The early 90’s were a frustrating time to be in your late teens. As if the 80’s weren’t oversexed enough with all those horny comedies, you had the 90’s ramping things up to a fever pitch with the epidemic of erotic thrillers that were the rage at the time.
The genre was ripe for the kind of parody Mel Brooks or Abrahams and the Zuckers might do. Instead, former Brooks co-performer Carl Reiner helms 1993’s Fatal Instinct, a work which may not reach the heights of the best material of those other filmmakers, but which I still found to have many laugh-out-loud moments.
Many films of the era are skewered, most notably Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, hence the portmanteau comprising the title. Many of the jokes either reference films I haven’t seen or take potshots at some of the genre’s conventions. Films of, and trappings of, the first era of noir are also fair game, such as a character saying, “That’s the postman. He always rings twice.”—not that I found that line particularly funny.
Far better is a recurring gag where Sean Young, as an obvious surrogate for Sharon Stone, keeps having things stick to the soles of her stilettos. Over the course of the film, we will see at least a gum wrapper, some sort of larger junk food bag, toilet paper, a pop can and a car floormat. I was watching closely for the next of those moments, hoping an impossibly great number of exceptionally large objects would be stuck to the underside of those shoes, as if this was Katamari Damacy.
Young does very well with this material. I keep forgetting how good she is in comedies, especially parodies. How could I forget how great she was in Young Doctors in Love? It is interesting how she always comes across as intelligent, but she never seems to be above the material. I like to think she has a healthy sense of humor about herself.
The object of her affection is Armand Assante, in the Michael Douglas role. I’m not sure I have seen him in anything previously, but he fares pretty well here. He takes the same approach Leslie Neilsen did in films like The Naked Gun, playing the character completely straight. In what I thought was a clever innovation, Assante also plays a cop…who is also a defense attorney.
Young is joined by another femme fatale in this film, with Kate Nelligan playing Assante’s wife. She’s cheating on him with a mechanic played by Christopher McDonald, as a mechanic who has spent weeks on end unsuccessfully repairing her car at their house. I don’t know what world this takes place in, but I want to live in a place where the mechanics do house calls.
Sherilynn Fenn is the third female lead (and, let’s face it, the types of films parodied here are all about the ladies) as Assante’s excessively loyal secretary. I still have a huge crush on Fenn just from her being on Twin Peaks but…ugh…as much as I hate to say it, much of her performance here is too self-aware. I didn’t believe her much, and that is in a role where the character is meant to be a shallow stereotype.
Still, she’s pretty funny in some moments as the straight woman where everything else around her is bizarre. Probably the best bit she is in is a montage of trying on hats, each of which is more insane than the last, until she finally settles on a helmet flanked by beer cans and the large letters on it proclaiming her to be a “BEER BIMBO”. Also in that scene is James Remar in a riff on the Mitchum/DeNiro character from the Cape Fear of your choice. He may be watching from a distance inside the store, but he’s soon swept into the spirit of the thing and trying on a succession of frilly chapeaus. What I found really odd is the scene is scored with Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl”, when both of these actors have blue eyes.
Something I learned after the fact is the original title of the picture was to be Triple Indemnity, which shows the writer has a decent knowledge of noir. The insurance policy bit here made me smile. For it to pay off, Assante must be shot while on a northbound train, and drown in a freshwater stream.
Of course, if you’re going to primarily parody erotic thrillers of the time, it is mandatory you have ridiculously convoluted sex scenes. There’s only one, but it is a doozy, as Young and Assante somehow couple while rolling down a flight of stairs, and then packed together in a normal household refrigerator. At one point, they are in the missionary position, except Young is balancing plates spinning on the ends of sticks in each hand, and even one somehow supported by a foot.
What is odd are some of the moments about smoking, a staple of noirs of both eras, being sent up here. When we see a cigarette pack, the brands are Black Lung Lights or Fatal 100’s. There’s a really bizarre scene with Nelligan and McDonald have a post-coital smoke and neither has their cigarette lit. McDonald even proceeds to “blow” non-existent smoke rings. I didn’t find it funny, but I can honestly say that’s another thing I’ve never seen before.
And there is still more here I have never seen before. Off the top of my head, there’s the criminal who is always wearing a stocking mask, including while trying to eat a snow cone or chew gum. In court, his wife and kids are also similarly masked. There’s a car chase involving bumper cars, one of which turns out to have a functioning airbag built in. A clandestine conversation in Yiddish in a public park is understood by the man on the bench across from the speakers, as he has been reading the subtitles. There’s a car with a working household ceiling fan in it. There’s a fairly well-done animatronic skunk riding a roller coaster with Sean Young.
Fatal Instinct was pummeled by critics at the time, and I think unfairly so. Alas, it isn’t exactly comedy gold either. It throws so much on the screen that I don’t see how anybody can’t find at least one thing to laugh at. As for myself, I laughed a great deal, though I realized there were far more misses than hits. All that said, I gotta like a movie that repeatedly has the saxophone on the soundtrack, only to reveal is being played by Clarence Clemmons in the scene itself. At times, it is a smart-dumb film and, at other times, merely dumb-dumb. I suspect a statement made by Assante could be applied to film overall: “I don’t look as dumb as I am.”
Dir: Carl Reiner
Starring Armand Assante, Sean Young, Sherilynn Fenn
Watched on Olive Films blu-ray