Body Heat (1981, Warner Bros./ Ladd Comp, dir. Lawrence Kasdan, 113 min, R), is the ultimate modern “film noir.” Yes, it is a retelling of “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” This is the film about which they said simply, “good?” Kathleen Turner plays Matty Walker, the aspiring black widow-to-be (like Nicole in “Days of our Lives”), who traps a second-rate lawyer Ned Racine (played by a kind of childish William Hurt) as an accomplice to murdering her old fogey rich husband (Richard Crenna). This movie is loaded with great lines, like early when she says to him, “you’re not too bright. I like that in a man.” Later he says, “we know we’re gonna kill him.”
Then the pleasure, after the murder half-way through, is watching him get caught and her getting away (to “Purgatory” perhaps, to soap opera fans). It all starts to unravel with a deliciously staged meeting in a real estate office in central Florida—what better place for legal documents to unravel? The music score by John Barry is particularly haunting and was popular at the Crossroads Market in Dallas (on Cedar Springs) in the 80s.
I love the line, 'The problem lies elsewhere'. You might as well say, 'The ring is mine'.