And yet if bad modern noir can play like a parody, good noir still has the power to seduce. Yes, Lawrence Kasdan's “Body Heat” (1981) is aware of the films that inspired it--especially Billy Wilder's “Double Indemnity” (1944). But it has a power that transcends its sources. It exploits the personal style of its stars to insinuate itself; Kael is unfair to Turner, who in her debut role played a woman so sexually confident that we can believe her lover (William Hurt) could be dazed into doing almost anything for her. The moment we believe that, the movie stops being an exercise and starts working. (I think the moment occurs in the scene where she leads Hurt by her hand in that manner a man is least inclined to argue with.)
Watch Body Heat movie trailer and get the latest cast info, photos, movie review and more on TVGuide.com. 1981's Body Heat had all the ingredients to be really quite awful. Turned out to be not so. Star Wars co-writer Lawrence Kasdan' s debut in the directors chair was also to be the curtain raising feature for the movies true star Kathleen Turner. She positively rocks my world as the nasty scheming 'Marty Walker'.
Women are rarely allowed to be bold and devious in the movies; most directors are men, and they see women as goals, prizes, enemies, lovers and friends, but rarely as protagonists. Turner's entrance in “Body Heat” announces that she is the film's center of power. It is a hot, humid night in Florida. Hurt, playing a cocky but lazy lawyer named Ned Racine, is strolling on a pier where an exhausted band is listlessly playing. He is behind the seated audience. We can see straight down the center aisle to the bandstand. All is dark and red and orange. Suddenly a woman in white stands up, turns around and walks straight toward him. This is Matty Walker. To see her is to need her.
- Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat is a phenomenal directorial debut. For a first-time director, he had such a great visual eye for blocking the camera and blocking actors. He also put together a fantastic cast with William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Mickey Rourke, Ted Dansen, J.A. Preston, and Richard Crenna.
- Body Heat is a 1981 American neo-noir erotic thriller film written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan in his directorial debut. It stars William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, and Richard Crenna, and features Ted Danson, J. Preston, and Mickey Rourke.
Actors In The Movie Heat
Turner in her first movie role was an intriguing original. Slender, with hair down to her shoulders, she evoked aspects of Barbara Stanwyck and Lauren Bacall. But the voice, with its elusive hint of a Latin accent, was challenging. She had “angry eyes,” the critic David Thomson observed. And a slight overbite (later corrected, I think) gave a playful edge to her challenging dialogue (“You're not too smart, are you?” she says soon after meeting him. “I like that in a man.”)
Hurt had been in one movie before “Body Heat” (Ken Russell's “Altered States” in 1980). He was still unfamiliar: a tall, already balding, indolently handsome man with a certain lazy arrogance to his speech, as if amused by his own intelligence. “Body Heat” is a movie about a woman who gets a man to commit murder for her. It is important that the man not be a dummy; he needs to be smart enough to think of the plan himself. One of the brilliant touches of Kasdan's screenplay is the way he makes Ned Racine think he is the initiator of Matty Walker's plans.
Ned and Matty do kill Edmund. Ned attacks Edmund with a board and then takes his body somewhere and destroys the place with a bomb that he had made. Ned then later learns that Matty had the will changed but since it was not valid, all of Edmund's money goes to her and not half to her and the other half to Edmund's sister, Roz. Ned also discovers that Edmund's glasses that he always wears were not at the crime scene and that someone was trying to call Ned the night of the murder which makes Ned a suspect. When Ned asks Matty about the glasses, she says that the maid must have took them and she wants money if she is to return them. Matty later says to Ned that the maid stopped by Matty's place to drop off the glasses, but the man who helped Ned make the bomb tells Ned that he saw Matty and helped her make a bomb. When Ned sees Matty, he forces Matty to go into the boathouse where the glasses supposedly are and where Ned discovers a bomb that Matty may have placed. As Matty enters the boathouse, it explodes. Ned is arrested and put in jail for the 'murder' of Matty and for possibly Edmund's murder. That night, Ned wakes up and starts to realise that Matty is somehow still alive. But everyone denies it because the dental records show up as Matty's. But after receiving a yearbook, Ned discovers that Matty's real name is Mary Ann Simpson, which was the name of the girl who looked a lot like Matty shown earlier in the movie. Also that Matty is the name of the girl posing as Mary Ann Simpson. Which means that it was the girl posing as Mary Ann Simpson and not Matty (Turner) whose body was burned to death. The movie ends with Matty/Mary Ann Simpson (Turner) on a beach in Kauai.
Big Evil
Factual error: Under US law neither Peter Lowenstein nor Oscar Grace would be allowed any level of participation in the investigation, arrest and prosecution of Ned Racine. Both have a highly visible social relationship with him, which disqualifies them from having anything to do with a criminal case against him. In fact as soon as he became a suspect in Edmund Walker's murder they would both be officially 'warned off' - told not to contact him again for any reason.
Ned: You better take me up on this quick. In about 45 minutes, I'm going to give up and go away.
Trivia: Teddy Lewis tells Ned that 'Matty' had him show her how to rig up a explosive with a delay to a door. So in theory Matty could have opened the door and escaped unscathed.
Kathleen Turner
Question: Maddy pulls up to the house in her dead husband's Cadillac right around the time Ned was supposed to be at the boat house. Why would she be driving his car when at that point in time, she is supposed to be Mary Ann Simpson, her real identity? Ned was supposed to be dead at that point. The boat house could have blown up as she arrived and the fire dept. called by a neighbor would be on its way?
Answer:It was all part of the plan to frame Ned, she purposely left clues behind as Ned would become suspicious of her. In the end, the dead body of the real Mary Ann Simpson was already in the houseboat. Thus everyone would think she's was dead when in fact she in sunning on a tropical beach.
Cast Of Body Heat Movie Poster
Answer:Maddie (who was the real Mary Ann Simpson) was deliberately being careless, dropping clues, and creating inconsistencies, like leaving Edmund's eyeglasses behind at the house when they moved his body. It was the same with Edmund's car. She was framing Ned as being the sole murderer who killed both (the real) Maddie and Edmund. She had specifically targeted Ned as her accomplice, knowing he was an incompetent lawyer who was careless about details.
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Cast Of Body Heat Movie Cast
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