Fatal Instinct is a 1993 American sex comedy thriller film directed by Carl Reiner.

A parody of the erotic thriller genre, which at the time had reached its commercial peak, as well as being a pastiche of 1940s film noir and psychological thriller genres, in particular Double Indemnity, the film stars Armand Assante as lawyer/cop Ned Ravine (a take-off on Body Heat, in which William Hurt plays the similarly named Ned Racine) who has an affair with a woman named Lola Cain (Sean Young).

Ned Ravine, who is both a police officer and lawyer (who often defends the people he arrests), believes that he knows everything about women, and says that he will throw away his badge if anyone ever proves him wrong.

Lola gets Ned to come to her house to examine the "papers", which are actually a laundry receipt and an expired lottery ticket, and the two of them end up having sex in various wild ways.

While Ned goes upstairs to investigate, Laura's abusive husband (whom she had escaped from three years ago) comes in and confronts her; she kills him with a frying pan.

[2] In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert rated it one and a half stars out of four and stated "It's a strange thing about the parody genre: Some of these movies work ... and some don't.