Fatal Attraction Details

This is the movie that, among other things, helped create a new genre: the psychotic female from hell (see Basic Instinct, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and The Crush for prime examples). Glenn Close plays the obsessed woman driven to extreme lengths when she discovers that Michael Douglas is not going to leave his wife (Anne Archer) for her. Close is excellent in a thankless role, while Douglas established himself as the troubled icon of middle-class America, the ordinary man who would later find himself getting out of his depth in the likes of Falling Down and Disclosure. The movie's message (it's all right to have an affair as long as it's not with a nutcase) is more than a little dubious, but there is no denying its slick power and director Adrian Lyne milks the tension for all it's worth. However, he had to reshoot the movie's climax after test audiences gave the thumbs down to his first ending.

"...The screws are tightened expertly in this suspenseful meller....Glenn Close throws herself into the physical abandon of the early reels with surprising relish, and becomes genuinely frightening..."