''Fatal Instinct'' is a 1993 American sex comedy thriller film directed by

Carl Reiner Carl Reiner (March 20, 1922 – June 29, 2020) was an American actor, stand-up comedian, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned seven decades. He was the recipient of many awards and honors, including 11 Primetime Emmy Awards, ...

. A parody of the

erotic thriller The erotic thriller is a film subgenre defined as a thriller with a thematic basis in illicit romance or erotic fantasy. Though exact definitions of the erotic thriller can vary, it is generally agreed "bodily danger and pleasure must remain in ...

genre, which at the time had reached its commercial peak, as well as being a pastiche of 1940s

film noir Film noir (; ) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American '' ...

and

psychological thriller Psychological thriller is a genre combining the thriller and psychological fiction genres. It is commonly used to describe literature or films that deal with psychological narratives in a thriller or thrilling setting. In terms of context and c ...

genres, the film stars

Armand Assante Armand Anthony Assante Jr. (; born October 4, 1949) is an American actor. He played mobster John Gotti in the 1996 HBO television film '' Gotti'', Odysseus in the 1997 mini-series adaptation of Homer's ''The Odyssey'', Nietzsche in ''When ...

as lawyer/cop Ned Ravine (a take-off on ''

Body Heat Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperatur ...

'', in which

William Hurt William McChord Hurt (March 20, 1950 – March 13, 2022) was an American actor. Known for his performances on stage and screen, he received various awards including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award and Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor. H ...

plays the similarly named Ned Racine) who has an affair with a woman named Lola Cain ( Sean Young). Kate Nelligan stars as Ned's wife and

Sherilyn Fenn Sherilyn Fenn (born Sheryl Ann Fenn; February 1, 1965) is an American actress and author. She came to attention for her performance as Audrey Horne on the television series ''Twin Peaks'' (1990–1991, 2017) for which she was nominated for a Go ...

stars as his secretary. The film title is a combination of ''

Fatal Attraction ''Fatal Attraction'' is a 1987 American psychological thriller film directed by Adrian Lyne from a screenplay by James Dearden, based on his 1980 short film '' Diversion''. Starring Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, and Anne Archer, the film cent ...

'' and '' Basic Instinct'', both of which starred

Michael Douglas Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and film producer. He has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the AF ...

Synopsis

Ned Ravine, who is both a police officer and lawyer (who often defends the people he arrests), believes that he knows everything about women, and says that he will throw away his badge if anyone ever proves him wrong. While on a

stakeout Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as c ...

, he encounters a seductive woman named Lola Cain; the next day, Lola shows up at his law office, saying that she needs him to look over some papers she has come across. Meanwhile, Max Shady, who was just released from prison after seven years, starts stalking Ned, planning to kill him for failing to successfully defend Max in court. Ned's wife Lana and her car mechanic Frank, with whom she is having an affair, start plotting to kill Ned in order to collect on his accident insurance, which has a triple indemnity rider; if Ned is shot, falls from a northbound train, or drowns in a freshwater stream, Lana will collect nine million dollars. Lola gets Ned to come to her house to examine the "papers", which are actually a laundry receipt and an expired lottery ticket, and the two of them end up having sex in various wild ways. The next morning, Ned says that they can never do that again because he loves his wife; this drives Lola to start stalking Ned. A few days later, Ned takes the train to go to a legal

symposium In ancient Greece, the symposium ( grc-gre, συμπόσιον ''symposion'' or ''symposio'', from συμπίνειν ''sympinein'', "to drink together") was a part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was acc ...

; Lana and Frank are also on the train, and so is Max. When the train passes over a lake, Lana shoots Max 36 times with a

revolver A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating firearm, repeating handgun that has at least one gun barrel, barrel and uses a revolving cylinder (firearms), cylinder containing multiple chamber (firearms), chambers (each holding a single ...

