Basic Instinct

There is a crime scene with an ice pick stained with blood, a silk scarf tied to a bedpost and a fading rock star brutally slain. But who is the killer? For San Francisco Detective Nick Curran, what begins as a routine investigation becomes something much more when he meets Catherine Tramell. She is a novelist whose bizarre, fictional crimes have a nasty habit of coming true. She quickly becomes the prime suspect but Curran cannot help but be drawn to the flirtatious and irresistible Tramell.

After two science fiction movies, Verhoeven changed tack with this steamy, Hitchcockian neo noir thriller. One of the most financially successful films of 1992, BASIC INSTINCT is a melodramatic crime thriller with everyone in top form – including Jan de Bont’s stylish cinematography, a rousing music score by Jerry Goldsmith, and the central performances of Michael Douglas as Nick Curran, and Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell – who overnight became an international movie star.