For victims of amnesia who discover themselves inside a video store and can't quite recall the name of that actor who's the son of Spartacus and who have a fuzzy recall of the titles of recent hit movies, the numbingly dull and cheap FATAL INSTINCT should trigger a complete recovery.
Frank Stegner (Gene Armor) is murdered at a Southern California resort hotel and laid-back detective Cliff Burden (Michael Madsen) is sent to investigate. Burden finds out that the hotel is definitely in the off-season because, aside from Frank and his girlfriend (Kim McKamy), the only two people
at the hotel the night of the murder were the hotel manager Cy Tarr (Richard Foronjy) and the beautiful hotel owner Catherine Merrims (Laura Johnson). Cliff immediately suspects Catherine of the murder and begins following her and ransacking her room at the hotel. But before long, he becomes
sexually involved with her and the two engage in a torrid love affair.
But Burden is getting pressured from his boss, Captain Merihew (Tommy Redmond Hicks), to solve the case. He finds out that Catherine is a woman with a past, having moved to Southern California after shooting a burglar and rejecting her therapist, who promptly killed himself. As the case unfolds,
Burden discovers that the dead therapist is actually alive, now under the moniker of Bill Hook (Tony Hamilton). And Hook has Catherine under his obsessive psychotherapeutic spell. Burden realizes that Hook is the killer of Frank Stegner after finding Frank's girlfriend murdered. He races back to
the hotel and finds Catherine held at bay by Hook. After a shootout, Burden kills Hook, but not before Hook pumps some bullets into Catherine. At the film's fadeout, Burden sits by the hotel swimming pool and smokes a cigarette.
Obviously, these filmmakers had no compunction about exploiting the tremendous popularity of FATAL ATTRACTION and BASIC INSTINCT to create an artificial demand for their product, but all FATAL INSTINCT manages to achieve is to evoke a weak impression of the originals; there's no desire to expand
or embellish on the popular "erotic thriller" genre currently dominating the direct-to-video marketplace and, increasingly, movie theaters. While not painful or difficult to sit through, FATAL INSTINCT's main problem is its shoddiness, which, in the fashion world equivalent, would be an Oscar de
la Renta knock-off manufactured in Newark.
George D. Putnam's threadbare screenplay was clearly calculated to bask in the success of BASIC INSTINCT, containing not one moment of interest or suspense in itself. When Hook is discovered to be the murderer, the only surprise is why it took so long for Cliff to figure it out. Putnam's
screenplay is a paint-by-numbers clone, only with some of the paints missing. The actors also seem to be in on the listlessness of the venture with Michael Madsen (THELMA & LOUISE, RESERVOIR DOGS) appearing bored and sounding like Danny Aiello in slow motion. Only Laura Johnson plays her part a
peg above mediocrity. The perfunctory location shooting is limited to mostly two locations--the hotel and the police department office. This may have been interesting in the days of Edwin S. Porter, but in 1992 it's merely tiresome and flat.
With all the unused writing, acting and filmmaking talents waiting on tables, parking cars and writing film reviews, it is vastly depressing to know that films like FATAL INSTINCT will continue to get made while artists of originality and vision starve. (Violence, excessive nudity, excessive
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