Basic Instinct

A wealthy rock star dies in a San Francisco bedroom, an ice pick buried in his chest during sex. The prime suspect: Catherine Tramell, a beautiful novelist whose latest manuscript describes the murder in chilling detail. Detective Nick Curran, a man haunted by a cocaine-fueled shooting that left two tourists dead, takes the case. He is a walking wound, drinking too much, sleeping with his police psychiatrist, and barely holding his badge.

Paul Verhoeven directs this erotic thriller with a cold, glossy precision. Michael Douglas plays Curran as a coiled spring of aggression and desire. Sharon Stone's Catherine Tramell is something else entirely: a woman who treats every conversation as a chess match, who wears white linen like armor, and who seems to know exactly what everyone around her is thinking. The film's budget of $49 million bought sleek San Francisco locations, the Transamerica Pyramid, Coit Tower, the nightclub called The Box, and a Jerry Goldsmith score that hums with electronic menace. Released in March 1992, it grossed over $352 million worldwide and became the defining erotic thriller of its decade.[edit]

San Francisco homicide detectives Nick Curran and Gus Moran arrive at a penthouse to find the body of Johnny Boz, a former rock star. He is tied to the bed, a single ice pick wound in his chest. The killer left no fingerprints, no forced entry, nothing but a half-empty bottle of vodka and the smell of expensive perfume.

The trail leads to Catherine Tramell, Boz's girlfriend. She is a novelist with a psychology degree from Berkeley, a black leather wardrobe, and a complete lack of visible remorse. During interrogation, she lights a cigarette and tells the detectives that her next book is about a detective who falls in love with the wrong woman and gets himself killed. She smiles when she says it. Nick watches her like a man watching a snake coil.

Catherine's past is a minefield. Her college professor died in a car accident that looked like murder. Her friend from boarding school fell off a balcony. Her current girlfriend Roxy has a violent temper and a history of arson. Catherine seems to collect dangerous people the way other people collect stamps. She also seems to know everything about Nick, his drinking, his shooting of the tourists, his affair with Dr. Beth Garner, the police psychiatrist.

Nick cannot stay away. He follows Catherine to a nightclub where she performs a striptease that leaves the crowd breathless. They end up in her bed, where she scratches his back bloody and tells him she wants to fuck him like a cop. The next morning, she is cool and distant, already writing again.

The body count rises. A police officer is killed with an ice pick. Internal affairs starts circling Nick, asking questions about his relationship with Beth. Catherine's publisher is found dead in his office. Every crime seems to connect back to her, but there is never enough evidence to arrest her. She has alibis. She has lawyers. She has a way of making everyone around her doubt their own instincts.

Nick's partner Gus grows suspicious of Catherine's influence. Beth warns Nick that he is being manipulated. But Nick is already in too deep. He has started to believe that Catherine might be innocent, that someone else is framing her. The question gnaws at him: is he a detective solving a case, or a character in a novel she is writing?[edit]