You know how some film historians - Paul Schrader, for example, wrote an essay on it - claim that Film Noir was a movement, not a genre, and it only lasted during a certain time frame? (From Double Indemnity in '44 to Touch of Evil in '56, if you're asking.) Steamy Flicks might have been the same kind of thing, because they blew up from the arrival of Fatal Attraction in 1987, and I think they might have ended around the time the second half of tonight's double feature, or possibly when David Caruso decided to be like David Caruso in Jade. It was a time and place when people spoke with their wallets at the box office, and their wallets apparently said "We want to see women (preferably blondes) have crazy sex (preferably with Michael Douglas)."
Now, I haven't researched this entire movement and its place in Hollywood history. I was only 14 or 15 when it all but died out in the mid-'90s; I've been learning and playing catch-up ever since. But I'm pretty sure the two movies I'm gonna talk about tonight are two of the craziest Steamy Flicks from that time and place.
That place is New York City.
HOW THIS WORKS
Step 1) I pick a movie.
Step 2) I tell you about the movie.
Step 3) I tell you what we're looking for in a double feature movie.
Step 4) Another movie!
Step 5) Victory!
Blue Steel
1990, Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Steamy Flicks hadn't hit their prime popularity yet in 1990 - that would come two years later when Basic Instinct became a pop culture thing - which means that Kathryn Bigelow's Blue Steel didn't have to follow some of the rules that Verhoeven's film made for this cinematic movement. That's a really good thing, because Bigelow and co-writer Eric Red (who had teamed together previously on Near Dark) had a little more freedom than they might have had if Sharon Stone was already a household name. They made their movie crazy, but it was at least their own kind of crazy. That's what makes it one of the best of all Steamy Flicks.
Blue Steel is the story of Megan Turner (Jamie Lee Curtis!), a rookie cop who admits flat out that she wanted to become a cop because she craves action. Apparently they didn't have psychiatric tests for police officer women (Thanks, Hot Fuzz) in 1990 NYC, and that's fine, because Megan is kinda mostly sane. It's just that she has pretty bad luck.
Megan gets her first taste of action early in the film, and it doesn't go extremely well. She rushes into a NYC grocery store because she sees a gunman (a youngish Tom Sizemore) attempting to rob it, and she ends up gunning him down before he can do the same to her. In the chaos that follows, one of the onlookers, Eugene (Ron Silver), manages to grab the robber's gun and leave the scene before Megan can clean things up. Why would Eugene do that?
Because Eugene is CRAZY.
I don't like to call people crazy. It's not a nice word, nor is it the technical term. But if you lined up all the people in all the movies of the 1990s, and ranked them by mental illness, I'm willing to bet that Eugene would be in the top five or ten craziest.
- Eugene steals a gun from the crime scene, leaving poor Megan's shooting under investigation because apparently no one else saw the robber's gun.
- Eugene uses the gun to kill people, starting with an old man who seems too innocent to even try to not get killed while expressing his disbelief that he's about to be killed.
- Eugene carves "MEGAN TURNER" into the side of the bullet he uses to kill the old man, leaving Megan facing even more questions from Internal Affairs and a nice, but tough, cop (with beautiful curly hair) played by the marvelous Clancy Brown.
- Eugene lifts weights, which wouldn't be entirely creepy if he didn't start hearing voices while doing it, then start arguing with himself, then lift weights more violently.
- Eugene not only continues to kill people, but he does things like going to a rooftop, stripping nude, and wiping the hooker-he-just-murdered's blood-drenched sweater all over his face and body.
- Eugene uses the word "misanthropic" to describe his job as a commodities trader. Maybe that's not crazy, but it's a warning sign.
Oh yeah, and Eugene also manages to bump in to Megan on the street, put on the charm, and start dating her.
I KNOW. If you told me these were things that happened in a movie about a rookie cop who is just trying to get a little action, I wouldn't believe it either. But that's Blue Steel. And there's a lot more twists from there, I'm not giving too much away.
Now that I've gotten that craziness out of the way, let's get back to Megan Turner, as played by the still virginal in my mind Jamie Lee. She falls madly in love with Eugene. Maybe it's because her father doesn't like her being a cop, maybe it's because all the other men around seem to be shouting at her, but it's probably because Eugene seems to have a caring personality when he wants to. He's sweet to her, and she's not used to that. One one of their earliest dates she kind of breaks down, possibly because the rest of her life just isn't working out right now.
Megan:
"I'm actually happy, very happy to be here. I feel like I'm on top of the world."
Eugene:
"Wanna get higher?"
At this point you might expect me to tell you that Eugene then gets Megan addicted to crack and starts riding her around the room like a pony. But NO. That's not what happens. He takes her for a ride in a helicopter. Over New York City, at night, with the wind in their hair and smiles on their faces. It's actually really lovely. At the end of the night, they share one of the most beautifully framed kisses I've ever seen on screen.
Now, what do we need for a double feature?
- Blue Steel is blessed with the unique couple, Curtis and Silver, that leads its cast. It's a pairing that you wouldn't really expect, and yet they play off each other incredibly well. This is mostly because they're two great actors, but also because they have an awkward, yet palpable, chemistry with each other. We need leads like that.
- Blue Steel also brings a stacked supporting cast to the table. I mentioned Brown and Sizemore, but you can also keep your eyes open for such all-stars as Elizabeth Pena, Matt Craven, Kevin Dunn and Richard Freakin' Jenkins. That's a great cast. We need a movie that has some heavyweights around the leads.
