Some sex scenes are about sex. This one is about who’s holding the scarf.
What happens in the Basic Instinct scene
Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct, written by Joe Eszterhas, opens with a blonde woman tying rock star Johnny Boz to a bed with a silk scarf and killing him with an ice pick. Sharon Stone’s Catherine Tramell is his girlfriend, a crime novelist whose latest book mirrors the murder, and San Francisco detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) can’t decide whether he wants to arrest her or be ruined by her.
He chooses ruin. After a night at Boz’s club, Catherine takes Nick back to her house, and the film finally stops circling: she ties his wrists to the bed during sex, the exact setup of the murder that opened the picture, while her girlfriend Roxy watches unseen. Verhoeven stages it so every second of pleasure carries a question mark over it. Stone plays Catherine completely in control, amused, never once asking permission from the audience.
It’s her own body and her own choice, and it’s the scene that made her the biggest sex symbol of the early 1990s.
It’s number one on the Sharon Stone hub, where every scene of hers we cover is ranked.
Film: Basic Instinct (TriStar Pictures / Carolco, 1992) · directed by Paul Verhoeven · written by Joe Eszterhas · Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell, Michael Douglas as Nick Curran · released March 20, 1992 · about $353 million worldwide · Stone was in her early thirties at filming (born March 10, 1958) · no body double noted
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