Getty Images/Sunset Boulevard(LOS ANGELES) — Thirty years ago today, the movie that inspired the phrase “bunny boiler” arrived in theaters.
Fatal Attraction, the 1987 psychosexual thriller directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, followed Dan Gallagher, a guy who has a brief affair with a career woman named Alex Forrest. Alex then becomes obsessed with Dan, and stalks him and his family, with deadly results.
As Alex becomes more and more unhinged, she sneaks into Dan’s house, kills his daughter’s pet rabbit and leaves it boiling in a pot of water for Dan’s wife and daughter to discover when they arrive home. This led to any obsessive, spurned woman being dubbed a “bunny boiler.”
The movie’s original ending had Alex trying to frame Dan for her murder, and then killing herself. But when test audiences didn’t like it, the studio re-shot the ending, in which Dan’s wife Beth shot and killed Alex — an ending which Close protested at first.
Fatal Attraction sparked much discussion and debate, and struck fear into the hearts of many men tempted to cheat. In a 2008 article, Glenn Close said, “That movie struck a very, very raw nerve. At the time, feminists hated the movie…they felt they’d been betrayed because it was a single working woman who was supposed to be the source of all evil.”
She added, “Men still come up to me and say, ‘You scared the s*** out of me.’ Sometimes they say, ‘You saved my marriage.'”
Fatal Attraction was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Close. It spent eight weeks at #1 and grossed more than $320 million worldwide, making it the #1 movie of 1987 globally. Other psychosexual thrillers followed in its wake, including Sliver, Disclosure, Basic Instinct, Single White Female, Sleeping with the Enemy and more.
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