Body Heat

As a searing heat wave lays a still blanket of sweat across a Florida beach town, local lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt) strikes up lurid affair with Matty (Kathleen Turner), an unhappily married woman. Passions run extra high in the stifling temperatures, and soon talk turns to the various ways the couple can get rid of Matty's lame duck husband. It's a simple story made incredibly effective by an adept understanding of atmosphere and performance, a combination of pure doom and S-E-X. Lawrence Kasdan's (THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK) hazy thriller comes replete with the kind of ominous romance that defined the very best of its 1940s predecessors, set loose in a time when filmmakers were free to explore eroticism on screen. The result? One of the great neo-noirs to come out of the last gasp of New Hollywood, a film that guaranteed to make you feel like you need a cold shower.