For someone who was never ripped or found himself in roles where his characters lost their shirts all the time, Michael Douglas managed to make quite a name for himself as a go-to guy for erotic thrillers. Douglas had a couple of solid hits to his name in the mid-80s with Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile, both of which featured romance as a key aspect of their appeal. But adventure romance and erotic thriller are two very different beasts, as Douglas would learn upon waking that sleeping giant.
Michael Douglas' Erotic Thrillers Were Box Office Hits
If 1987’s Fatal Attraction was the test to see if he could deliver on a different kind of movie coupling than his well-received pairing with Kathleen Turner, then Douglas passed with flying colors. With two excellent co-stars in Glenn Close and Anne Archer, both of whom went on to receive Oscar noms for their roles, Douglas proved that his onscreen chemistry with Turner was no fluke. He convincingly portrayed a dishonest and shamed husband with Archer, while Close and Douglas’ scenes together called for more of a burning passion – the kind that shines brightly, briefly, and dangerously. Many have already discussed the ways in which the film doesn’t age well. Still, Douglas and Close must have delivered what audiences wanted to see at the time - sexual chemistry and magnetism radiating off the screen - because the pop culture phenomenon Fatal Attraction went on to become the number one movie of the year. If success is sexy and greed is good, as Douglas’ own Gordon Gekko famously said, then many of his characters in this time period embodied those creeds well.
His next outright erotic thriller wasn’t until a half-decade later, but 1992’s Basic Instinct, which paired him with Sharon Stone, made up for the extended wait by being more lurid and salacious than was expected from mainstream Hollywood fare to the tune of over $350 million on a $50 million budget and fourth biggest of the year. Neither of the final two erotic thrillers reached the zenith of Basic Instinct or Fatal Attraction, but at the very least, they contribute to the mythos of Michael Douglas as a sex symbol. 1994’s Disclosure, which paired him with Demi Moore, isn't really even an erotic thriller, but from the title to the poster to the subject matter, it was definitely sold to audiences as one. 1998's A Perfect Murder, an updated take on the Hitchcock classic, was his last that could really be qualified as an erotic thriller, and even then the eroticism was fairly brief and limited to Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortenson. Douglas and Paltrow had plenty of scenes together, but describing any of them as “erotic” wouldn’t be entirely accurate. They both did well at playing spouses who clearly lost whatever connection once existed, though, and over a billion dollars from four movies that cost less than a fifth of that, combined, is definitely a very great and profitable stretch.
Tapping Into 'Basic Instinct'
Douglas and Sharon Stone enthralled audiences with their sexual escapades and murderous intrigue to the point of becoming Douglas’ second obscenely successful erotic thriller in just five years. “Obscene” is the operative word, which is absolutely something director Paul Verhoeven is known for. He brought his over-the-top and in-your-face nature of things like RoboCop and Total Recall to sex scenes (and interrogation scenes, and clubbing scenes, and…), which were often swirled together with violence with offensively successful results. Right from their first scene, in which he’s questioning her whereabouts during the murder of a man she was seeing (though “seeing” was not quite how she put it) and she’s playing around while barely looking at him, it’s clear they have a spark that will be explored. And explored, it was, as they quickly enter into a very questionable and insatiable sexual relationship that really lets Douglas and Stone both play off each other’s narcissism and dishonesty with glee. The less said about Basic Instinct 2, the much-too-late and not-any-good sequel (which Douglas was not involved with), the better.
Michael Douglas Was a Believable Everyman
A lot of Douglas’ success likely came from the fact that he was able to walk that line between a believable everyman and a famous movie star with such ease. Having such a distinctive voice and being a well-put-together person (which is just a convoluted way of saying “handsome”), while still being able to come across as an average man someone might know in their personal life, gave him an edge over action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone. Nobody would buy those kinds of guys as a random middle-class husband who works as a lawyer or a production line manager busy with executive decisions all hours of the day. Douglas, however, managed to be exactly the kind of person audiences could both see themselves as or see themselves with, which translated to a long-lasting career as a sex symbol. Being the son of Diana and Kirk Douglas no doubt gave him a leg up (or perhaps all the legs up) but at a certain point, the movie-going public was happy to watch him on the big screen, whatever his lineage. Especially if he was engaged in some kind of heated sexual relationship that inevitably went sour with someone played by a famous actress.
Michael Douglas' Characters Are Normal People Who Make Bad Decisions
Perhaps people liked seeing Douglas’ characters in these films as, aside from being outwardly relatable, his characters were far from perfect and that made them incredibly human. Obviously, A Perfect Murder won’t be included here, as wanting to kill your wife ventures well beyond “nobody’s perfect” territory. That was easily his least successful of these kinds of films, so maybe that outright villainy played a part in lesser ticket sales because the others see Douglas as an imperfect protagonist. He does things viewers can either be put off by and then learn to forgive when his character grows and changes (like cheating on his wife with Glenn Close), or perhaps others are never bothered much by his behavior and just want to see how he either comes out on top or not. As detectives go, his portrayal of Nick Moran in Basic Instinct is a demonstration of how to still earn audience interest while being a smarmy and unethical jerk (the same goes for Stone). Douglas really excelled at perfectly bringing out the humanity of very, very imperfect people, and, considering audiences are full of regular folks who also make bad choices, they could relate.
Douglas clearly had a skill at being multiple things to many people at the same time, and that kind of versatility goes a long way when paired with good material and excellent costars. While his days as the lead of erotic thrillers are behind him, Douglas’ time working with the best leading ladies is far from over. His latest film, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, sees Douglas paired with Michelle Pfeiffer and hopefully, the two of them make the most of their time in the Quantum Realm together because even if the “erotic” career period is over, doesn’t mean things can’t still be thrilling.