Rating: 
Summary: The movie is hot. The DVD is not.
Review: The movie is extremely enjoyable. Kathleen Turner and William Hurt give very good performances. Things are indeed hot in this movie.
Whilst some elements are derivative of Hitchcock and some are predictable, it is enjoyable to see how they play out. The DVD is a disappointment. The casing is cardboard, not the hard plastic that better withstands time and usage. The widescreen version is a matted version that crops content off the top and bottom and does not appear to offer any more on the sides than the full screen version. The added content is OK.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm sweating
Review: This is a very cleverly contrived sexploitation thriller, penned and directed by the talented Lawrence Kasdan. It stars Academy-Award winner (Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1985) William Hurt with a mustache and a dangling cigarette as Ned Racine, a not overly bright Florida lawyer smitten by Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner in her steamy film debut) a rich housewife with a husband she hates, and a yearning to breathe free. Shades of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, both triangle murder tales made into film noirs. Kasdan is cribbing, but I forgive him since in some ways his film is an improvement on both the novels and the films they inspired, plus his is a kind of satire on those films with numerous witticisms. I especially liked it when Matty describes her husband, Edmund, a hard-nosed and successful financier played repulsively by Richard Crenna: "I can't stand the thought of him. He's small and mean and weak." Ned gives this some serious thought and then kisses her on the head like she's a good little girl. Not too much later, after the first mention of the murder, immediately in the very next scene, Kasdan does a little foreshadowing with lawyer Ned visiting the jail. The steel door clangs shut behind him, startling him and causing him to jump in fright. I also liked the fog on the night of the murder, and I especially liked it when Ned, after putting the body in the trunk, closes the lid to reveal Matty standing there directly in our line of sight, a kind of visual witticism. I also liked the scene in which the lawyers are sitting around the varnished wood with Matty and the woman she has shrewdly cheated, and the lead lawyer asks if anyone would like to smoke. Everybody (except Ted Danson) eagerly and immediately lights up. Ted says he'll just breathe the air. This is a little in-joke satire by Kasdan on the fact that Hollywood movies of the day were financially encouraged by the tobacco companies to show the players happily puffing away as often as possible. William Hurt really is excellent, almost as good as he was in Kiss of the Spider Woman, and that was very good indeed. Turner is completely believable as a voracious and greedy femme fatale with a wondrous criminal mind. The dialogue is sharp and clever throughout; especially interesting are the dueling "pick-up" rejoinders by Ned and Matty when they first meet. Noteworthy is the performance of Ted Danson of TV's "Cheers" fame as a prosecutor in black-rimmed specs. He has some spiffy lines of his own and he does a great job, as does Mickey Rourke as Teddy Lewis, Ned's fire-bombing buddy. The plot twists are in some sense anticipated, but the exact nature of their unfolding is fascinating to watch. Indeed, Kasdan's snappy direction of his diabolically wicked tale is practically seamless. This is not to say that it was perfect. I have to point out that the scene in which Matty is in the tub with Ned and he dumps more ice cubes in to cool her off is a little on the contrived side since they surely had air conditioning. She claims to a natural body temperature of 100, reminding me of the classic rock lyric, "I'm hot-blooded, check it and see/I've got a temperature of a hundred and three." Also Matty's seduction of Ned was a little too fortuitous. I don't think she would have left so much to chance. But I liked the beginning anyway because it led us to believe that this would be a tale of sexual obsession (which in part it is) and not just an adulterous murder thriller. I also could not, even though I rewound the video, catch what was said in the final scene. (Probably that's just my ears going the way of the waist line.)
Rating:
Summary: CAN YOU TAKE THE HEAT?
Review: Love and madness are easy to confuse, and "Body Heat" is a great look at both elements pushed to the extreme. A tale of mystery and intrigue expertly written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, "Body Heat" keeps the viewer spellbound to the end no matter how many noirish potboilers have come before. It's a familiar plot, but rarely is the siren's song so alluring. A slew of outstanding performances by William Hurt, Ted Danson, Richard Crenna, and Mickey Rourke bring the sultry drama to life, but Kathleen Turner steals the show as the sexy she-devil in white. An all-too believable melodrama of unquenchable lust and despair, "Body Heat" works on every level.
