‘Body of Evidence’ At 25: Is The Razzie-Winning Sex Thriller As Bad As Its Reputation?

“It’s not a crime to be a great lay.”

No, that’s not the tag line for the 1993 sex thriller Body of Evidence, though it probably should have been, given the disappointing real ones (“An act of love, or an act of murder?”). But that line of dialogue is a great summary of the subject matter, tone, and appeal of the notorious bomb that became far more notable for its infamy than it did for its filmmaking pleasures. Starring a much maligned Madonna as a woman accused of murdering her wealthy, elderly lover after (or via?) a night of kinky sex, Body of Evidence opened in January 15, 1993, and in the 25 years since its debut, few films have been as much of a perfect storm of scorn.

We’ve written here previously about the sex-thriller boom of the early 1990s, when the surprise success of Basic Instinct gave Hollywood the idea that they could push the boundaries of onscreen sex in mainstream theatrical releases, only to end up releasing a bunch of Cinemax-level dreck that killed the genre before it could get truly interesting. When we wrote about Sliver last year, we talked about what a drop-off in quality it was from Basic Instinct, but that was nothing compared to the crater that was Body of Evidence, which managed to turn off both critics and audiences from just the ad campaign, if not sooner. Madonna in a movie where she pours hot candle wax onto Willem Dafoe’s wiener?

The ratio of people who remember those candle-wax TV spots to people who actually saw Body of Evidence  is as lopsided as any you’re going to find, which makes this 25th anniversary a chance to finally let curiosity get the better of us. After all, wouldn’t there be some kind of campy appeal to watching Madonna in a sex thriller made in 1993? Wouldn’t the eve of Willem Dafoe getting an Oscar nomination for The Florida Project be the perfect occasion for a look back at the movie where he gunked up his privates with Yankee Candle for the sake of art? Sure it would!

20 Things About Body of Evidence

1. Regardless of the quality level of Body of Evidence, this movie was a perfect storm of negative attention in 1993. Erotic thrillers were never a critically respected genre as it was, but putting Madonna front and center during her most maligned era pretty much doomed the movie before it even got out of the gate. The early ’90s were a huge backlash period for Madonna, from the controversy surrounding the “Justify My Love” video, to the Sex book, the underperforming Erotica album, cursing on Letterman, dating Dennis Rodman. Everything surrounding Madonna around this time was getting slammed for being artlessly obsessed with sex, and whether or not that kind of scrutiny was fair, it was omnipresent. Add to that the fact that Madonna’s acting was never given very much respect even during her strongest career stretches and you’ve got a recipe for a turkey on your hands.
2. So: the movie. Blatantly ripping off Basic Instinct, Body of Evidence kicks off with the death-by-sex of a wealthy man. The gist of the plot goes like this: Madonna plays a femme fatale gold-digger who is accused of murdering her rich, old paramour, who dies after a night of kinky sex and ingested cocaine. Madonna is the beneficiary in his will, and she has a history of dating old, rich men with heart conditions, so you do the math. She ends up being charged of killing the old coot with her sex. Her body is the murder weapon! Willem Dafoe plays her sympathetic attorney, who gets perfunctorily drawn into her seductive web as he attempts to get her off (of murder charges).
3. The original score by Graeme Revell — who had previously scored thrillers like Dead Calm and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle — is sax-heavy fare straight out of the Skinemax library. It is cheesy as all hell.
4. Before the opening credits are over, we get a title card that says so very much about what we’re about to get:

   Dino De Laurentiis is the Italian producer responsible for all sorts of movies, both highbrow and lowbrow, from Dune to Blue Velvet to Barbarella to Bound to Death Wish to Hannibal, but a great many with lurid themes or aesthetics to them.

5. Joe Mantegna shows up as the prosecutor looking to make the case against Madonna. While touring the crime scene — and in a few other early scenes — Mantegna shows off a knowledge of kinky sex ephemera, which is treated by his colleagues in law enforcement like it’s exotic knowledge from a far-off land. Things like nipple clamps and poppers. Nothing ever comes of it, though, despite the movie treating almost all aspects of kink as if they’re criminal. You keep waiting for Chekhov’s nipple clamps to go off in the third act, but they don’t.
6. After the introduction of Mantegna, we are introduced to Oscar-nominee Anne Archer, who is playing the old, rich dude’s longtime secretary, who points the finger squarely at Madonna. Archer’s presence lends the film some Fatal Attraction shine, which is almost certainly intentional, as Fatal Attraction is the holy grail of erotic thrillers.
7. Oh, you thought the star parade was over? How about one Julianne Moore (!) as Dafoe’s wife. She’s fresh off of being julienned (sorry) (no I’m not) by falling greenhouse glass in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and who once again is about to be victimized by a blonde femme fatal in a sexual thriller.  

