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Back in the cottage, while Dan makes tea downstairs, Beth prepares her bath. With her robe she erases steam from the bathroom mirror. Alex is standing behind her, carrying a knife. Softly, she asks Beth, "What are you doing here?" In her frayed mind she may already be Mrs. Dan Gallagher, her hubby in the kitchen, their imminent child asleep in her womb. Who is this presumptuous intruder in Alex's dream cottage? Someone who doesn't deserve to play happy family. Someone who deserves to die. Their struggle for the knife finally alerts Dan, who rushes upstairs, overpowers Alex and forces her into the full tub. She struggles, then ceases, blood rising from her mouth. But you can't keep a bad woman -- or a citation from the landmark French chiller Diabolique -- down. Alex springs screaming from the tub and slashes at Dan, as Beth appears brandishing a handgun and kills Alex with a bullet through the chest.
Fatal Attraction was conceived by English Screenwriter-Director Dearden eight years ago as a 45-minute film called Diversion. In 1983 Producers Lansing and Stanley R. Jaffe hired Dearden to write a feature-length script based on his idea. (Later, Screenwriter-Director Nicholas Meyer rewrote some of the scenes involving Dan's family, which Paramount executives had thought insufficiently sympathetic.) Michael Douglas was in on the project early, but Close arrived only after Debra Winger had rejected the role and Barbara Hershey was unavailable. The film began shooting in September 1986 under Lyne's direction. Flashdance had proved that Lyne knew which buttons to push for a multimedia smash, and 9 1/2 Weeks, a flop at the U.S. box office but a hit at the video stores, showed his fascination with the theme of sexual dependency at the borderline of pain and pleasure.
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."
So the filmmakers tried for something more crimson. "We sat in a room for four days," recalls Dearden. "Obviously the present ending makes Alex a complete psycho. It works well as a piece of cinema but makes her less authentic." In July they were back in Mount Kisco, N.Y., for reshooting. Dearden wrote the new ending, "because I wanted to maintain some degree of influence over it." (The original ending may be used when Fatal Attraction is released in Japan next year.)
The new 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.