The Last Seduction

Director: John Dahl, 18, 1994

Stars: Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, Bill Pullman Out to buy on DVD

Played by Fiorentino with toxic elan, Bridget Gregory is an über-bitch to rank alongside Phyllis Dietrichson of Double Indemnity and Catherine Tramell of Basic Instinct. Subsisting on a diet of fraud, murder and Machiavellian sex, she sashays through every preposterous turn of Dahl’s cult black comedy with barely a raven hair out of place.

Perhaps fearful of rupturing Bridget’s mystique, Fiorentino is largely absent from the extras of this two-disc edition. But there are amusing asides from Dahl and his writer Steve Barancik about sneaking their arty noir flourishes under the noses of the studio, who were expecting a generic sexploitation flick. And praise is rightly heaped on Peter Berg, for holding the film together as the smalltown boy whom Bridget plays like a cheap fiddle.