Body Heat Movie Plot

[Elvisa Schimke]

BodyHeat is a 1981 American neo-noir[1][2] erotic thriller film written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan in his directorial debut. It stars William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, featuring Richard Crenna, Ted Danson, J. A. Preston and Mickey Rourke. The film was inspired by the classic film noir Double Indemnity (1944), in turn based on the 1943 novel of the same name.

In the heat of a relentless summer, Ned Racine, an inept South Florida lawyer, meets and begins an affair with Matty Walker. Matty's wealthy husband, Edmund, is always away on business during the week. Late one night, Ned arrives at the Walker mansion and, seeing Matty in the gazebo, playfully propositions her. The woman is actually Mary Ann Simpson, Matty's old high school friend who physically resembles her and who is briefly in town. Soon after, Matty tells Ned she wants a divorce, but a prenuptial agreement would leave her almost nothing. When she wishes Edmund was dead, Ned suggests murdering him so Matty can inherit his wealth. Ned consults a shady former client, Teddy Lewis, an explosives expert, who provides Ned a small incendiary device though he advises Ned to abandon his plans.

After murdering Edmund, Ned and Matty move his body to an abandoned building that Edmund owns. Ned detonates the bomb to make it appear as if Edmund accidentally died during a botched arson attempt. Soon after, Edmund's lawyer contacts Ned about a new will that Ned supposedly drafted for Edmund and which was witnessed by Mary Ann Simpson. The new will was improperly prepared, making it null and void and results in Matty inheriting Edmund's entire fortune, while disinheriting his sister. Despite Ned's previous warning against making any estate changes, Matty had forged the new will, exploiting Ned's past malpractice issues, knowing it would be nullified and leaving her the sole beneficiary. Ned knows the police will consider the new will suspicious. A prominent plot point centers on a complicated and often misunderstood legal rule known as the rule against perpetuities.

Two of Ned's friends, assistant deputy prosecutor Peter Lowenstein and police detective Oscar Grace, suspect Ned may be involved in Edmund's death. Evidence includes Edmund's missing eyeglasses, which he always wore. On the night of the murder, hotel phone records show that repeated calls to Ned's room went unanswered, thereby weakening his alibi. Also, police are unable to locate Mary Ann Simpson. Increasingly nervous over the mounting evidence and questioning Matty's loyalty, Ned happens upon a lawyer acquaintance who says he recommended Ned to Matty Walker. He admits telling her about Ned's limited legal skills. Later, Teddy tells Ned about a woman wanting an incendiary device, and says he showed her how to booby trap a door. Teddy also says the police have been asking him questions about the apparent arson.

Matty calls Ned and says that Edmund's glasses are in her boathouse. Ned arrives late that night and spots a wire attached to the boathouse door. Matty arrives, and, following a confrontation, Ned asks her to retrieve the glasses. Meanwhile, Oscar Grace arrives and observes their interaction. To prove herself, Matty walks toward the boathouse and disappears from view; the boathouse then explodes. A body found inside is identified as Matty Walker (ne Tyler). Now in prison, Ned, having realized Matty duped him, tries to convince Oscar Grace that she is still alive. He believes that "Matty" assumed the real Matty Tyler's identity in order to marry and murder Edmund. Ned surmises the "Mary Ann Simpson" that Ned previously met had discovered the scheme and was blackmailing Matty, only to be murdered and her body used to identify her as Edmund's wife. Had Ned been killed in the boathouse explosion as Matty likely intended, he reasons the police would have found both suspects' bodies.

Kasdan "wanted this film to have the intricate structure of a dream, the density of a good novel, and the texture of recognizable people in extraordinary circumstances."[5] George Lucas acted as uncredited executive producer following successful collaborations with Kasdan as a scriptwriter on Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back.[6] Christopher Reeve turned down the role of Ned Racine, which eventually went to his friend, William Hurt; Reeve would later regret the decision, though he was "glad for" his friend.[7] Gail Matthius from ''Saturday Night Live'' auditioned for Turner's role.[8]

A substantial portion of the film was shot in east-central Palm Beach County, Florida, including downtown Lake Worth and in the oceanside enclave of Manalapan. Additional scenes were shot on Hollywood Beach, Florida, such as the scene set in a band shell.

