Great Character: Matty Walker (“Body Heat”)

This month’s theme: Femme fatale. Today’s guest post by Jason Cuthbert features Matty Walker from the 1981 Body Heat, written by Lawrence Kasdan.

What is life like after your first two produced screenwriting assignments are The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark, arguably the absolute best installments in the “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” franchises? If your name is Lawrence Kasdan, you get the higher power of those movie worlds, George Lucas, to co-produce your directorial debut and first “Written By” sole screenwriter credit — the steamy 1981 crime thriller Body Heat.

Body Heat plot summary from IMDB:

In the midst of a searing Florida heat wave, a woman convinces her lover, a small-town lawyer, to murder her rich husband.

Lawrence Kasdan cast William Hurt, his personal actor representative from The Big Chill, The Accidental Tourist and I Love You to Death, as the easily seduced playboy lawyer Ned Racine. But this bedroom bachelor meets his midnight match when a certain femme fatale named Matty Walker becomes the cause of his sleepless nights, for better and for worse. Kathleen Turner’s portrayal of Matty, the blonde medusa of manipulation, was her big grand opening introduction to feature film audiences. Turner’s smoldering sex storm reined all over the 1980’s with Romancing the Stone, Prizzi’s Honor, Peggy Sue Got Married, The War of the Roses and back with Kasdan and Hurt again in The Accidental Tourist.

Matty has the perfect last name — “Walker.” Her feet were only made for walking all over the hearts of useful men, not for remaining firmly planted in a stable, settled marriage. With a teenaged nickname like “The Vamp” and a lifestyle aspiration like “To be rich and live in an exotic land” that date back to her high school yearbook, Matty desires a man’s money, but the man is optional. Her “exotic land” will be a solo bachelorette party — not a honeymoon.

MATTY: [to Ned] You aren’t too smart, are you? I like that in a man.

Similar to the Hollywood actresses that actually live the life that Matty craves, she is also terribly great at pretending for a living. Pretending to be in love. Pretending to be trustworthy. Pretending to not be pretending. Her emotional fronting has convinced an audience of two to suspend their disbelief — Ned and her husband Edmund Walker (Richard Crenna).

Matty is casting a shadow that Ned is more than willing to submit his own image into, on a night that all the rest of his future evenings will be affected by.

Mrs. Walker likes to bounce her beautiful ball into Ned’s court, even when his hormones are not even scheduled to play against her. She dribbles all around the subject of her “faithful marriage,” but not without giving Ned the open opportunity to make non-intercepted passes.

MATTY: My temperature runs a couple of degrees high, around a hundred. I don’t mind. It’s the engine or something.
NED: Maybe you need a tune up.
MATTY: Don’t tell me. You have just the right tool.

Once she realizes that she doesn’t have a “lazy” man on her hands, willing to giving up at the first sight of marital obligations, she adds extra glue to her already sticky web. Could this be the guy that wouldn’t mind bathing himself in the permanent stink of greed? Well, she has successfully tested him for the stench of moral corruption, and he passed with aerodynamic flying colors.

MATTY: Would you get me a paper towel or something? Dip it in some cold water.
NED: Right away. I’ll even wipe if off for you.
MATTY: You don’t want to lick it?

Matty Walker is like a student with a cheat sheet during a final exam, plotting the perfect score while trying to appear innocent of any intentional indiscretions.

Once Ned bashes his way into Matty’s not-so-humble abode, just by being silently begged, symbolically he has proven that he cannot just break windows, but break the rules if lustfully motivated. Little does Ned know that he has completed the first introductory stage of his potential co-murderer evaluation. By allowing Ned to mistake erotica for love, without sending him the memo of this one-sided folly, Matty continues to get her way at his expense, whether it is changing her husband’s will against Ned’s will, or making him her husband’s private grim reaper.

For her radiant seduction skills, her masterful matching of wits and her cautionary conversion of “LOVE” into a four-letter curse word — Matty Walker is truly one GREAT CHARACTER.

Matty Walker is a terrific representative of the femme fatale archetype, right in line with Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indemnity) and Catherine Trammell (Basic Instinct).

And by the way, what is it with those two word movies with this dynamic at work: Double Indemnity, Body Heat, Basic Instinct. Must be some sort of subliminal connection.

Thanks to Jason for another guest post. I’ll see you in comments for your thoughts of Matty Walker.

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