Body Heat ***** (1981, William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Richard Crenna) – Classic Movie Review 2387

‘When it gets hot, people start to kill each other.’

Writer/ debut director Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 neo film noir Body Heat stars Kathleen Turner, who is thrilling in her movie début as a sexy socialite called Matty Walker.

She sets about to inflame her lover, plodding Florida small-town lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt), a man with a sleazy moustache, into murdering her rich husband Edmund (Richard Crenna). ‘It’s mad all right, and if we’re not careful it’s gonna be the last real thing we do.’ Ned starts to realise she’s only interested in the money.

Set in a searing Florida heat wave, Kasdan’s stupendous Eighties take on the film noir is a clear homage to Double Indemnity (1944), whose situation and story it uses liberally and quite shamelessly, though immensely profitably. It’s hardly a surprise then that Kasdan’s favourite film noir movies include Double Indemnity, as well as The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Out of the Past (1947). However, Matty Walker, with her husky voice and long legs, was modelled on Lauren Bacall rather than Double Indemnity’s Barbara Stanwyck.

In 1981 Kasdan is able to show the sex that they could only suggest in the Forties in his brilliantly steamy, sleek, stylish and still surprising movie. Ted Danson as the fellow lawyer Peter Lowenstein and Mickey Rourke as an arsonist enjoy decent support roles.

It’s so steamy that there’s a TV version that tones down the sexual content. Danson’s mother went to see the film and walked out because of the film’s provocative sexuality. 

Song: ‘Feel Like a Number’ by Bob Seeger. Cinematographer Richard H Kline composes some eye-opening images. Composer John Barry’s main theme is a jazz ballad plus a piano figure with strident chords and strings.

Also in the cast are J A Preston, Kim Zimmer, Jane Hallaren, Lanna Saunders, Carola McGuinness, Michael Ryan, Larry Marko, Deborah Lucchessi, Lynn Hallowell, Thom J Sharp, Ruth Thom, Diane Lewis, Robert Traynor, Meg Kasdan, Ruth P Strachan, Filomena Triscari and Bruce A Lee.

Despite the Florida heat wave setting, the film was shot in freezing temperatures. The actors had to suck ice cubes before speaking to eliminate foggy breath and had water sprayed on their skin and shirts to simulate body sweat.

It’s the first of four movies that Hurt and Kasdan made together, followed by The Big Chill (1983), The Accidental Tourist (1988) and I Love You to Death (1990).

Turner says: ‘Matty Walker was the best part written for a woman in so many years. I’d never tested for a film before and it was pretty scary, walking into a studio, having make-up men and everybody turn you into their idea of what Matty should be.’

William Hurt (March 20, 1950 – March 13, 2022) made his film debut in Ken Russell’s 1980 Altered States, followed by Body Heat. He had three consecutive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), Children of a Lesser God (1986), and Broadcast News (1987), winning for the first of these. Hurt stars as Mr Rochester in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1996 version of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2387

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