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One of the more famous erotic thrillers is Fatal Attraction. A movie that gave the world the term “bunny boiler” and became an advert for staying faithful to your lover. In the movie Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) has a one night stand with Alex Forrest (Glenn Close). Despite being aware of his marital status she wants more from him and begins to stalk him. First by calling him and appearing at his office, then by showing up at his apartment before becoming violent. Dan has to keep his mistake a secret for his wife while at the same time trying to stop Alex who wants to be with him.
Dan’s marriage has reached a point where the passion is non-existent. Hoping for some intimacy he finds his 7 year old daughter in bed wanting to sleep between mommy and daddy. While loving his wife Dan needs more, this is where Alex comes in. He meets her at a party, they hit it off to a certain degree. When his wife is a weekend at her parents he, by coincidence, ends up in a cafe with her. They talk, she seduces him, and they end up having passionate sex. Though he made it clear this was nothing more than some consenting sex between two adults, she quickly becomes obsessed by him. So quick in fact she slits her her wrists when he wants to go back to his apartment the next day.
Fatal Attraction is a crafty thriller for the first two thirds of the movie and a mediocre slasher the last third. The movie generates a fair amount of tension when Alex is starts to stalk Dan and becomes increasingly violent as time goes by. Dan is caught because his secret prohibits him from sounding the alarms when all still seems manageable, yet everything he does to prevent the situation from escalating is of no use. In the last act the movie sadly derails by making Alex a psycho killer in the vein of countless horror icons like Jason Voorhees, giving her even a “the killer isn’t really dead” moment. But even before that the script started to become shaky as Alex is able to take Dan’s kid from school without any problems. Teachers just give the kid away to a strange woman they’ve never seen before.
As a genuine threat Glen Close convinces as the mentally unstable Alex, but as an object of desire she does not. Her smoke-stained teeth, typical 80s perm and a just not that attractive face I had a hard time dealing with the fact that she was supposed to have men turn their heads around when she passes by. This is of course my personal opinion on her, but I never saw her really as this sex-bomb she’s supposed to be, unlike Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.
Despite being an erotic thriller and being directed by Adrian Lyne the movie isn’t loaded with steamy scenes full of nudity. The movie focuses more on the thriller aspect than the erotic. The movie has Dan and Alex only have sex twice in one weekend after which she goes nuts when he isn’t interested in anything more. Maybe we would be more on her side if they had this long affair and he would promise to leave his wife for her. Now we’re just rooting for a guy who can’t keep his dick in his pants. But still, this movie is a perfect public service announcement for all those men who want to cheat on their lover with another woman and believe the woman when she says it’s just sex for her too.
