Matty Walker, played by Kathleen Turner, is the object of his obsession and lures him into a plot to murder her investor husband Edmund (Richard Crenna).
William Hurt plays Ned Racine, a sleazy lawyer whose lust for a married woman lands him in hot water. In Kasdan’s original screenplay, that premise takes on a whole new life with two new unsympathetic protagonists, a Florida setting and an unrelenting heatwave. The basic premise of a femme fatale and her lover plot to murder her wealthy husband was modelled from the noir Double Indemnity (1944). Inspired by Kasdan’s love of film noir, specifically movies like The Big Sleep (1946), Out of the Past (1947) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Body Heat pays homage to the film noir style while boosting its sex appeal for a contemporary audience. An atmospheric and steamy neo-noir, Body Heat (1981) is an impressive feature directorial debut by Lawrence Kasdan.
