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by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

It is known that the best films from Alfred Hitchcock were done during the days of the code. The restrictions on nudity and graphic violence gave us iconic Hitchcockian moments like the shower scene in Psycho, where Hitch pulls of a totally kosher psycho-sexual ejaculation of ultra-violence. When the code gave way to the MPAA rating system, Hitchcock didn't really know how to react, producing mediocre films, giving way to directors like Brian De Palma who stepped into his shoes, to give us, more-modern Hitchcockian thrillers like Dressed To Kill. But by the end of the 80s, as De Palma stepped down from this Hitch-immitation role, and before Robert Zemeckis ultimately took this title with his 2000 film What Lies Beneath, there was also Paul Verhoeven and his psycho-sexual thrillers, like 1992 Basic Instinct.

Let's start from stating the basic fact: Paul Verhoeven is a fucking great director. His sense of camera motion and flow is immaculate. And this movie shows a very good example of it. I still thing his best directed movie is 1995 Showgirls, but Basic Instinct is very damn impressive.

Writing-wise, Joe Eszterhas's script is very smart. There are twists in the film, and there is a sort of kind of twist ending, if you want to look at it that way, but the film is not dumb about it. It only pretends to be dumb about it. It kind of leads you into one direction, making you notice it, so you obviously think of the other direction, and then the other direction is revealed to be the wrong direction. Which makes you feel like you witnessed a work of a genius smart-ass. You know what I'm talking about?

The film does go into some hard R territory. Verhoeven even uses a Von Tririan technique ( showing dead kids ) at one point. This is probably the only scene in the film which I cannot handle very well. Even though you only see pictures of them held by one of the cops. At least Verhoeven is not a total motherfucker, and doesn't portray it as something good, unlike Lars Von Trier with The House That Jack Built, so it is at least swallow-able. This movie might just give me the courage to re-watch Schindler's List.

When it comes to adults getting murdered, the films starts with a satisfyingly brutal stabbing to death, of a wealthy motherfucker. Sorry for my ageism. And then the film has a lot of nudity, some of which was "unplanned". As far as I know, the pussy-flashing scene, was Verhoeven's idea, and he didn't tell Sharon Stone where the camera is pointed. So, the legend goes, she slapped him at the premier ( at which she found out ).

Michael Douglas is playing the lead character who has a complicated psychological state. The whole movie various women and men around him ( especially Sharon Stone's character ) deteriorate his mental state further and further. And the funny thing is, the film is sexy enough that you kind of sort of understand the motherfucker. And then the final twist, while being kind of sort of ironic in a way, makes you kind of sort of say "fuck it". And be totally and utterly okay with it.

It is like the movie is seducing you into falling in love with somebody you know is a bad person and by the end of it you consent.

Happy Hacking!!!

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After I mentioned Josephine Mutzenbacher, here you are reviewing an ero-thriller.

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