NOTE: Since it’s Women’s History Month, all the horror/thrillers this month will focus on women-centered movies. This post also contains spoilers.
The first of which is Fatal Attraction, which takes what Clint Eastwood did with Play Misty For Me and updates it for the Boomer/Yuppie Reaganeighties. If Misty was a warning of the free love generation and sexual revolution, Attraction is about The Big Chill/Thirtysomething Me Generation trying to remain pure in the depths of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
In the first of what would become an unofficial trilogy on the dangers of men giving in to their sexual desires, Michael Douglas plays Dan Gallagher, a Manhattan attorney who is rising high in his career. Dan and his wife, Beth (Anne Archer), are considering leaving the city for the suburbs of Bedford, N.Y.
On a Friday night, they attend a gala for a book publishing where Dan strikes up a conversation with Alex Forrest (Glenn Close), an editor at the publishing company hosting the event. Moments earlier, Alex shoots daggers at Dan’s co-worker, Jimmy (Stuart Pankin), but Dan and Alex meet again at the bar where they become more friendly. Alex senses a spark with Dan.
As luck would have it, Dan has to attend a meeting the next day over the legalities of an book set to be published as a prominent politician thinks one of the characters is a negative reference of him. And Alex is there. They have friendlier interactions but it’s raining heavy as they leave the meeting. So, they go to lunch to get to know each other better.
Then, they go to Dan’s condo to have sex as Beth and his daughter, Ellen (Ellen Hamilton Latzen), are out of town visiting potential properties. They go out for a night on the town and have sex again at Alex’s place. But Dan leaves early with Alex asleep and hoping this is just a one-night stand that Beth will never find out about.
However, Alex wants to spend the Sunday with him which he reluctantly does. Yet, when he tries to leave after an argument, she slits her wrists and he stays with her throughout the night hoping he can leave for work and make it look like he had a boring weekend at home. He feeds the dog the leftover spaghetti and in a smart move, rolls around on his bed to make it look like he was there. (I also think it’s funny that Alex also cooks spaghetti for Dan.)
Yet Alex comes visit him at the office to apologize for her actions. But when Dan refuses to have any further contact with her, Alex goes off the rails and begins to harass him and damages his car. Alex also tells Dan that she’s pregnant and she rebuffs Dan’s idea that she should get an abortion.
At the heart of the movie is the question of who is the good person and who is the bad person. Close has said she never thought of herself as a villain. And in today’s climate with different viewpoints, Dan brings all this upon himself. I’ve been out to eat with a lot of women who I’ve never had sex with. It is possible.
The problem is Dan feels that he should have sex as it doesn’t happen with Beth because Ellen gets scared and wants to sleep with them. The next day, he has what he thinks is a one-night stand with Alex and go one with his life. The thing is Alex sees a potential relationship with Dan and when that isn’t possible, she tries to destroy his family during some memorable scenes. If you’re a lover of animals, especially rabbits, you probably won’t like an infamous scene.
Yes, Alex is clinically unhinged, I think. But all this could’ve very easily been avoided had Dan gone home and jerked off. Or at least wore a damned condom. Dan is being forced to pay for his sins in the worse ways. If the Friday the 13th and Halloween movies showed teenagers and young 20-somethings being killed for having premarital sex, Fatal Attraction proves that there are worse things than death.
The question remains who is in the right and who is in the wrong. I’d argue neither Dan nor Alex are good people. Yet, it shows the social norms that we sympathize through Dan because of what he is put through. Also, a husband and father has a responsibility as the protector of his family which Dan fails. However the movie never really does exposes how an affair has an effect on a marriage and a family.
That being said, I agree with both Close and writer James Dearden that it would’ve served the movie’s plot better had Alex killed herself with the butcher knife with Dan’s fingerprints. Unfortunately, the original ending confused audiences as it created a dues ex machina where Beth discovers a tape Alex made that helps exonerate Dan when he is arrested for suspicion of her murder. It also fits more with the theme of Madame Butterfly which plays throughout the movie.
Unfortunately, test audiences didn’t like the ending, prompting a new ending where Alex breaks into the Bedford house and attacks Beth. Now, as protector, Dan can come to Beth’s aid. And in an climax that was heavily criticized in the Scream movies, Dan thinks he has drowned Alex in the bathtub but she pops out to stab him with Beth shooting Alex dead in defense. It’s a cliched climax but it worked with audiences to the tune of a worldwide gross of $320 million in 1987 dollars. Adjusted for inflation in today’s dollars, that’s nearly $900 million on a meager little budget of $14 million.
