Body Heat
It’s hot during the night, Ned Racine sweating as he stands by the window, watching a fire blaze only a few blocks away and hearing the sirens, a restaurant he used to frequent going up in flames and clearing the block, a convenience for the right people if the law looks the other way, and hotter by day, grilled by Judge Costanza in the Florida courtroom for taking on the client in the first place then coming to the case poorly prepared.
Wandering the Miranda Beach bars, listening to the jazz bands as he drifts like a summer breeze, Ned encounters beautiful Matty Walker, equally listless and far out of his reach, married, not interested in company, and gone like the wind but changing her tune at their next encounter down the coast near her home in Pinehaven, her husband working away again and Ned invited back on the promise that he will be discreet.
Written and directed by frequent Lucas and Spielberg associate Lawrence Kasdan and ostensibly inspired by 1944’s Double Indemnity, though there are many other antecedents in the film noir and thriller genre, 1981’s Body Heat took Altered States’ established rising star William Hurt and, in her feature film debut, Serial Mom’s Kathleen Turner and turned up the gas, Ned lured into a passionate and obsessive affair with Matty whose wealth is tied with her absent husband and his shady business dealings.
Shot by The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man’s Richard Kline and with a soundtrack by John Barry which recalls the moodiness of Bond with a touch of his later orchestral album The Beyondness of Things, Richard Crenna is Edmund Walker, possessive and blunt but susceptible to blunt force trauma, and an unfeasibly young and handsome Mickey Rourke is Teddy Lewis, a former client of Ned’s expert in all things explosive, and Ted Danson is fellow lawyer Peter Lowenstein.
His career on the up even as his friend finds himself dragged down by his impulsive actions, it is apparent to all but the patsy himself that Ned is being set up as the fall guy, blinded by Matty and manipulated into being an accomplice beyond what he agreed but unable to step back without incriminating himself, careless in the trail that ties them together, a man bested by the woman who has played him while she has her eyes on the big prize.
Sultry but somewhat slow-moving, Body Heat a time capsule of the era which launched the erotic thriller, Criterion’s new restoration is supervised by editor Carol Littleton and approved by Kasdan and is supported by a new interview with Kasdan, a conversation between Littleton and film historian Bobbie O’Steen, archive material with Kasdan, Littleton, Hurt, Turner, Danson, Kline and Barry, deleted scenes, the original trailer and an essay by author Megan Abbott.
Body Heat is available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Criterion now
