Everybody knows Basic Instinct for one reason and one reason alone: it features that super memorable and very revealing moment where a '90s Sharon Stone uncrosses and crosses her legs during an interrogation, leaving just enough time for audiences to gaze into her holiest of holies and then... it's gone! It's one of the most iconic moments in all of cinema, of course, and there's no doubt that it was designed that way on purpose. Hubba hubba. People don't tend to remember much else about Paul Verhoeven's erotic thriller, save for the fact that it seems to sum up an era of similarly-titled, '90s films in the same genre (oh, and that is also stars Michael Douglas, who is like the master of said genre or something). Basic Instinct is a guilty pleasure though and through, but it's a good one - a never dull, self-aware potboiler with Hitchcockian tendencies, it is also - thanks to Stone - undeniably sexy.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
