Detour #223: The real best bit from Basic Instinct, Highway 1, California, USA

Ben Barry retraces the route of one of Hollywood’s most nail-biting car chases, underwear intact.

Erotic thriller Basic Instinct became famous for THAT Sharon Stone scene when it arrived in cinemas in 1992 but car fans had another reason to settle back and dig into the popcorn – to watch Stone driving a gorgeous black 1990 Lotus Esprit SE as crime novelist and suspected ice-pick murderer Catherine Tramell.

One particularly memorable sequence is the focus of this Detour. Michael Douglas (playing homicide detective Nick Curran) tails the Esprit in his undercover and under-powered police-issue Dodge Diplomat, pursuing Stone down a twisting canyon road as a hazy Pacific Ocean glints in the distance

It’s a dreamy stretch of asphalt recognisable to San Franciscans as the run to Muir Beach along Highway 1, and one that must’ve been easily closed to traffic thanks to an alternative inland route – a route that also makes for a handy return loop.

In the film we see the chase from Douglas’s perspective, with the fast-disappearing Lotus all predatory lunges of acceleration and reflexive changes of direction, where the Dodge looks soft, imprecise and is clearly a handful to control. Only De Niro in Ronin has looked more uncomfortable at the wheel.

It’s one of the more convincing car chases in Hollywood history, thanks to highly skilled stunt driving, incredible choreography and coherent editing from director Paul Verhoeven as Stone and Douglas weave in and out of the processional traffic, skirt round blind bends and screech perilously close to vertiginous drops. Near misses with oncoming traffic are particularly heart stopping.

To follow the movie trail, leave San Francisco and cross the Golden Gate Bridge heading north on the 101, before taking the freeway exit at Manzanita. It’s here that you pick up the coast-bound Highway 1.

Initially climbing up from the urban sprawl of Tamalpais Valley and into the shade of eucalyptus groves, the twisting road peaks near the turn for Panoramic Highway – this is the alternative inland route and where the loop later dumps you out like a water slide meeting the pool. 

Keep going straight and, soon after, the treeline vanishes and suddenly the serpentine section used during filming cascades before you. Three decades on the hillsides are more parched than the verdant backdrop we see on the big screen, but the dramatic topography as well as the road itself are unmistakeable.

Carved into one side of a ravine, the road flows north and downhill, and while it’s mostly protected by Armco these days, it was a straight plunge off the side in the early 1990s. Tourist traffic means it can be a crawl at peak periods and the speed limit is 35mph with no overtaking – painful at times, though Detour’s experience suggests slower drivers do courteously pull over.

The Basic Instinct crew stopped filming a little short of Muir Beach, which makes for a beautiful stop off with its luxurious hillside properties, golden sand and towering clifftops either side. Presumably it’s also where traffic was redirected inland on Frank Valley Road during production.

Photo Studio Canal / YouTube

If you’re pressed for time, FVR makes for a scenic return route, but try to press on a few miles more to Stinson Beach with its long, wide spit of sand bisecting Bolinas Bay and Bolinas Lagoon, before cutting inland on Panoramic Highway.

Quickly the landscape shifts again as you climb inland, and mostly you drive under the cover of towering, lichen-covered Redwoods native to Mount Tamalpais State Park. It’s a darker, lusher environment that feels hundreds of miles removed from the film’s stunt sequence despite its proximity – think more Twilight than Basic Instinct, and this is also the better, quieter drive.

After several miles of tortuous coils, Panoramic Highway emerges from the treeline to trace the spine of the mountainous landscape and finally live up to its name – the views back to the Pacific are truly awe-inspiring. Then you’re briefly back on Panoramic Highway before it reconnects to Highway 1 just above where the stunt sequence began.

Stone outwits Douglas in the chase, but the Esprit ultimately follows many of its Hollywood predecessors when it smashes through roadworks and ends up stricken on its roof (fortunately Stone also owns a second white Lotus).

Detour doesn’t advise replicating that particular scene but a sedate loop north up Highway 1 and back on Panoramic Highway isn’t just a treat for film fans, it’s a great drive full stop.

Words Ben Barry Twitter | Instagram
Photography Shutterstock

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ROADBOOK

CLASS: hollywood heroics

NAME: Basic instinct

ROUTE: San Francisco to San Francisco

COUNTRY: usa

Distance: 35 Miles

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