Rating: 
Summary: A sexy, superb thriller
Review: "Body Heat" is one of my all-time favorite thrillers. It's literate, suspenseful, well-acted, beautiful photographed, reasonably believable, and very, very sexy. What more could you want? The movie is an excellent example of film noir; however, since it was released thirty years after that genre's heyday, some critics originally dismissed it as a "Double Indemnity' knockoff. Indeed, it does closely resemble that Billy Wilder classic, and, as Roger Ebert noted, it's hard to make a modern film noir. Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such movies didn't have this label applied to them. The filmmakers didn't know they were creating something unique in these mostly 'B' pictures. These films were most likely a byproduct of Post-WWII cynicism. Still, the genre has been successfully revived from time to time. Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye" (1973) comes to mind. I think writer/director Lawrence Kasden would readily admit that his movie is partly a homage to all those earlier dark thrillers, but, even so, he takes the genre and makes it his own. The many ways he conjures up the image of heat serve as a textbook for novice filmmakers who need lessons in style. Ditto the way he depicts the numerous sexual encounters between William Hurt and Kathleen. We see lots and lots of skin and sweat, but there is not a single frame of gratuitous nudity, at least as I define the term. Ditto the way that every subordinate character is there only to move the plot along, yet at the same time is a memorable one. Kathleen Turner shows here, in her first movie, why she became a major star in the 1980s. She is sultry and sexy, a true femme fatale. She has bits and pieces of Lana Turner, Veronica Lake and Barbara Stanwyck in her, but, with that incredible voice, she is a one of a kind. She becomes her character, Matty Walker. From the moment we first see her, we are fascinated, intimidated and uneasy. This in one smart, powerful woman. On the surface, it seems like the story is all from Ned Racine's [Hurt] point of view, but it is equally Matty's tale. As Racine, Hurt is great. He doesn't play Ned as dumb, he plays him as vain and lazy. This is the perfect choice. Matty takes full advantage of his deficits, and by the time he figures it all out, it's far too late. Had he been merely stupid, she would have come off as merely cruel, rather than as complex and calculating. Oh, and the plot? I don't want to say too much. The locale is South Florida during a dreadful heat wave. Ned is a womanizing attorney whom nobody respects but everyone likes. One night he is hanging out at the beach and sees Matty. Its lust at first sight. She plays it cool and hard to get. He persists, and one night she relents. She lets him know she's not just beautiful. She's rich and unhappily married. His wheels start spinning. He comes up with a plan to solve all their problems. At least he thinks he's the one who came up with it. I highly recommend this movie to people who love a good adult thriller. The DVD has almost no special features, and I hope one day Kasden and others will be involved in a special edition. But it's a very inexpensive DVD that's well worth the money. The film transfer is very decent. I believe the movie originally was in stereo, but these tracks seem to have been lost. Since it's a character-driven piece, this doesn't affect one's enjoyment of the film, though hopefully the tracks will one day be restored.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Sunshine Noir
Review: Lake Worth, just a stone's throw northwest from tony Palm Beach, is the setting for a gripping film about greed and lust. Kathleen Turner makes a powerful film debut as a woman who drives men wild. She uses her charms to snare William Hurt, referred to accurately by reviewer Leonard Maltin as "a lawyer whose brain moves at half speed." Hurt's less than impressive law practice is exposed early in the film. When he sees a fire raging in the night from the window of his apartment he chuckles, "It was probably started by one of my clients." When he is shown in court pitted against his friend, deputy prosecutor Ted Danson, his client is a man being prosecuted for extracting coins from the town's pay toilets. The judge offers to give the miscreant probation on the condition that he leaves town and never returns. He turns on Hurt furiously, admonishing him for his lack of courtroom preparation and the appallingly low quality of his clients, warning that if the current situation repeats itself that he will be filing an attorney misconduct complaint to the bar association. Danson later quips that Hurt is helping his career by making him look so comparatively good. At that point talentless attorney Ned Racine with his stuck-in-the-mud law practice meets femme