8. Dafoe and Moore also have a tweenage son — introduced here and then never dealt with again, much like Joe Mantegna’s nipple-clamp knowledge — who more than earns his paycheck by delivering the following line with the maximum of childlike wonder: 
9. Madonna’s styling in this movie is very important. This was during the era where she was very into the backwards beret look, which makes her feel both bohemian and in control of her surroundings. This is also some of the earliest evidence of the emerging faux-British (ish) accent, and she begins to sound vaguely posh in her clumsily blunt advances towards Dafoe.
10. “Have you ever seen animals make love, Frank?” Out of the many howler lines of dialogue in this movie, a lot of them include Madonna’s character saying “make love.” Anyway, yes, Frank has seen animals make love, though he doesn’t share their sense of reckless abandon. Until Madonna brings it out in him.
11. True to its late-night-on-pay-cable vive, the film gives Willem Dafoe an incredibly obvious butt double for his sex scene with Julianne Moore. Moore, of course, is fully naked, as she was for most of the early 1990s. 

12. Oh, and speaking of butts, we get a scene of Madonna paying a visit to her herbologist that exists almost entirely in order to show Madonna getting acupuncture in her butt. I’d say this was a butt double too, but given how frequently Madonna is topless in this movie, what would be the point? 

13. This movie features Lillian Lehman as one of the great no-nonsense judges of all time. Her name is Mabel, and she manages to say “I’ll allow it” and “watch yourself, counselor,” all while frequently rolling her eyes that she has to hear this smutty-ass case.
14. These scenes also take place in the single shadowiest courtroom in cinematic history: 

15. Meanwhile, on Madonna’s houseboat — yes, have we mentioned that her character lives on a houseboat for no discernible reason except that maybe it seems more noir-ish? And that she has billowy Skinemax curtains that are constantly billowing out the open windows? Of her houseboat? Cool.
16. So, back to the sex. Once Madonna and Willem Dafoe’s characters start doing it on the reg, they make sure to up the stakes with a lot of “dangerous” S&M. Once again, even the lightest kink is treated by this movie like a major transgression that ought to have you shunned from polite society. So things like handcuffs or, like, simple foreplay (?) are played for extreme shock value. Like, yeah, Madonna is fingering herself. Ooooh, Willem is giving her oral sex. …Okay, fucking in the parking garage atop a layer of broken glass is pretty fucked up, fine.
17. SO THE WAX SCENE. Not gonna lie, this is the only thing I wanted to watch this movie for. All those years knowing there was a movie where Madonna poured hot candle wax on Willem Dafoe’s crotch, and I hadn’t seen it. I began to worry that the trailer was playing tricks and she would only pour the wax on his chest, as she does early in the scene. She also alternates wax with prosecco in a kind of sexual IcyHot situation. But just as I got scared that my childhood had been lied to, there Madonna was, dripping all that wax into Dafoe’s (out-of-frame) genitals. If you think about it for half a second, it’s not all that scandalous. Grooming-conscious men have this very thing done to them on the reg, and they also have to put up with painful hair removal, and they don’t even get sex after.  It’s not even the worst thing that has been done to Willem Dafoe’s genitals in a movie, which you’d know if you’ve seen Antichrist. 

18. So the conclusion to the movie involves the surprise appearance of Frank Langella (if you’re keeping count, that’s four Oscar nominees in the cast, not including Madonna, who has had songs she’s sung — but not written — nominated) as a former lover of Madonna’s who is revealed to have cheated on her with a man (!!), which hilariously turns the jury’s sympathy towards her, and she’s exonerated. Man, the early ’90s were homophobic as hell. Anyway, the verdict is not the end, but you’ll have to actually see the movie for yourselves to know whether she’s really guilty. Or watch Basic Instinct. That will also give it away, as this movie rips that one off in every conceivable way.
19. More dialogue goodness from Madonna: “I fucked you, I fucked Andrew, I fucked Frank. That’s what I do. I fuck.” This girl fucks.
20. Body of Evidence was savaged by the critics at the time. Roger Ebert’s half-star review called it laughable and “excruciatingly incompetent.” (He also referenced Madonna’s Sex book, in case you doubted that that played a part.) Vincent Canby at the Times singled out the unsexy sex and laughable dialogue (though he also liked the judge). Nominated for six Razzies, including Worst Picture, it took home Worst Actress for Madonna, a typically bitchy singling out, though sadly you can’t say it wasn’t deserved.

25 years later, you wish you could say there was a newfound appreciation for Body of Evidence. It remains today what it was called out for then: the sex is cheesy as heck; the dialogue is full of laughable clunkers; the hysteria over kinky sex feels silly, if era-appropriate. This is no unfairly maligned classic. It was fairly maligned. But everything that’s bad isn’t necessarily unenjoyable. Roll around in those howlers. Recoil at how un-fun those sex scenes appear to be. Imagine how Joe Mantagena got all that kinky knowhow. Luxuriate in the high-class Skinemax of it all.

Rent (or purchase!) Body of Evidence on Amazon Video