Fatal Instinct (1993) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Carl Reiner felt he could make a solid entry into the lucrative genre. After all, didn't his best friend Mel Brooks virtually invent genre spoofs with Blazing Saddles? The question was - what genre was left to to satirize? One of the most popular and lucrative cinema trends in the 80s and early 90s involved the rebirth of the "erotic thriller." The basic idea had been popular back in the 1940s, when several films featured a wily dame who would use her sexual appeal to manipulate some poor sap into a criminal action which would benefit her, inevitably followed by the femme fatale disappearing to let the patsy take the rap. The genre's renaissance in the 1980s featured the same old conniving schemes and sassy dialogue from the 40s, but in the permissive 1980s filmmakers could couple the sexual tease with sexual delivery as well, and the combination proved to be box office dynamite for the earliest and best entries into the marketplace: Body Heat, Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, for example. Reiner's Fatal Instinct is a parody of those three films, as well as Cape Fear, Chinatown, Sleeping with the Enemy, and the mother of them all, Double Indemnity.

The critics really didn't care for Fatal Instinct. I think it is an OK movie, but it could have been much better. The actors all perform in an old-fashioned, overwrought "can't you see I'm kidding" style, replete with funny faces and slapstick, and that stepped on some of the best material. I think it would have worked better if they had kept the lines and situations just as silly, but had acted in a completely believable way, as if the film were a legitimate drama. The star, Armand Assante, is not Leslie Nielsen in the comedy department, but is quite a good serious actor and might have delivered a hilarious performance if Reiner had said to him "Armand, don't try to be funny. Don't Mug. Don't act so big. Just act the scene for real and let the lines do their job."

• Dudley Moore was originally in the film as the mother of the bad guy who was based on the Cape Fear character.
• The film was originally called "Triple Indemnity".
• There was originally a scene making fun of Silence of the Lambs.
• There was a silly scene in which Assante, who was both the arresting officer and the defense attorney of the accused murderess, was questioning her in one voice, then advising her not to answer in another. Cutting this was definitely the correct move.

The DVD is a mixed bag. It is great to see an older small-release film with ten sections of deleted footage, including one scene which is four minutes long, and it's always fun to hear commentary by Carl Reiner, who directed. Those are some good plusses. On the other hand, there's no theatrical widesceen version of the film itself. The only place where you can see the theatrical aspect ratio is in some of the deleted scenes!