Basic Instinct: No film caused as much of a worldwide stir this year as Paul Verhoeven’s (“Total Memory”) perfect erotic thriller about obsessions and human abysses. Sharon Stone (“In Love with Danger”) catapulted to stardom with her bold and revealing role as an ice-cold angel of death. At her side, even superstar Michael Douglas (“The War of the Roses”) pales. Already, the explicit…
Plot and background
Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) is suspected of murdering her lover with an ice pick. But the case is not so easily filed away, because the evidence is scanty. Moreover, Detective Nick Curren (Michael Douglas) has already succumbed to Catherine’s erotic attraction. This also worries Nick’s psychologist and ex-lover Beth (Jeanne Tripplehorn).
A grisly ice pick murder of a rock singer keeps San Francisco police busy. Detective Nick Curren suspects Catherine Tramell, the victim’s highly intelligent, stone-cold rich bedfellow. The aura of the mysterious beauty fascinates the hardened cop. Not only Catherine’s playmate Roxy jealously follows the passionate cat-and-mouse game between her sex partner and Nick: Nick’s psychiatrist and former girlfriend Beth is also sceptical. Nick is torn. When he learns that Beth had sex contacts with Catherine in her student days, the case suddenly presents itself to him from a completely different angle…
In 1992, no film caused as much of a worldwide stir as Paul Verhoeven’s (“Total Memory”) perfect erotic thriller about obsessions and human abysses. Sharon Stone (“In Love with Danger”) catapulted to stardom with her bold and revealing role as an ice-cold angel of death.