Body of Evidence - Turbine Limited Edition Blu-ray Mediabook

Like the Titanic trying to turn left, sometimes there’s just no saving a film from its own demise. While the early ‘90s were in the throes of a technological revolution with improvements in CGI imagery and visual effects for big-budget spectacle blockbusters, we also witnessed the return of the neo-noir femme-fatale erotic thriller. Certainly, the argument could be made that the genre’s resurgence began in the ‘80s with gems like De Palma’s Dressed to Kill and Body Double, and matched by Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo and Adrian Lynn’s Fatal Attraction. 

Those were heavy hitters, certainly, but the genre felt like it hit its peak and most exploitive point in the ‘90s as Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct became a global box office juggernaut. All of a sudden, every big-name in the biz, in front and behind the camera, wanted in on that salacious action, on occasion, for better, but more often for worse. On the latter side of that equation for ‘90s Erotic Thrillers was Uli Edel’s Body of Evidence, an attempt to combine a murder mystery with kink culture wrapped in a courtroom procedural. Starring Madonna and Willem Dafoe, the film is rarely erotic and, unfortunately, hardly thrilling, as clumsy plotting and daffy dialogue undercut any narrative thrust. 

Our film starts out with a bang…of sorts, as an older dude is chained to his bed seemingly watching a previously-recorded sex video of himself with Madonna’s luxury art dealer Rebecca Carlson. Only he’s not watching, he’s DEAD!!! Hotshot district attorney Robert Garrett (Joe Mantegna) arrives on the scene as the cops do their thing and quickly deduces this was a classic case of homicidium sexus, and the number one suspect is our nefarious kink-inclined blonde bombshell. Coming to her aid is defense attorney Frank Dulaney (Willem Dafoe). Despite his marriage to the beautiful Julianne Moore, Frank ends up exploring more of Rebecca than just her legal defense.

Well, they can’t all be Basic Instinct. Hell, they all can’t even attempt to reach The Last Seduction (review of that 4K coming soon). Unfortunately, for every strong, turgid entry in the ‘90s run of Erotic Thrillers, there was a rather flaccid, limp if you will, entry like Body of Evidence. Maybe not as stupifyingly preposterous as Color of Night, but this is a genuinely dull feature. Clumsy character development, bizarre pacing, lurching plot, complete with often laughable dialogue, the film stumbles out of the gate and never recovers. Madonna is doing her best to be seductive, but by this point in history, we’d already seen a lot of her (figuratively and literally). Part of seduction is withholding; you need an air of mystery. Madonna had no mystery at this point (her Sex book certainly didn’t help matters). So a lot of the drama and intensity falls on Willem Dafoe to carry as the kink-curious lawyer. But even as Dafoe does his best to inject some kind of stability into the feature, at times he ends up looking like he wishes he had actually died in Vietnam and just wants out. The anticlimactic cliche climax is a doozy where everyone in the scene looks like they're racing to be the first one to die.

I’ll be blunt (or at least moreso than I have been so far): when the legal side of your thriller hinges on a twist cameo by Frank Langella, you’re in trouble. You’re in even more trouble when the erotic side of your thriller is more awkward and strange than illicitly enticing because there's no setup. Boiling hot wax on one’s naughty bits might be enticing for some, but I imagine most folks would draw the line at having a roll-around on broken lightbulb glass. Where does Body of Evidence go wrong? Frankly, it barely makes it out of the credits because it's not really interested in an honest-but-alluring look at kink. When a detective starts playing around with those jumper-cable-grade nipple clamps, it’s all downhill from there. 

Is it the worst Erotic Thriller of the ‘90s? No. Unlike Sharon Stone and Billy Baldwin in Sliver, Willem Dafoe and Madonna actually looked like they had some chemistry - they just needed a better script to work with. This movie desperately needed an over-the-top Jade-level car chase to spice up the action outside the bedroom (or car hood). For the talent involved, it deserved some clever Wild Things-level plot misdirection. Hell, I’d have even settled for one damned good Dream Lover-style twist ending. Body of Evidence sadly had nothing going for it beyond the cast, and just working through the basics.

Uli Edel made good films before Body of Evidence (Christiane F) and some great stuff after (I particularly liked his Rasputin HBO film, even if historically it’s sketchy). Willem Dafoe went on to enjoy a fantastic career in virtually every genre because he’s just that kind of incredible talent. Julianne Moore certainly moved on to bigger and better things after her brief and frankly awkward appearance here (not her fault, just a badly written character). Joe Mantegna is still Joe Mantegna-ing and is a highlight of just about any film or show, just for the energy he brings, let alone character and performance. As for Madonna, she certainly goes all out for her role, but it’s the script that fails her. Give her the right material, and she can deliver. Her career as an actress would survive long enough to stand on that balcony and belt it out for 1996’s Evita, but little else would gain any kind of box office traction. Swept Away certainly didn’t help, as she'd spend more time successfully reinventing her music career. 

