YMMV / Basic Instinct

• Alternative Character Interpretation: There is much debate amongst fans of the film whether Beth is an innocent victim or an evil Femme Fatale. There are people who think it's not a hundred percent clear even at the end that Catherine is a murderess. There is even a theory that Beth and Catherine are in league all along - which explains how they can guess each other's actions and know how the same information - and only pretend to be foes to mess with Nick's head. Did Roxy commit any of the murders? Apart from her brother and the attempted murder of Nick. The final shot is interpreted differently by different viewers. Is Catherine about to kill Nick? Was she going to kill him and then changed her mind? Does the ice pick mean she definitely is the killer or is it only supposed to hint she might be? There is also debate whether the first scene of Nick and Beth in her apartment is sex or date rape.
• Awesome Music: The ever-dependable Jerry Goldsmith contributes a sensuous, atmospheric and exciting score.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: So much so that people are often Just Here for Godzilla: Even in an erotic thriller, where fanservice is to be expected, Catherine's interrogation, during which she recrosses her legs while wearing an extremely short skirt with no panties, infamously stood out. Long-distance gynecology, anyone? It has even been remembered as "the scene that wore out many VHS tapes."
• Complete Monster: Catherine Tramell derives joy only from death-defying gambits, in which she manipulates and leads others to their deaths. Seducing her victims into falling in love with her, Catherine kills them when she grows bored and publishes novels inspired by her crimes, as a show of arrogance in what she can get away with. With a slew of bodies behind her, including her own parents, Catherine manipulates her girlfriend into getting herself killed in a jealous attack on Catherine's other lover, Nick Curran, before setting up her own acquaintance to be blamed for Catherine's murders and get killed by Nick. Given a court-ordered psychologist, Dr. Michael Glass, years later, Catherine mentally torments him and personally kills Glass's wife, manipulating Glass into killing a rival psychologist and framing him for both crimes, happily admitting to Glass that she loves and indulges in her own evil nature.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: If one looks closely enough at her mentality, Catherine Tramell seems to display symptoms of all four Cluster B Personality Disorders (Antisocial, Borderline, Narcissistic, and Histrionic), even if not fully. Though it should be very obvious to which condition she best represents.
• Fetish Retardant: Nick's sagging buttocks during sex scenes provoked laughter from audiences. This includes the much-debated sex scene with Beth, where whatever the scene intended to convey takes a backseat to the audience being subjected to having an eyeful of them for quite some time.
• Hollywood Homely: Brown hair, brown eyes, glasses, and sensible and drab-colored clothes (and presumably underwear as well) was supposedly enough to make Beth the plain alternative to the glamorous Catherine. Granted, she was still considered desirable enough to gain the sexual interest of Catherine and Nick, to the point of doing a nice topless scene.
• Memetic Mutation: The interrogation scene has been parodied countless times over the years. Even the WWE did a parody of it when promoting WrestleMania 21.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The first scene depicts Catherine (from behind) having passionate sex with a man in a very warm rosy setting. She proceeds to tie his hands to the bed with a silk scarf, and just as they are about to orgasm she grabs an ice pick and starts stabbing the poor guy repeatedly. How quickly the scene shifts from eroticism to pure horror is quite a shock. We don't even see him die, we just watch him scream madly and struggle to get away as Catherine keeps stabbing, getting bathed in his blood as the movie cuts to the next scene.
  • When Nick and Catherine have sex the first time, she ties him to the bed — something which the police (and audience) presumes she usually does with her male partners before murdering them mid-coitus. Nick is frightened but too aroused and restrained to do anything, and it looks as if she's going to kill him right then and there during the act. Sure, she only has sex with him but still.
  • The highly intense car chase scene between Nick and the suspect in the car trying to kill him. Complete with a car crash via the automobile flipping over the bridge and Roxy's corpse falling out with eyes wide open.
  • Gus being cornered in the building after exiting the elevator and being stabbed to death with an ice pick before his friend could get to him.
  • Beth being shot to death by a cop on duty and dying very quickly from her gun wound. There's a reason cops tell people to take their hands out of their pockets.
  • The idea of a young juvenile Roxy murdering her brothers when she was a teen because she was of jealous of her father's attention to them. And the fact she seduced numerous young boys just to kill them later.
  • Hazel Dobkins, a seemingly sweet old woman who is friends with Catherine, killed her entire family for no good reason.
  • The possibility that Catherine murdered her parents at a young age and got away with it. Based on the novels she's written.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: The movie became one of the highest-grossing movies of 1992, despite protests over being misogynistic and homophobic. People love forbidden fruit.
• Once Original, Now Common: While this film codified the erotic thriller along with Fatal Attraction, nearly thirty years on the titilation has worn off with easy access to internet pornography and increased sexualization of popular culture, and the Cliché Storm nature of the plot being copied many times since makes Catherine come across not as an ingenious Femme Fatale but an incredibly unsubtle manipulator and Devil in Plain Sight and Nick not as a brooding Tragic Hero but a gullible lemming. It's co-codifier is actually a lot more Values Resonant for dealing with the realistic consequences of infidelity and stalking and its moral ambiguity.
• One-Scene Wonder: Wayne Knight's character.
• Signature Scene: The interrogation scene where Catherine crosses her legs and it's clear she's Going Commando. It's been parodied numerous times, either playing the fanservice aspects straight again or using it for Fan Disservice (like featuring an older woman or an overweight guy instead).
• The Un-Twist: Catherine was so obviously telegraphed as the killer that most viewers believed it when the evidence began pointing to Beth. The filmmakers stated they had to add the very last shot of the ice pick probably revealing Catherine as the real killer specifically to lead people in the right direction right before the movie ends.
• The Woobie: Beth, who suffers date-rape, verbal abuse, and at least one physical altercation with her boyfriend Nick Curran. She spends the remainder of the film trying to warn him of Catherine Trammell only to get blown off and cheated on by him and eventually she dies by his gun while telling him she loved him.

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