, mistaking him for Ned, and he backflips through the door to his death; Ned thinks that Lana had acted to save his life. He arrests Lana, and then defends her in court, getting her cleared of all charges. Lana later kills Frank, believing that he was going to abandon her, by pinning him against a wall with his power drill; Lola witnesses this, and starts

blackmail Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to fa ...

ing Lana. Ned confronts Lola, and learns that she and Lana are

identical twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of TwinLast Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two ...

sisters; after Lana had smashed Lola's face with a shovel, the doctors had given her a whole new face, causing the man she loved to leave her for Lana; Frank was the man's son. Lola's plan from the beginning was to get revenge on Lana by seducing her husband and ruining her marriage. Later, Ned's secretary Laura tells Ned about Lana's plans to kill him, having figured it out herself. Upstairs, Lana is attacked by Lola, who drowns her in the bathtub. While Ned goes upstairs to investigate, Laura's abusive husband (whom she had escaped from three years ago) comes in and confronts her; she kills him with a frying pan. Lola and Ned fight, and Lola falls to her death from the second-floor landing after Ned pushes her back with a powered-up hair dryer through a broken handrail (which Lana had sawn off earlier). As Ned and Laura embrace each other (and Ned throws his badge away), Lola and Lana come back to life and attack; Laura shoots them both. Ned and Laura marry a few days later.

Cast

as Ned Ravine *

as Laura Lingonberry * Kate Nelligan as Lana Ravine * Sean Young as Lola Cain *

Christopher McDonald Christopher McDonald (born February 15, 1955) is an American film, television, theatre and voice actor. McDonald is best known for playing the villainous professional golfer Shooter McGavin in the 1996 comedy ''Happy Gilmore''. Other notable ...

as Frank Kelbo *

James Remar William James Remar (born December 31, 1953) is an American actor. He has played numerous roles over a 40 year career, most notably Ajax in '' The Warriors'' (1979), Albert Ganz in ''48 Hrs.'' (1982), Dutch Schultz in '' The Cotton Club'' (1984 ...

as Max Shady *

John Witherspoon John Witherspoon (February 5, 1723 – November 15, 1794) was a Scottish-American Presbyterian minister, educator, farmer, slaveholder, and a Founding Father of the United States. Witherspoon embraced the concepts of Scottish common sense real ...

as Arch *

Bob Uecker Robert George Uecker ( ; born January 26, 1934) is an American former Major League Baseball (MLB) player and current sportscaster, comedian, and actor. Facetiously dubbed "Mr. Baseball" by TV talk show host Johnny Carson, Uecker has served as ...

as Himself *

Clarence Clemons Clarence Anicholas Clemons Jr. (January 11, 1942 – June 18, 2011), also known as The Big Man, was an American musician and actor. From 1972 until his death in 2011, he was the saxophonist for The E Street Band. Clemons released several ...

as Himself *

Eartha Kitt Eartha Kitt (born Eartha Mae Keith; January 17, 1927 – December 25, 2008) was an American singer and actress known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 recordings of "C'est si bon" and the Christmas novelty song " Santa ...

as Trial Judge *

Tony Randall Anthony Leonard Randall (born Aryeh Leonard Rosenberg; February 26, 1920 – May 17, 2004) was an American actor. He is best known for portraying the role of Felix Unger in a television adaptation of the 1965 play '' The Odd Couple'' by Neil Si ...

as Judge Skanky *

Bill Cobbs William Francisco Cobbs (born June 16, 1934) is an American actor. He is known for his roles in movies such as Louisiana Slim in '' The Hitter'' (1979), Water in '' The Brother from Another Planet'' (1984), and as Lewis Coleman on ''I'll Fly A ...

as Man In Park (uncredited) *

Rosie O'Donnell Roseann O'Donnell (born March 21, 1962) is an American comedian, television producer, actress, author, and television personality. She began her comedy career as a teenager and received her breakthrough on the television series '' Star Search'' ...

as Woman In Pet Store (uncredited)

Reception

The film received generally negative reviews from critics; it maintains an 18% approval rating based on 22 reviews on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, with an average rating of 4.2/10. In his review for the ''

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the '' Chicago ...

'',

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

rated it one and a half stars out of four and stated "It's a strange thing about the parody genre: Some of these movies work ... and some don't. And you can't say why, except that sometimes you laugh, and sometimes you don't, and the reasons for that are not arguable."

Janet Maslin Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...

of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' felt the film's gags "vary much too wildly in terms of timing and wit. All that hold this comedy together are a playful outlook and a conviction that detective stories are intrinsically funny, especially if the detective is as much of a blockhead as Ned Ravine. As played by Armand Assante, Ned is a bit too convincingly dense, but he does make a useful fall guy." The film opened on 1,886 screens in the United States and Canada on October 29, 1993 and grossed $3,502,569 in its opening weekend, placing sixth at the box office. It went on to gross $7.8 million in the United States and Canada.

Home media

This movie was released in the spring of 1994 on VHS and it is available on DVD and

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

, but only for North America and Europe.

References

External links