40 years on, Body Heat remains a sweaty, seduc­tive erot­ic thriller

With its mous­ta­chioed every­man, steel-heart­ed femme fatale and schlocky twist end­ing, Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat remains a touch­stone of the erot­ic thriller genre. Look­ing back 40 years on from the film’s release, it’s clear to see how Kath­leen Turner’s break­out per­for­mance forged a new path for women in Hol­ly­wood through­out the 1980s and ​’90s.

Many films that emerged dur­ing the erot­ic thriller boom were dis­missed as misog­y­nis­tic – the prod­ucts of screen­writer Joe Eszterhas’s coke-fuelled, cum-stained scrib­blings. But they had an unde­ni­ably seduc­tive effect on audi­ences, wear­ing their sleaze on their sleeve and giv­ing women com­plex roles that placed the pow­er firm­ly in their sweaty, post-coital palms.

While the New Hol­ly­wood era had pre­vi­ous­ly cen­tred tor­tured male pro­tag­o­nists, Body Heat put Kath­leen Turner’s Mat­ty Walk­er in a posi­tion of dom­i­nance over the film’s splut­ter­ing, dumb­struck male char­ac­ters. ​“Not only was Mat­ty a fan­tas­tic char­ac­ter in a tru­ly great film,” Turn­er said in a 2018 inter­view, ​“she was at the cen­tre of the film. The whole movie rotat­ed around her. A part like that is dif­fi­cult to get as an estab­lished actress, let alone as a vir­tu­al unknown.”

William Hurt stars along­side Turn­er as Ned Racine, a slop­py lawyer bit­ten by Matty’s black wid­ow, whom he meets by appar­ent chance in Flori­da dur­ing a heat­wave. The pair soon fall in lust and scheme to mur­der Matty’s rich hus­band, but after Ned begins to doubt Matty’s motives and fears he has been duped, he falls down a rab­bit hole of para­noia. When we first meet Mat­ty in a neon-hued sub­urb, with her immac­u­late­ly waved locks and white cot­ton dress, Ned’s reac­tion mir­rors our own; we’re instant­ly entranced and enthralled by this woman.

More than just a noir knock-off, Body Heat tran­scends its cin­e­mat­ic influ­ences by align­ing with the new­ly accept­able promis­cu­ity of Gen X, thrilling audi­ences in an any­thing-goes, con­se­quence-free man­ner. (Even the seed­i­est film noirs had to bow to the Hays Code.) It has been said that Dou­ble Indemnity’s Phyl­lis Diet­rich­son walked so Mat­ty Walk­er could run – but it’s equal­ly true that Mat­ty Walk­er walked so that Fatal Attraction’s Alex For­rest and Basic Instinct’s Cather­ine Tram­mel could fuck.

Body Heat pos­i­tive­ly drips with sweat, all soft focus and slick sur­faces. The heat­wave that the char­ac­ters con­stant­ly refer to becomes a char­ac­ter in itself, quite lit­er­al­ly adding a lay­er of hot air to the atmos­phere of intense pas­sion and deceit. When Mat­ty lifts her hair to allow the nape of her neck to cool, the mas­ter­ful direct­ing, edit­ing, pro­duc­tion design and act­ing com­bine to give the moment a charged feel: it’s by no means a cheap, flesh-bar­ing trick.

For all its nudi­ty — of which there is plen­ty — the film’s hottest scene comes ful­ly-clothed. Ned is pac­ing the porch of Matty’s man­sion, hav­ing been shut out and asked to leave, pre­sum­ably before they do some­thing they may regret. He rat­tles the door, but it’s locked. Through Venet­ian blinds they gaze at each oth­er; her face imper­cep­ti­bly dares him to come inside and take her. He picks up a chair, smash­es the win­dow and strides in, cement­ing his fate as the fall guy to what­ev­er scheme Mat­ty has seem­ing­ly cooked up. The ulti­mate thrill of Body Heat comes not from sex, but see­ing the woman win.