The Last Seduction (1994)

Taglines: She wants it all… & she wants it now…

The Last Seduction movie storyline. Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino) has a lot going for her: she’s beautiful, she’s intelligent, she’s married to a doctor. But all of this isn’t enough, as her husband Clay finds out. After she persuaded him to sell medicinal cocaine to some drugdealers, she takes off with the money, almost a million dollars, and goes undercover in a mid-American smalltown.

Because Clay has to pay off a loan shark who’ll otherwise damage him severely, he keeps sending detectives after her, trying to retrieve the money. When Bridget meets Mike Swale, a naive local who is blinded by her beauty and directness, she devises an elaborate, almost diabolical scheme to get rid of Clay once and for all.

The Last Seduction is a 1994 neo-noir erotic thriller film directed by John Dahl, and features Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, and Bill Pullman.[1] The film was produced by ITC Entertainment and distributed by October Films. Fiorentino’s performance generated talk of an Oscar nomination, but she was ineligible because the film was shown on HBO before it was released to theatres. October Films and ITC Entertainment sued the Academy, but were unable to make Fiorentino eligible for a nomination.

Screenwriter Steve Barancik said the film was originally pitched as a “standard skin-e-max” low-budget movie to ITC Entertainment even though the filmmakers had “an under-the-radar intention to make a good movie without letting the executives know about it.” ITC Entertainment executives were upset with a shot scene in which Linda Fiorentino is dressed as a cheerleader and wears suspenders over her breasts.

Barancik recalled, “Apparently, a guy from the company who was monitoring things and watching the dailies, saw the suspenders over Linda’s nipples, and shouted out, ‘Are we making an art movie?!’ He shut down production and called the principals of the movie on the carpet and they all had to pledge that they had no artistic pretensions, then he punished them by not paying them that half day of production and by forbidding that scene from being in the movie, which ruined the whole sexual role-playing theme.” The scene was cut.

About the Story

The film opens in New York City, where Bridget works as a telemarketing manager and her husband Clay is training to be a doctor. He is heavily in debt to a loan shark so he arranges to sell stolen pharmaceutical cocaine to two drug dealers. The transaction becomes tense when the buyers pull a gun, but rather to Clay’s surprise, they eventually pay him $700,000. Clay is left shaken, and on his return home he slaps Bridget after she insults him. She then steals the cash from him and flees their apartment while he is in the shower.

On her way to Chicago she stops in Beston, a small town near Buffalo. There she meets Mike, a local man back from a whirlwind marriage in Buffalo that he refuses to talk about, who tries to pick her up. She proceeds to use him for mere sexual gratification during her stay in town. Adept at word games and mirror writing, and with an imminent return to her hometown in mind, Bridget changes her name to Wendy Kroy and gets a job at the insurance company where, coincidentally, Mike works.

Their relationship is strained by her manipulative behavior and the fact he is falling for her. When Mike tells her how to find out if a man is cheating on his wife by reading his credit reports, Bridget invents a plan based on selling murders to cheated wives. She suggests they start with Lance Collier, a cheating, wife-beating husband residing in Florida. This proves to be the last straw for Mike and he leaves her alone in his place after an argument.

Clay’s thumb is broken by the loan shark for not repaying his loan. Fearing for his health and in dire financial straits, he hires a private detective, Harlan, to retrieve the money from his wife. Harlan traces her phone area code, travels to Beston and accosts Bridget at gunpoint right after her argument with Mike. She manages to murder him on the drive back to her place, and tricks the police into closing the case without further investigation by using local racial prejudice to her advantage.

She then resumes her manipulation of Mike and pretends to travel to Florida to kill Lance Collier, but instead goes to Buffalo to meet Mike’s ex-wife, Trish. She shows Mike the money she stole from Clay to convince him she has taken a cut from the life insurance payout from the new widow as payment for the supposed killing.

She tells him she has done it so they can live together, then tries to persuade him that he must also commit a similar murder so they will be even, and to prove that he loves her. She tries to talk Mike into killing a tax lawyer in New York City cheating old ladies out of their homes. At first he rejects the idea, but agrees after receiving a letter from his ex saying she is moving to Beston. The letter was forged by Bridget to change his mind.

The Last Seduction movie trailer.