Rating: 
Summary: Near the apex of the sex/slasher genre
Review: We might call this trash, but if we do we'd have to call it very clever trash, the sort of trash one might find dumpster-diving in Beverly Hills.It stars Michael Douglas (who, by the way, has eclipsed the Hollywood power, if not the screen presence, of his dad, Kurt Douglas) and Sharon Stone who, as usual, finds herself in a part that requires that she take off her clothes and spout hard-edged one-liners: she does both with a certain delight that makes us think she is having a good time. He's a San Francisco homicide cop named Nick Curran with some questionable shootings hanging over his head, hence his nickname, "Shooter." She's a rich best-selling trash novelist named Catherine Tramell (pen name Catherine Wolfe) who likes kinky sex and other deviancies. It seems that her latest boyfriend (depicted in a blood-splattered opening scene) abruptly, shall we say, met his maker while in the arms of Venus, something predicted in Catherine's latest opus. We are made to believe that she could very well have been that Venus, although of course keeping us in the dark is part of the seduction. Jeanne Tripplehorn plays Beth Garner, police Internal Affairs shrink who just happens to be Nick's latest main squeeze. It seems that Catherine and Beth had a one-time intimate liaison while undergrads at UC Berkeley. We are led to believe that she too might have done the killings. So Nick has a choice, whom to believe about who's responsible for all the dead bodies, the blonde Catherine or the brunette Beth? Both seem a little wacko/sexy. He tries them both out, and we see a lot of skin and hear a lot of fast breathing, and are kept on the edge of our whoopee cushions until the very end--and after, actually, as though the purveyors were already counting on the sequel. I am reminded of a lyric from Elvis Costello's "Everyday I write the book": "Even in a world where everyone was equal/I'd still own the film rights and be working on the sequel." In other words, what this film is about is money--money for the producers, director, actors, crew, etc. It's an extreme sexploitation thriller diabolically done with absurd plot twists and plenty of dead bodies and some diverting chase scenes (did I mention sex?); indeed I suspect that Basic Instinct will be recognized by future film historians as one of the primo examples of the sex/slasher genre, that is, as soft porn with a sick edge. But wait, why did I watch this? Uh...Sharon Stone amuses me like a comedic actress, but she ain't exactly funny, is she? Also it's interesting to notice that in these late eighties/early nineties sexploitation flicks it's the women who are the aggressors (I'm thinking also of Single White Female from the same year) while the men play a little tagalong. Michael Douglas is particularly adept at playing the sort of male who seems natural being dominated by Sharon Stone. Bottom line: mass mind trash, but worth seeing for its ability to define the Hollywood mentality circa 1992.
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