What Ever Became of NC-17?

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Four movie scenes coming soon -- or maybe not -- to a theater near you:

1. A man and a woman are making love in heated close-up. Suddenly she stabs him with an ice pick. "She is first having sex with him, then killing him," says one person who has seen the film. "And she doesn't do either gently."

2. A woman being interrogated by police about a murder uncrosses her legs and reveals she is wearing no panties.

3. A climactic attack is drenched in violence.

4. This is it, folks: "five minutes of pure, erotic sex and lovemaking."

These scenes are from Basic Instinct, a cop-and-copulation thriller starring Michael Douglas as a San Francisco detective on the trail of a serial killer and Sharon Stone as a bisexual novelist, a suspect in the case, with whom he has a convulsive affair.

The film has courted scandal since it was a script, which earned a record $3 million for writer Joe Eszterhas. Before shooting began, the original producer, Irwin Winkler, quit, complaining that director Paul Verhoeven was obsessed with showing body parts "in various stages of excitement." Eszterhas also stormed off the project once or twice. Last spring the production was picketed in San Francisco by gay activists objecting to the script's depiction of killer lesbians. Everyone else was gossiping about the sex scenes. "Michael Douglas and I went as far as anyone could go," Stone told Movieline magazine. "So far, in fact, that I don't know how they'll ever get a rating."

They can get a rating. But their problem is getting an R, which allows children to see a film in the company of an adult. After two preliminary screenings, the Motion Picture Association of America's classification board indicated that in its present form, Basic Instinct would receive an NC-17 rating (no children; 17 or older). Douglas and Verhoeven have urged that the disputed scenes stay, even if this results in an adults-only tag. But Carolco, which produced the $40 million film, and Tri-Star, which is to release it in March, are insisting that Verhoeven keep cutting Basic Instinct until it gets an R. Fearful that they will make less money if shut out of the lucrative teen market, they are opting for holy Mammon over hot art.

If anybody in Hollywood could bring muscle to breaking the taboo against releasing NC-17 movies, Douglas and Verhoeven are the guys. The Dutch director (who in his early films Spetters and The Fourth Man peppered extravagant sexual themes with lavish male and female nudity) is known for his inventive, violent and profitable sci-fi films RoboCop and Total Recall. Douglas is one of the town's most respected and powerful actor-producers; his risks pay off. Should Tri-Star take a gamble on his instincts? Director Lili Fini Zanuck (Rush) thinks so: "You've got Michael Douglas, a major star who has proved himself in a similar film, Fatal Attraction. If the studio will back Basic Instinct, so will the marketplace."