All in all, Body of Evidence was a strange, nostalgic trip. I hadn’t really watched this film since late-night cable viewings, so at the start, it felt like a fresh new experience. But then, as the film rolled on, I started to remember why I never took to it. “Murder by Sex” sounds like it’d be a hell of an Agatha Christy novel, and it could have served as a great hook for an Erotic Thriller, but this film just clumsily trips over itself. The mystery side is dull, the thriller side is blunt, and the erotic side is almost comedic. While this is not a good film, I can affirm in a non-traditional sense, Body of Evidence ain’t boring. It just might not be entertaining for the reasons intended.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray 
Thanks to our friends in Germany, Body of Evidence arrives on physical media as a two-disc Blu-ray + DVD Mediabook release from Turbine. The Blu-ray is pressed on a Region Free BD50 disc. The discs are held on opposite sides of the book case with a 30-page book inside offering an essay from Wieland Schwanebeck and an interesting interview with Uli Edel (content is in German, but break out that Google Translate app and you’re good to go). The Disc loads to an animated main menu with standard navigation options. If DVD is somehow important to you, it's worth noting that the disc only offers the 97-minute theatrical cut, whereas the Blu-ray is the full 101-minute extended experience. 

For this release of Body of Evidence, Turbine delivers a fairly solid 1080p experience. I’m not sure of the vintage for this transfer; I’m guessing it’s on the elder side, as it displays slight occasional frame judder with some very light speckling. The film maintains a Neo-noir style with heightened shadows and dark spaces that permeate even the most well-lit locations. Lots of dramatic shadows even in that big courtroom! Say what you will about the film itself, Doug Milsome shot the hell out of that thing with some striking photography. It may be uncomfortable to watch, but that red-light parking garage sequence is a beauty. I’m not sure of the vintage of this release, but the details are relatively crisp and clean. Colors are healthy and strong, whites can be a bit hot in spots, but nothing too egregious, while black levels are on point. Overall, it does the job. 

On this release of Body of Evidence we have a very good LPCM 2.0 track to kick back to. The disc specs list it as a DTS-HD MA 2.0 track, same for the German counterpart, but this one is actually encoded in LPCM. Regardless, it's good. Also worth noting, on the German language front, there’s a DTS-HD MA 5.1 track, which offered a little more space for some of the key sound effects and some of the more open locations like that gigantic courtroom we get a little more audio element spread - but it’s dubbed in German, so that might be a haul for some folks. In English 2.0, the film sounds very good. Dialog is clean, and the Graeme Revell score is appropriately moody. Until the last act, the film’s action is rather subdued, so there really isn’t much call for a big multi-channel experience beyond what this 2.0 experience already has going for it.

For this release, Turbine looks to have assembled a nice little assortment of extras. While we get some archival making-of and EPK materials, we pick up a great and lengthy interview with Producer Stephen Simon, who delivers quite a bit of background information about the production and its release. The Lucy O’Brien interview is also interesting for delivering some context for the timing of this film’s release against when Madonna’s Sex book came out. The archival materials look like they’ve gone through a little bit of an HD upgrade, certainly better than average tape materials. However, worth noting that if you haven’t seen the film yet, the Behind-the-Scenes segment has a LOT of spoilers. 

• Love or Murder Featurette (HD 5:54)
• Interview with Producer Stephen Simon (HD 23:37)
• Interview with Madonna Expert Lucy O’Brien (HD 30:01)
• Behind-the-Scenes (HD 6:33)
• EPK Interviews with Cast and Director (HD 2:18)
• US Trailer
• German Trailer
• Booklet Essays

If I think about it, I believe I only need four fingers to count how many times I’ve earnestly sat down and watched Body of Evidence. Two of those fingers were just in the last month between different disc releases. Unfortunately, this film doesn’t work. Conceptually, it’s a slick setup for a pulpy, sexy, Erotic Thriller, and with this cast, it should have been a box office homerun. But as I’ve watched the film again, twice now, I see where it doesn’t come together (no pun intended). That script is desperately undercooked, saddling a talented director and smart cast with threadbare plotlines, incomprehensibly silly twists, and some mercelously hacky dialog to work through between the frequent frames of fornication - waxy or otherwise. 

Thanks to Turbine, we have a solid Blu-ray release to check out. With stylish mediabook packaging, the film comes home with a decent video transfer, strong audio, and a healthy assortment of extra features that aren’t too bulbous, but they’re informative. It’s not the quantity of the extras that matters so much as the impact of the information they deliver. I didn’t love the film, and that’s usually where I rest my recommendations of ownership, so I have to call this Blu-ray of Body of Evidence as For Fans Only 

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