We are going to live with this for the rest of our lives.
There were erotic thrillers before 1987's Fatal Attraction and erotic thrillers after -- lots of them after -- but none boiled the genre down to its essence quite like it. The story of a weekend-long tryst between a married lawyer and an unstable book editor that blossoms into a full-blown obsession when the lawyer tries to disengage, Fatal Attraction struck a nerve at the time of its release (so much so that it was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Adrian Lyne, and Best Adapted Screenplay for James Dearden) and continues to resonate with audiences close to three decades later. It's a film with a message and the message is this: Never make a baby with crazy.
Alas, that lesson is learned far too late by Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas), who does indeed make a baby with the crazy Alex Forrest (Best Actress nominee Glenn Close), who chooses not to go gentle into that good night (or have an abortion). This, of course, makes it difficult for Dan to keep his indiscretion from his wife Beth (Supporting Actress nominee Anne Archer), but he's somehow able to keep her in the dark until Alex kills their daughter's pet rabbit, which is the sort of thing that can't be ignored or explained away. (Intentionally or not, that plot point retroactively adds a double meaning to an earlier scene where Alex entreats Dan to come over to her place. "Bring the dog," she says. "I love animals. I'm a great cook.") If Helen of Troy was the Face That Launched a Thousand Ships, Alex Forrest was the Lunatic That Halted a Thousand Extramarital Affairs in Their Tracks.