Fatal Attraction

I was walking down the streets of New York when I passed by the Hotel Roxy. I’ve past by, even been in the Roxy a few times (Saw Dave Chappelle There before he was a superstar), but I did not know they had a Roxy Cinema pocketed inside. I just happen to look up and saw they were showing Enter The Dragon, and I was like oh that’s cool. At the time I said that I would come back and check this place out to see what it’s about.

And today turn out to be that cool day.

Once again walking down the street, I look up while passing the Roxy Hotel. “Oh yeah, this place shows flicks” I said as I looked up. I noticed something new this time too…The movies were free. “That’s the magic word!” I took a closer look and noticed that Fatal Attraction was playing at 4:30pm. I checked my watch and it was exactly 4:30. So I went in and asked around for the Roxy Cinema. It was located in the basement (never been down there).

It’s a nice place, you can tell it’s brand new but has a retro feel to it. A good place to watch an 80s movie. I came in five of six minutes after the movie started at 4:30pm (I knew no trailers would be shown, just the movie. Usually I would pass if I did not see the beginning but hey, this is a new (and free) experience.

I have not seen Fatal Attraction since I was a kid, and I’m talking Kid Kid, single digits here. This was a time when streaming was something they must have done on the Star Ship Enterprise in the 23rd Century, A time when only the rich had something called a Compact Disc. I’m talking VHS home video here.

I remembered bits and pieces of the film as I watched. I was very impressed that my memory got a quick jog just before all the nude shots, which must have been burned in my head since I was nine.

Everyone knows that Micheal Douglas was a bankable star, but as I watched the movie I began to reminisce on the fact. As a kid, I must have seen every movie this guy was in: Wall Street, Black Rain and the trilogy of movies he did with his college roommate, Danny Devito and the sexy sounding, Kathleen Turner (Just in case you don’t know them, I’m talking about Romancing The Stone it’s sequel Jewel of the Nile, and the unrelated but just as great War of The Roses).  I just think it’s strange that an child knew enough about Douglas to think he was cool enough to want to see his flicks, but they all were really good flicks.

Anyway, Douglas (With the possible exception of his academy award winning turn as Gordon Gekko) tends to play nice guys heavy into shady shit. In this case he’s Dan Gallagher, living the perfect 80s lifestyle with his wife and kid, they are about to leave the city and move to a suburb to raise a family, but at a party, he meets Alex, played by Glen Close. Adrian Lyne and his actors do a good job of showing us the instant attraction between the two without saying much. Nothing happens, but a second encounter puts all the cards on the table for what seems like a no strings attached bed room dance, and Dan is all like, “why not, my wife and kid are out of the city looking at houses, I can do this. So he gives her the passion right on the kitchen counter”. So they had fun while his wife is away no big deal, now we can go back to our regular lives right? Right?

Unfortunately for Dan, this is not a Woody Allen movie, the consequences for stepping out on your wife don’t end in a comedic folly. As they are having fun, he notices slowly what he just gotten into, with jokes about seeing her father die and her getting very upset when he leaves during their second encounter.

Then she goes bonkers–real bonkers and just when he thought he had her under control, she just increases the level of Bonkers (An impressive feat might I add cause when you watch it, Alex gives a WTF moment, she only tops as the movie goes on).

It’s effecting his work (Lucky it did not effect his relationship with his boss Herman Munster from the Munsters, cause you know, wouldn’t want him to do the Munster mash on you), and of course she’s effecting his wife in kid. It’s a hard lesson to learn.

But it’s hard not to still love Micheal Douglas in this movie. like I said his movie star days seem to have him playing appealing men who get involved with some shading things, Douglas is charming and you can’t help but to side with him despite this whole thing being his fault.

Stranger for me is that Anne Archer, who plays his wife in the movie was a hot number here.  Every time she smiled, I thought to myself “Why would he cheat on her?”

I can tell you why. Glenn Close is really sexy in this picture. That’s what she has going for her here, mad sex appeal. She was oozing it on the screen and as charismatic as Douglas is, Close fuels the fire. You really could not blame him for wanting to get a piece of that (Which in reality is why he should not have done it cause she made it all too easy for him. I mean way too easy, so easy you knew it was going to end badly).

I could see why he would want to leave his kid. I know that’s mean of me to say, but she was begging for a bunny the entire film and she already had a dog and a hamster (A perfect example of what was wrong with the 80s)

Fatal Attraction has an amazing story well done by the director and the actors that allows it to stand the test of time despite it being so engulfed in the decade it was filmed. Me personally, I remember this New York and all the places they filmed so I was in heaven. All the wide shots of the landscapes were done for dramatic feel (especially one scene were Alex followed Dan home), not knowing that one day looking back on this would take me to that time and place and make the movie even better after almost thirty years.

And thirty years later, it’s still one of those movies that people reference when they talk about how looney tunes your significant other can get. Not a bad legacy for it at all.