The Ladd Company
Not part of a collection.
Body Heat
As the temperature rises, the suspense begins.
During an extreme heatwave, a beautiful Florida woman and a seedy lawyer engage in an affair while plotting the murder of her rich husband.
- Original title
- Body Heat
- Language
- EN
- Country
- US
- Budget
- $9,000,000
- Revenue
- $24,058,838
John Chard
Aug 21, 2019 · via TMDB
I hope you haven't done us in? Warning: Spoilers Body Heat is written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan and stars William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Richard Crenna, Ted Danson, J.A. Preston and Mickey Rourke. Music is scored by John Barry and cinematography by Richard H. Cline. Plot sees Hurt as small time Florida lawyer Ned Racine who falls in love and lust with smouldering babe Matty Walker (Turner). Trouble is is that she is married, and as the affair grows more torrid, the pair begin to hatch plans to kill the husband (Crenna) so as to be together and get very rich in the process... Well some can chide it for its debt to Double Indemnity, or even glance scornfully at Kasdan for using sex to sell his reinvention of amoral noirs of the 40s and 50s, but it stands tall and proud in my book of best neo-noirs produced. Causing quite a stir upon its release, Body Heat under Kasdan's watchful eye has most things right for a nod to the glory days of film noir. Male protagonist caught in a lusty web of deceit and murder, femme fatale so smouldering her skin literally does burn, twists and turns in the narrative, photography keeping it down low on light but expanding the colours for extra lurid effect, and a score that fuses seedy like jazz with low Bondian base strains that suddenly get attacked by a shrill to outline the hapless Racine's imploding panic. The dialogue, too, is devilish, especially when delivered so sensually by Turner's crafty honey, a lady bridging the gap between Lauren Bacall and Jessica Rabbit. Yep! Body Heat has it all going on. That was her special gift, she was relentless. Basically Kasdan has brought to life the suggestion involved of something like Double Indemnity, and set it in a sweltering modern day Florida. Free of any code restrictions, he unleashes the sex between the two principals and wraps his biting story around it. It's never sordid or done for the sake of selling tickets, it expertly realises the passion, trickery, and even genuine love? That's going on between Matty and Ned. Helps, too, that Turner and Hurt are terrific in performance and chemistry, while the support cast, courtesy of well thought out writing, really flesh out the plot. There's a problem for genre fans that stop it being a masterpiece all told, that of there being no shock factor come the finale reveal, but the slow boil to the outcome is positively gripping. While the visual views we get of Matty in the final frames leave a question tantalisingly hanging in the air... Slick and sexy, tricky and teetering, Body Heat stokes the fires of noir conventions of old with some style. 9/10
User reviews courtesy of TMDB.
Amazon Video
Apple TV Store
Google Play Movies
YouTube
Fandango At Home
TCM
Amazon Video
Apple TV Store
Google Play Movies
YouTube
Fandango At Home
William Hurt
Ned Racine
Kathleen Turner
Matty Walker
Richard Crenna
Edmund Walker
Ted Danson
Peter Lowenstein
J.A. Preston
Oscar Grace
Mickey Rourke
Teddy Lewis
Kim Zimmer
Mary Ann
Jane Hallaren
Stella
Lanna Saunders
Roz Kraft
Larry Marko
Judge Costanza
Thom Sharp
Michael Glenn
Renié
Costume Design
Lawrence Kasdan
Director
Michael Grillo
First Assistant Director
Carol Littleton
Editor
George Lucas
Executive Producer
John Barry
Original Music Composer
Lawrence Kasdan
Writer
Der Hammermörder
Delitto al luna park
The strange case of detective Jones
Murderers Club of Brooklyn
Twin Peaks
Pulp Fiction
Jerry Cotton: Tip Not Included
Double Indemnity
Manhattan Night of Murder
The Secret in Their Eyes
Heat
On the Waterfront
L.A. Confidential
Dancer in the Dark
Mulholland Drive
The Maltese Falcon
Sleuth
Mississippi Burning
The Big Sleep
Death Comes at High Noon
Lost Highway
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Lady Vengeance
In Cold Blood
Gaslight
Dirty Harry
The Experiment
It Happened in Broad Daylight
Scarface
The Long Goodbye
I, Portrait
A Time to Kill
Blow-Up
Gone Baby Gone
Pickpocket
Deadly Shots on Broadway
Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte
Angamaly Diaries
Lust, Caution
Murder, My Sweet
A Simple Plan
A Fish Called Wanda
Crows Zero II
Shoot the Piano Player
The Professional
The Merciless
The Last Castle
The Thirteenth Floor
Angst
Scum
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Frenzy
Arlington Road
Rounders
Inland Empire
This Gun for Hire
Heads or Tails
Al Basha
Geschminkte Jugend
Ninth Life
Tsotsi
The Sleeping Car Murders
Bronson
We Die Alone
Focus
Bad Romance: The Vicky White Story
Cop Land
Payback
The Perfect Neighbor
Mission: Impossible III
The Last Seduction
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
The Blue Dahlia
Paid
Traitor
Cypher
Mississippi Mermaid
The Naked Prey
The United States of Leland
The Grifters
The Last House on the Left
Young and Seductive
Big Bang Love, Juvenile A
Unhinged
Next Door
Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill
Butterfly on a Wheel
The Loft
Murder in Monaco
Wild Things
Out of Time
The Assignment
The Hassled Hooker
The Forest of Love
Old
The 39 Steps
Suspense
Romeo Is Bleeding
Riff-Raff
10 to Midnight
Kim Novak Never Swam in Genesaret's Lake
Wolf Lake
Geostorm
Crime of Passion
Sathya
52 Pick-Up
The Brasher Doubloon
Black Friday
Evil Nanny
Laim und die Zeichen des Todes
I Am Cursed
Candyman
The Whistle Blower
A Fire in the Cold Season
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Righteous Kill
The Big Sleep
Cry_Wolf
City by the Sea
Massacre at Central High
Women's Prison
Seven Years of Night
Essex Boys
Larceny
The Baylock Residence
Endangered Species
Borderland
Uncovered
Hyena
Sliver
Honey Don't!
No Code of Conduct
Someone Behind the Door
The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations
The Caller
Bad Country
Maestro
Real Fiction
The Walker
Straightheads
Gangs of New York
Dying Breed
Dahmer
Final Girl
Lost Joy
Ernest Goes to Jail
American Nightmare
Walled In
Doppelganger
Poison Ivy 2: Lily
The Unholy Wife
Cut
Todos los días son tuyos
Sinister Assistant
D Company
Georgia
The Telling
No Alibi
Bellini and the Devil
Suspectives
Fleeting
The Mystery of Murder: A Horizon Guide
Living in the Dead of Night
Elders Club
Yours Truly, Elaine
Behind the Crime: The Nipsey Hussle Murder
I'm Heather
Bonding
Homewreckers
It Burns!
Joker's Wild
NOKTURN
Rotten Society
GoodFellas
Touch of Evil
Cool Hand Luke
Key Largo
Cape Fear
Bad Boys for Life
The Enforcer
The Last Seduction
Buried Alive
Unfaithful
Dream Lover
No Man of God
Convict
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Tony Rome
A Walk Among the Tombstones
Half Baked
The Hot Spot
Live by Night
Adulterers
In Secret
Return to Sender
Careful What You Wish For
Original Sin
Faces in the Crowd
Bone Lake
Killer Heat
An Affair to Die For
Aug 28, 1981