fatale Matty Walker and his life changes forever. Turner as Matty is to criminal science what Einstein was to theoretical science, a brilliantly calculating genius. She sees to it that Hurt meets her and makes his first play at a concert at the community bandshell. She goes through the usual early motions of appearing insulted by his intrusiveness, making the point that she is married, but this is all subterfuge. She is out to hook Hurt and does so with coolly calculated dispatch. Lawrence Kasdan, in his directorial debut after a successful screenwriting career during which he penned "Raiders of the Lost Ark," was influenced by the brilliant 1944 noir classic "Double Indemnity," spinning the story cleverly into a current eighties' dimension. Whereas Billy Wilder was plagued by censorship restrictions imposed by the notorious Breen Office in the earlier film, Kasdan in the 1981 release was able to more graphically display how a man is turned into a creature of undiluted lust through the machinations of a woman so appealing in the case of Turner that, after the film's release, she was referred to in media circles as "the queen of curves." Hurt is so desperate for sex with Turner that he smashes a window to get inside her residence. Another area where Kasdan was able to use more liberalized cinema codes and times to his advantage was in the portion of the film following the killing of Turner's older and very rich husband, mob business operative Richard Crenna. Wilder could never in Breen Office times have presented the story that emerged with Danson and police detective J.A. Preston expressing their friendship for Hurt and warning him not to revisit widow Turner. Danson makes his feelings abundantly plain in one conversation with Hurt when he declares that Preston and himself are delighted that Crenna is dead and would like to see the whole case blow over, but that as long as Hurt keeps seeing Turner it may reach the point where they can no longer protect him. This turns out to be precisely the case as Turner generously provides Hurt with generous lovemakig to make him ultimately vulnerable as a case gradually builds with the assistance of anonymous tipoffs to authorities which come from Turner. Another clever plot twist is that, where Barbara Stanwyck sought out Fred MacMurray to help her kill her husband in "Double Indemnity" due to his expertise in the insurance field, Turner purposely enlisted Hurt's assistance after learning about a complaint on file against him with the local bar association. When she manufactures a bogus will purporting to be that of her husband and allegedly prepared by Hurt, it contains a major error, an invocation of the Law Against Perpetuities. As a result the earlier will is null and void and Turner as widow of Crenna inherits his entire estate. Turner wields her deft hand all the way to the finale, using an old girlfriend to change identities on the pretext that she needs a fresh start following drug difficulties with the law back in her native Chicago. After turning the screws so that Hurt will ultimately go to prison, she rigs an explosion in the boathouse next to her residence. The dead body found inside is ascertained to be that of Turner rather than her girlfriend's. Mickey Rourke stands out in an early role playing a skilled arsonist and demolition expert who warns Hurt to look out for Turner after she seeks to employ him. He is concerned about Hurt's life. His warning spares Hurt, who had been assisted earlier by Rourke, who rigged a fire to make it look like Crenna had died in an accident, from being in the boathouse when the explosion and resulting fire occurs. Instead he lives to sit desperately in prison, aware that Turner has escaped to the life of luxury she had long dreamed about after arranging for Hurt to pay the price of Crenna's murder for both of them. This film conveys the moody setting of a small Florida town in the midst of a sultry summer heat wave. The heat wave is symbolic of the steaminess of passion between Hurt and Turner. The wily femme fatale lures Hurt into her lair. He refuses to leave, even after good friends Danson and Preston warn him about the ultimate consequences. He is as hopelessly hooked as were Robert Mitchum by Jane Greer in "Out of the Past" and MacMurray rendered vulnerable by Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity."
Rating:
Summary: It's great, and Kathleen Turner's beauty's at her best!!!!.
Review: How could William Hurt refuse an invitation to spend the night with such a spectacular and young Kathleen Turner at her wonderful house, and on such a warm night?... Bet no real man would. But there are limits that can't ever be tresspassed, which is exactly what Hurt does, and that wrong decision makes him pay an extremely high price afterwards.
Rating:
Summary: White Never Looked So Unclean!