- I talked about the Steamy Flicks movement in the opening, but Blue Steel is actually pretty tame compared to some of them in the Steam department. If this double feature's gonna make any sense, I gotta take the Steam up a notch with movie number two.
- One of the things I think about every time I see Blue Steel is whether or not Megan is a problematic character. She's a strong, independent woman who can hold her own most of the time, but she also lets herself get caught up in the moment and falls in love with a crazy guy while occasionally getting in trouble because of her action fueled desire to be a hero. The movie solves this debate by the time the credits roll - and does so emphatically - but it's still interesting to think about the female lead and her choices when Hollywood so often struggles with characters like this. So, I'm looking for a female lead who's got some issues that the film has to work out.
- Also, I need to find a movie crazier than Blue Steel. I know that sounds difficult when you read all that stuff I said about Eugene, but I'm looking for a movie that does some insane things. Maybe a movie that has a montage where they cut together a series of trust falls, a snowball fight, and a sex scene.
That movie, thankfully, exists.
Never Talk To Strangers
1995, Directed by Peter Hall
It's 1995 and we're in New York City. It's been five years since the events of Blue Steel (You can't prove that this isn't a shared universe, so back off!), and criminal psychologist Dr. Sarah Taylor (Rebecca DeMornay) is at the top of her game. She's working on the case of an accused serial rapist, Max Cheski (Harry Dean Stanton!), who might have Multiple Personalities Disorder or might be schizophrenic or might be a mastermind of crazy like Eugene was in Blue Steel. As we watch their sessions together it takes maybe seven words for us to realize Stanton, as you would expect if you know his work, is killing it in this role. Cheski is kind of a laid back version of Hannibal Lecter to Sarah's Clarice Starling, so when she asks "How often when you say you suffer from bouts of dementia?" and he responds with "I don't remember." before breaking into laughter, you start to realize Never Talk To Strangers is going to be the kind of movie where the lead character says the title of the movie, ten minutes into the movie, while doing the exact thing the title of the movie is saying not to do.
Cheski might be the shadiest dude in Sarah's life, but the movie quickly reveals there's going to be a lot of competition in the race for that title. First she's out to a kinky art gallery with her horny neighbor (Dennis Miller), and later her alcoholic father (Len Cariou) shows up and tries to make amends by jumping out of a dark alleyway at her. Between these moments, she meets a stranger in a supermarket (if these two movies taught me anything, it's that people shouldn't meet in NYC supermarkets) named Tony Ramirez, played by the undeniably suave Antonio Banderas.
To her credit, Sarah tries really hard to avoid Tony's advances...for about 2 minutes. He starts up a conversation about how she's choosing the wrong wine, compliments her on her looks, and tries to convince her he's got the right wine for her waiting at his nearby loft apartment. Much like the banter between Eugene and Megan in Blue Steel, he's got the right answers to most of her rebuttals.
Sarah:
"Do I look like someone who can be bought with a great vintage?"
Tony:
"You look like someone...who has to be won."
You might have guessed by now that Sarah and Tony get Steamy soon after this. And, since the bar for Steaminess had been raised by Basic Instinct and its immediate predecessors, this one goes for bizarrely Steamy with aplomb. It's not long before we start to question everything in Never Talk To Strangers, because when we see what Sarah is willing to do inside Tony's sex cage we see that Sarah is all about that Steam. Cheski sees it, Tony sees it, and whoever starts doing things like leaving dead flowers at her door or placing her obituary in the newspaper prematurely starts to see it.
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| The kissing in Never Talk To Strangers is just a tad Steamier than that of Blue Steel. Lovely doesn't live here anymore. |
The biggest difference between Blue Steel and Never Talk to Strangers is their tones. Bigelow kept her film gritty with a focus on the police drama and a restrained musical score, while famed theater director Peter Hall (the father of actress Rebecca Hall) brings an operatic drama and a Pino Donaggio score to Never Talk To Strangers. The movie hits its first peak when Sarah, deep in doubt about Tony due to everything going on around her, realizes he might be a nice guy by participating in trust falls in a snowy park at night.
I hope you've never experienced a trust fall - that weird activity some doofus in the counseling community started where you fall backwards into a loved one's arms, hoping they catch you - because if you have you will be instantly jealous that you didn't experience it the same way Tony and Sarah did. What starts as an over-the-top attempt to convince her she can trust him escalates into a slow motion series of these falls, a snowball fight that devolves into a wrestling match, and (since this is a Steamy Flick) a sex scene. And it's all cut together. One shot of the fall, one of the snowballs, one of the sex back in her apartment, and repeat. It's the best montage since Rocky IV.
I'm not convinced that Never Talk to Strangers isn't a terrible movie - especially considering the finale that I won't even hint at here - but it's a perfect example of why the Steamy Flick had to die eventually. There's only so much you can do with the concept. Blue Steel used it to create a gritty police drama, and Never Talk To Strangers uses it to create a melodrama that would almost be Hitchcockian if Hitchcock lost his damn mind and threw every piece of crazy he could think of into an 89 minute movie. (Then again, a Marnie/Never Talk To Strangers double feature might work. I must think on this further.)
The Steamy Flick movement is certainly defined by a mutated venn diagram that focuses on Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone and Demi Moore, but these two flicks that exist outside that framework just seem like they should be crazy best friends. If you're ever in the mood for a bunch of psychological mumbo jumbo, sexual tension that bubbles up in the most awkward ways, and all kinds of surprises - you need to take a trip to Steamy New York City with a Blue Steel/Never Talk To Strangers double feature.
P.S. - Could I possibly say Steamy more times?
P.P.S. - Steamy.
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