BASICALLY, IT STINKS

BASIC INSTINCT (1991)
dir: Paul Verhoeven

BASICALLY, IT STINKS
MAD #314, October 1992
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Angelo Torres

It was very controversial among the LBGTQ community for what was seen as a negative portrayal of bisexuals. MAD wasn't exactly the epitome of Pride itself but handled it fairly matter-of-factly, especially compared to how they would have ten years earlier or more.

Their parody of Batman Returns, elsewhere in the issue, will be posted on this blog in a couple days.

Other sight gags in splash panel—takes on the motto “We're here, we're queer, get used to it!”, the SNL character It's Pat, comparison to Fatal Attraction, Michael Douglas' father Kirk (star of Spartacus), and how there was also an X-rated version of the movie.

Novelist Catherine Trammell (Sharon Stone) is a suspect in a murder where Boz (Bill Cable), an occasional lover of hers, has been murdered. It is being investigated by Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) and his partner Gus (George Dzundna).

Nick used to date Dr. Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), psychiatrist of internal affairs, and was once a drug addict.

The detectives realize Boz's murder mirrors a passage in a book she wrote and bring her in for questioning.

The best known scene in Basic Instinct to people who never saw the movie (which I hadn't until now) is the interrogation where Sharon Stone crosses her legs and doesn't have underwear underneath her dress exposing her shaved hoo-hoo, so they had to mention that in this parody.

Cathy is bisexual and has a girlfriend, but comes onto Nick because she's using his psychopathic past as research for her next book. Dr. Garner knew Cathy in college and tries to warn him about her.

(The TV in that last panel refers to The Streets of San Francisco, where the actor had his start. The painting on the wall is a reference to Lust for Life, where his father played Van Gogh.)

Nick has sex with Cathy and he admits it to his former work partner. Oh yeah, there's a scene in the movie they omitted here where his supervisor is killed and he's kicked off the force.

Someone tries to run Nick off the road and it turns out to have been Cathy's girlfriend Roxy (Leilani Sarelle).

Nick goes to console Cathy and ends up having another fling. In another scene not used, she lets him know she's done with him because she's finished with her book.

His police partner investigates a case in a building and is also killed with an ice pick by someone we don't see. It's a police uniform (specifically theirs) but MAD made it a fire jacket so they could have a Backdraft joke, a movie they had parodied a few issues earlier.

As they sort of explain in one panel, Dr. Garner more than knew Cathy in passing. They had a tryst back then, after which she also tried to emulate her and went by a different name back then. She happened to be in the building at the time Gas was murdered so Nick shot her thinking she was the ice pick killer.

Nick gets back together with Cathy and while they're doing it considers killing him with an ice pick but doesn't.

UPDATE:
From their German edition. The guy with Sharon Stone is Otto Waalkes, a comedian known over there who also did the voice of Mushu in the German version of Mulan. And did they do a parody of Beethoven that was only seen in their foreign editions?