutated Panem-bred superflies, but hey, a deal’s a deal!

Despite their misgivings, Jennifer and Evan settle in, inviting two more frisky couples along for a weekend of bonfire guitar strumming, aged wine drinking, and role playing fornication that oddly enough, fits right into the soon-to-be-awakened killer’s MO.

See, amongst the creepy relics Jennifer discovers is a leather-bound diary of the previous tenant, a French maid (not like THAT! except, well, kind of like that) who raised her monstrous son Leonard with witchcraft and a lack of discipline. As Jennifer reads the artistically rendered script---

Fine. I can’t ignore it anymore either. Yes, Cabin In the Woods fans: the MaskMaker of the title could easily have been hanging out inside one of the elevator’s rotating cubes. And yes, among our pretty young people are scholars, whores, fools, virgins (eh, close enough) and athletically built young men whose death and pain would easily sate the appetities of some old hungry demons. 

There’s a harbinger--

And shock of shocks, he’s not actually played by Berryman but Bernie himself!

We’ve got a torture room...

Mythology...

A relic (in this case, a big ol’ magic stick thingy) that resurrects the past

Unmarried sexual encounters...

And in case you were worried about the future of mankind, plenty of death in the order The Ancient Ones require.

Mask Maker has about as much originality as an accountant’s lunch order, but it does what it’s expected to with better skill than most of its contemporaries. Though the idea of the killer is nothing special, Leonard himself looks menacing and quite eerie when wearing his victim’s cleanly extracated faces on his own. Some viewers might find the young cast’s talkiness annoying, but I appreciate the script’s insistence on giving its victims’ some individuality, something helped by the energy of its actors. We don’t necessarily like them, but at least they’re more interesting than the garden variety camp counselor or drunk teens. Director G.E. Furst (he of a few Asylum titles) shows some skill in establishing their chemistry as friends and lovers.

But...but...they’re STILL hard to think of as anything other than than The Whore(s), The Virgin, The Athlete(ishes), The Fool(s) and Scholar. With that in mind, I’d rather attend a party thrown by Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins.

High Points

You can’t argue with the impressively done gore, complete with drippingly fresh face maks and big ol’ fashioned axings

(MINOR SPOILER) There is a small effort to play a little with the death order. It’s not revolutionary, but one kill did happen far earlier than I expected, making it land quite effecitvely

Low Points

I rarely speak ill of anything involving Treat Williams, but the flashbacks of Leonard’s childhood story are easily the weak link of MaskMaker. Filmed in an undefined gray sheen, they just never evoke anything of the scandal or supernatural I assume they were going for

Not sure who decided it was a good idea to throw in a weirdly homophobic electrician, but I suppose one low point of the film would have to be the weirdly homobophic electrician

Lessons Learned

If horror movies have taught me anything, it’s that when a bloodthirsty killer has me straight in his aim of a knife or spear throw, it’s really easy and instinctual to just wait til the last minute to duck or roll over and avoid the death blow

In 2012, male college professors can totally say things like “just like a woman to compare investing to cooking” and get away with it

Some people are into being puked on

Look! It’s...

One of the London Twins (can people really tell them apart?) popping up for the final scene with an adorably strained Louisiana accent. I hope they didn’t spend too much money on that

Credits Curiosity

Ever see a film’s tagline plopped under its title in the opening credits? Me neither. Until now.

Rent/Bury/Buy

For what it is—a direct-to-DVD slice ‘em up about pretty people being hunted by a silent madman—MaskMaker is slightly above average. The acting has spunk, the makeup mostly looks great, and kill count is high and messy enough to not leave you feeling cheated. It does absolutely nothing new in terms of the genre, (even borrowing the basic monster design from Leatherface’s closet and a key plot resolution from Friday the 13th Part 2) but if you’re in the mood for a slick piece of modern American horror, it’s serviceable. Not special, but good enough in an unambitious way for a lazy Instant Watch while you're alphabetizing your DVDs or separating Lucky Charms marshmallows from the boring rice crisps.