Basic Instinct

Director: Paul Verhoeven

1992 / 127min / 35mm

The film that made a star of Sharon Stone, seen to good effect in Verhoeven’s previous Carolco production, Total Recall, and that also provided the studio a succès de scandale windfall. Perfectly poised as she negotiates her way through the most infamous police station interrogation scene in cinema, Stone’s pulp novelist-and-suspected ice pick murderess Catherine Trammell is a blonde ice queen à la Hitchcock who begins to melt in the arms of besotted SFPD Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas)—or does she only appear to? A work of carnivorous carnality that moves with prowling panther sleekness, its career-best Jerry Goldsmith score adding immeasurably to the undercurrent of imminent danger.

Distributor: Rialto Pictures

Part of When Carolco Was King