There was originally more graphic and extensive sex scene footage, but this was shown only in an early premiere, including in West Palm Beach, the area where it was filmed, and was later edited out for wider distribution. In an interview, Body Heat film editor Carol Littleton says, "Obviously, there was more graphic footage. But we felt that less was more."

Barry worked closely with recording sessions engineer Dan Wallin to mix the soundtrack album, but for several reasons J.S Lasher (who produced the limited-edition LP and CD) remixed multitracks himself without Barry's or Wallin's participation.[10]

J.S Lasher's album was released several times: as a 45 RPM (Southern Cross LXSE 1.002) in 1983 and as a CD (Label X LXCD 2) in 1989. Both editions also included 'Ladd Company Logo' composed and conducted by John Williams.

In August 2012, Film Score Monthly released a definitive two-disc edition: the complete score with alternate, unused, and source cues on disc 1, and the original, Barry-authorized album and theme demos on disc 2.[11]

Janet Maslin wrote that Body Heat was "skillfully, though slavishly, derived" from 1940s film noir classics; she stated that, "Mr. Hurt does a wonderful job of bringing Ned to life," but was not impressed by Turner's performance:

Sex is all-important to Body Heat, as its title may indicate. And beyond that there isn't much to move the story along or to draw these characters together. A great deal of the distance between [Ned and Matty] can be attributed to the performance of Miss Turner, who looks like the quintessential forties siren, but sounds like the soap-opera actress she is. Miss Turner keeps her chin high in the air, speaks in a perfect monotone, and never seems to move from the position in which Mr. Kasdan has left her.[16]

Pauline Kael dismissed the film, citing its "insinuating, hotted-up dialogue that it would be fun to hoot at if only the hushed, sleepwalking manner of the film didn't make you cringe or yawn".[17] Ebert responded to Kael's negative review when he added the film to his "Great Movies" list:

In a home video review for Turner Classic Movies, Glenn Erickson called it "arguably the first conscious Neo Noir"; he wrote "Too often described as a quickie remake of Double Indemnity, Body Heat is more detailed in structure and more pessimistic about human nature. The noir hero for the Reagan years is ...more like the self-defeating Al Roberts of Edgar Ulmer's Detour".[20] Body Heat received mostly positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 96% approval rating based on 47 reviews, and an average rating of 8.10/10. The site's consensus states, "Made from classic noir ingredients and flavored with a heaping helping of steamy modern spice, Body Heat more than lives up to its evocative title."[21] On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 77 out of 100 based on 11 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[22]

Warner Bros. released a 25th-anniversary Deluxe Edition DVD of Body Heat, including a documentary about the film by Laurent Bouzereau, a "number of rightfully deleted scenes",[20] and a trailer.

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Years before I finally watched Body Heat, I encountered it as an object of study. My freshman year of college, I joined a short-lived extracurricular club devoted to pop culture,headed by a chain-smoking, leather-wearing English professor with dim hopes for the future. Though I could never quite share (and often couldn\u2019t understand), his self-declared \u201Cpost-structuralist\u201D views, , his enthusiasm for literature and what lay below the surface of the text make him probably as responsible as anyone for pointing me toward pursuing criticism as a profession, even if at one point I thought it would be a career devoted to English literature and result in me having campus office hours and a stack of papers to grade. After one year of grad school, I left academia behind and never looked back, but that doesn\u2019t mean much of what I studied there hasn\u2019t stuck with me.

That includes Frederic Jameson\u2019s 1984 essay \u201CPostmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,\u201D which attempted to define what postmodernism is and what it means. For an academic text, it\u2019s pretty engaging, offering a sweeping look at the culture of the moment that touches on everything from architecture to painting to literature to film. (Jameson expanded it into a book of the same name in 1991.) Reading it now, I can see it\u2019s far from the description of a wasteland with no future, as my professor interpreted it.. But I also see some limitations, at least in its treatment of Body Heat.

In short: Jameson treats Body Heat as Exhibit A for an exhausted film culture (and by extension, culture at large) that\u2019s been colonized by nostalgia and \u201Cincreasingly incapable of fashioning representations of our own current experience.\u201D Body Heat\u2019s mood, music, tropes, and even the font used for its credits owe a debt to noir in general and its plot owes more than a little to James M. Cain\u2019s 1943 novel Double Indemnity and the Billy Wilder-directed adaptation of the following year. In Jameson\u2019s view, it\u2019s a work of art that knows only how to recycle.

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