Word: dan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ending works, though, not only as a jolt for the audience but also in resolving the drama on its own perfervid terms. Once Alex, the nightmare shrew, has threatened the dream family, she must be faced down by the family. Once Dan has sinned, only Beth can forgive him, by saving his life. Once Alex has invaded the home, she must be killed by the homemaker; the Wife must destroy the Other Woman...
Last spring Paramount sneaked Fatal Attraction to preview audiences. Their response was positive except for the ending. In that version, Alex committed suicide to the strains of Madame Butterfly and left Dan's fingerprints on the knife, thus framing him as her murderer. Ironic, Hitchcockian, certainly fatalistic and pretty darned Japanese -- but not satisfying. Says Lyne: "It was like having two hours of foreplay and no orgasm...
There is just one little problem. In killing Alex, Beth also kills the child -- Dan's child -- inside her. The first wife saves her family by destroying the potential family of the woman who wanted to be Dan's second wife. One woman movie executive, who is disgusted by Fatal Attraction's message, offers this bitter coda: "Dan and Beth should be put on trial for the murder of Alex's unborn child...
...critical standard, Fatal Attraction is no masterpiece. The plot has holes you could drive Beth's station wagon through. (How does Alex get Ellen out of school? Why didn't the family dog bark when Alex breaks into the Gallagher house? Why can't Dan hear the final struggle a floor above him, and why does the bathroom tile floor leak water?) The threat to Ellen's pet rabbit can be smelled three reels away from payoff; that hare is high. Lyne's visual style, with its grab bag of slick thrills and cheap tricks, is clever but unoriginal -- hack...
...American-boy bafflement suggests a Gary Cooper stripped of moral authority and ill at ease in a grown-up dilemma. Her intimidating energy recalls the young Katharine Hepburn but with a voracious libido. And behind them both stands another more portly silhouette: the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock. Dan is the basic Hitchcock protagonist, a fairly decent man in a horribly compromised position. And at first glance, Alex, with her cool allure, seems an avatar of Hitchcock's blond ice goddesses. Only later do we discover she is as lonely and lethal as Mother Bates. But with a difference. In Psycho...