Review: Kathleen Turner saunters next to a sweaty and agitated William Hurt with a look of passive sexual desire. The gaze between them is white hot lust and the ultimate way of cooling of them steam and sexual tension between these two is to act upon it and how is this bond sealed? Over the only thing that can cool down the tension-an ice cream! Kasdan gives Body Heat the ultimate send up of a film noir and he never misses a step or does he paint the story or the characters into a corner. Infact the film's story of a mistreated wife and her new found lover is so tight with sexual energy and overall southern passion you slip into a dream like sequence of lust and steam! The plot pushes forward with the same energy that Hurt and a wonderfully develish Turner seem to match at every speed! When Hurt and Turner decide that their affair is too hot to continue in just a sexual basis Turner finds it necessary to leave her husband but things just can't be that simple in a film noir. Kathleen Turner grabs you from the second she is on screen her Jane Mansfield-esque frame is sheathed in a white dress and her husky yet alluring voice and all out jaguar on the prowl apppeal has never been equalled by any actress in this genre since! Hurt is no slouch either but the film belongs to Turner her performance never makes you wonder why the men in this film are just dying to be with her!
Rating:
Summary: Experience shows I can be convinced of anything.
Review: First saw this film in Florida when it was released. William Hurt and Kathleen Turner are great in their roles. Then the film gets even better as Richard Crenna and Mickey Roarke are introduced and the plot unfolds. Atmospheric with an incredible soundtrack. Watching the DVD is like being with an old friend! Get John Barry's soundtrack re-recording as well while at Amazon. Bone up on Florida law and *don't* date Matty Walker!
Rating:
Summary: Almost Too Good for a 1980s Movie
Review: Rest easy: this review will not give the plot or the ending away. As you probably know by now, Lawrence Kasdan's "Body Heat" is rich in *film noir* elements of the kind rife in 1940s cinema: curling cigarette smoke, whiskey for two, late afternoon sun filtering through jalousies and so on. The plot could be construed as 1940-ish too, as two lovers (played by William Hurt and Kathleen Turner at the height of her oomph) conspire to do something very, very illegal that supposedly will put them on easy street. However (provided you can forgive the fact that the air-conditioning is almost always broken or non-existent in this small coastal Florida town), "Body Heat" is no mere exercise in style or nostalgia. The legal trouble Hurt gets into is solved high-tech style. And today's MPAA ratings allow the lovers to show some serious skin, not merely allude to it with symbols and suggestive dialog. If this is forties, then it's forties with the pants off. What mattters most, of course, is that this movie is a well-told, sexy and stylish thriller that adults will enjoy, and it hasn't a slack moment or the slightest plot crack in it. There is some violence, but it's necessary violence, not gratuitous bang-bang in a vain attempt to sharpen up a weak plot. The sex, too, reveals the more intimate side of the two lead characters (or so we think!). Not only are Hurt and Turner terrific, you will enjoy the supporting cast, too, especially Richard Crenna and a barely-recognizable pre-"Cheers" Ted Danson as the local D.A. I'm really surprised the DVD is so cheap, but why look a gift horse in the mouth? It's true that the production standards of "Body Heat" onto DVD could have been better, but it still looks better than my VHS copy. I like "Body Heat" so much I haul it out every year or so just to marvel at the overall package of style, suspense, atmosphere, dialog, and, um, sex.
Rating:
Summary: If you have never seen BODY HEAT . . .
Review: If you have never seen BODY HEAT, skip the June 13, 2000, review (by Brent Been), below, because it gives away the ending! (C'mon, dude! Please stay away from screenings of CITIZEN KANE and THE CRYING GAME, will ya? In fact, you are not even allowed to ruin "Scooby Doo" cartoons for the kids!) It surprised me that Amazon's review screeners did not reject or at least edit Mr. Been's remarks. BODY HEAT's such a winner I remember many parts of it well, even though I haven't seen it in about 20 years. It's one of those movies so well-written that it could be a great book. Bravo, writer (and director) Lawrence Kasdan. Prior to this film, I had seen William Hurt only in ALTERED STATES - talk about a movie with a great "end," thank you, Blair Brown ;)- and was surprised to see Hurt's wishy-washy persona cast in BODY HEAT. But he pulled it off. Kathleen Turner, then another newcomer, lit up the screen. Then there's good actor Richard Crenna, whose role could have been just a plot device, stealing scenes from both Hurt and Turner. See BODY HEAT and please, don't spoil the story for the friend who never saw it!
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