The Naked Gun Uses Pamela Anderson To Parody A Trashy '90s Classic

This article contains spoilers for "The Naked Gun."

This month's reboot of "The Naked Gun" may be a parody of the action film in general, but that doesn't mean its satiric targets are all that broad. The movie recognizably spoofs at least a handful of films, though not in a fashion that would allow the film to become quickly dated, something that /Film's Ethan Anderton observes in his review. In other words, there's nothing like the moment from "Hot Shots: Part Deux," in which Saddam Hussein is shot to pieces and then reforms a la the T-1000 in "Terminator 2," happening here. Instead, "The Naked Gun," as directed by co-writer (and "The Lonely Island" member) Akiva Schaffer, is more concerned with stuffing its brief runtime with jokes-a-plenty. In a similar fashion to Schaffer's prior comedy movies like "Hot Rod" and "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping," "The Naked Gun" is all about the yuks. As such, it refuses to fall into the trap that parody comedies indeed fell into during the '00s, which was to mistake references for jokes.

Yet there's no question that a well-deployed reference can pay comedic dividends, especially when "The Naked Gun," like its predecessors, has its characters play the moments straight while the audience can revel in their absurdity. In addition to slyly winking in the direction of "Mission: Impossible — Fallout" and legacy sequel tropes, "The Naked Gun" cleverly references a trashy '90s classic: Paul Verhoeven's "Basic Instinct." Yet Schaffer and his co-writers, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, aren't going for easy gags about ice picks and uncrossed legs. Instead, "The Naked Gun" uses some details from Sharon Stone's iconic "Basic Instinct" character to allow Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson) to be coded as a potential femme fatale archetype. It's a callback that exemplifies the intelligence and cultural savviness of "The Naked Gun."

The fact that "The Naked Gun" is doing a "Basic Instinct" homage in 2025 speaks to what a tradition it's become to send up the latter movie. There's no doubt that "Basic Instinct" shook up a complacent American mainstream when it was released in the early '90s, as Verhoeven took Joe Eszterhas' neo-noir script and infused it with a potent mix of unabashed sexuality and biting satire. As with any work of art that holds up an unflinching mirror to Americans' issues with sexual repression, the general response to "Basic Instinct" tended to be either revulsion, dismissal, or giddiness. The latter reaction manifested itself in dozens of parodies, homages, and other references across a wide range of media, with everything from TV sitcoms to advertisements getting in on the joke.

By far, the most parodied element of "Basic Instinct" was the iconic scene where Catherine Trammell (Stone) is interrogated by a gaggle of sweaty male criminal investigators, led by Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas). During the interrogation, she slyly crosses and uncrosses her legs, revealing her lack of underwear and turning the power dynamic tables on the interrogators. Parodies of this scene were staged in the spoof movies "Loaded Weapon 1" (with Kathy Ireland) and "Hot Shots! Part Deux" (with Brenda Bakke), and other homages have appeared as recently as in "Deadpool 2."

Ironically, the one spoof movie that would appear to be a direct parody of "Basic Instinct" does not contain a version of the scene, though it was referenced in the film's marketing. That movie is Carl Reiner's "Fatal Instinct," with Armand Assante and Sherilyn Fenn, and it's less a direct parody of "Basic Instinct" a la "Airplane!" and "Airport," and more a general parody of erotic thrillers and other similar films of the time (including Martin Scorsese's "Cape Fear" remake). This means that, while "Basic Instinct" has been fodder for dozens of spoofs over the years, there was still room for "The Naked Gun" to cleverly homage it, which is exactly what it does.

One of the best aspects of the way "The Naked Gun" pays homage to "Basic Instinct" is that it subverts expectations. If you heard that the film stars Pamela Anderson as a potential femme fatale and that a "Basic Instinct" parody was involved, you'd expect to see Anderson, so famously a sex symbol from the '90s and '00s, vamping it up, doing a "crossed legs" moment, and so on. None of that turns out to be true, as it isn't sexuality that the film is using to pay homage, but rather character elements. In "Basic Instinct," Catherine is a successful author of crime novels, and one of the ambiguities of the movie is whether she's inspired by true crime in writing her books, or if she's the one actually committing the crimes to inspire and help sell her novels. In "The Naked Gun," Beth is similarly an author of mystery novels, but at no point is she painted as a potential villain. Instead, Beth believes her prowess in writing female protagonists who solve (and prevent) crimes puts her on equal footing with Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson), creating some competitive tension between the two that soon blossoms into romantic tension.

Schaffer, Gregor, and Mand make Beth into an amalgam of female noir protagonists, someone who's part femme fatale, part independent detective, and a little morally ambiguous. During the last act of the film, after it's been proven that egomaniacal billionaire Richard Cane (Danny Huston) is behind the murder of Beth's brother as well as a dastardly plot to take over the world, Beth decides to disguise herself as one of her novel's protagonists to get close to Cane and kill him. Sadly, the plot doesn't work because Cane knows she has a gun hidden in her handbag thanks to reading Beth's novel. (She also has several other weapons hidden in extremely unlikely places, too, because this is "The Naked Gun," after all.) The moment completes the film's "Basic Instinct" homage, slyly referencing the fact that all the investigators in that movie needed to do was pay close attention to Catherine's novels instead of becoming distracted by her beauty.

There's a guideline that is passed around in comedy circles, particularly that of improvisational comedy, which is that one should always play to the top of their intelligence. The way Schaffer and company treat the comedy in "The Naked Gun" often follows that guideline. In other words, the movie is being very smart about being very dumb and silly, and the way it treats Beth's character, along with the "Basic Instinct" homage, is a great example of that.