In other words – give the audience what they want. Yes, Alex framing Dan does seem obvious to anyone seeing Alex staring at the knife. But audiences need to know that whatever hell this family has been put through is over. The cassette tape seems more or less an open-ended climax. What if the police don’t accept it as evidence or even a prosecutor argues it’s more evidence that Dan killed Alex?
No, we need to know that Alex is shot dead as a violent intruder. The police can close the investigation easily and the Gallaghers can rebuild their lives. Just as Frank Oz learned with Little Shop of Horrors, what works in one medium doesn’t work in another. I think audiences nowadays might accept the original ending more. Even my mom, may she rest in peace, commented when she saw that knife that Alex was going to kill herself and frame Dan.
The new theatrical ending turns Beth into a heroic figure rather than a victim which is what she seems in the original ending. She is able to save Dan and avenge the trauma and torment Ellen suffered. Beth is now the protector herself of the family, a mama bear willing to show what she is capable of when someone messes with her child.
Fatal Attraction’s ending would be further discussed in the Hollywood satire The Player with Habeas Corpus, the movie within a movie starring Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts, has to resort to a more conventional and cliched ending, because that’s what the audience wants. “That’s reality!” says Richard E. Grant’s writer character.
Off-screen, Fatal Attraction had a cultural phenomenon that is still referenced today, mostly in parodies, most memorably with Kate McKinnon as Kellyanne Conway on Saturday Night Live. Jim Carrey and Kelly Coffield Park did a parody of the movie combining it with the popular Taster’s Choice commercials at the time. Tom Hanks even referenced it in Sleepless in Seatle as his character argues with his son over meeting strange women who might be crazy saying how Fatal Attraction “scared the shit out of me. It scared the shit out of every man in America!”
But like all good thrillers and horror movies, it’s a warning of what might happen if men fool around. And it seemed to a watercooler discussion on something that by the mid-1980s was mostly discussed in private. The movie’s success and critical acclaim led to six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Director for Adrian Lynne, Best Lead Actress for Close and Dearden got a Best Adapted Screenplay has the movie was based on Diversion, a British movie he made in 1980.
The movie went through several casting choices and director options. John Carpenter was originally approached to direct but he considered it to be too close to Play Misty For Me. Barbara Hershey was considered but she couldn’t commit due to a scheduling conflict. Many other actresses including Isabella Adjani, Michelle Pfeiffer, Melanie Griffith, Ellen Barkin, Debra Winger, Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange were considered but turned it down. Tracy Ullman reportedly was opposed to the scene involving the rabbit and Miranda Richardson called the script “hideous.”
Close was originally not a contender as studio executives didn’t think she was sexy enough for the role. Yet, I don’t think Alex is meant to be sexy. There’s a playfulness she brings to the role as she seems ready to tell Jimmy to “eat shit.” However, minutes later, when she begins to talk to Dan at the bar, you can see the spark. When they have to be at the legal meeting, Alex gestures that Dan has frosting from a pastry on his nose. DA
Dan only is interested in Alex because he wants to have sex with her. But he wants to end relationship almost immediately when he’s gotten what he wants. Douglas would also play his iconic role as Gordon Gekko this same year in Wall Street. There’s some scumbaggery in Dan. I mean, he is a lawyer so he’s got that sneakiness to his role. Douglas has always been one of those actors who can make you root for him but also despise him with the way he delivers his dialogue. Take the way he shreds what looks like a very expensive birthday card in Wall Street or the way he almost wants to fire a secretary in The Game just because she wished him a Happy Birthday.
The difference between Dan Gallagher and Dave Garver, Eastwood’s character from Play Misty is that Dan has more to lose and still does it anyway. Also, Dave tries to make the relationship with Jessica Walter’s Evelyn Draper work until she goes off the deep end. Dave is single and he wasn’t really hurting anyone even though he should’ve gotten to know Evelyn more before he had sex with her.
Fatal Attraction would lead to a string of erotic thrillers in the late 1980s and early 1990s including Douglas’ Basic Instinct and Disclosure. A lot were schlock such as Body of Evidence which also co-starred Archer. And others went to straight to video market featuring Shannon Tweed and Shannon Whirry as the femme fatales. Others like Dangerous Touch switched the game and made Kate Vernon the person being terrorized by a mysterious man played by Lou Diamond Phillips.
Even the Two Coreys got into the mix with their movie Blown Away, which premiered on HBO in 1993. However, it’s not to be confused with the Jeff Bridges/Tommy Lee Jones thriller that opened in theaters a year later.
Decades before it became a famous phrase saying, these movies showed what happens when you fuck around (literally) and find out.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 