The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1981 American neo-noir[4] erotic thriller film directed by Bob Rafelson and written by David Mamet (in his screenwriting debut).

Frank Chambers (Jack Nicholson), a drifter, stops for a meal at a diner outside Depression-era Los Angeles and ends up working there.

The diner is operated by a young, beautiful woman, Cora Smith (Jessica Lange), and her much older husband, Nick Papadakis (John Colicos), a hardworking but unimaginative immigrant from Greece.

Cora is tired of her situation, married to an older man she does not love and working at a diner that she wishes to own and improve.

Although they do turn on each other, a clever ploy from Cora's lawyer, Katz (Michael Lerner), prevents her full confession from coming into the hands of the prosecutor.

With the tactic having failed to generate any new evidence for the prosecution, Cora benefits from a deal in which she pleads guilty to manslaughter and is sentenced to probation.

[9] The star of the 1946 version, Lana Turner, did not watch the remake, but said she had seen advertisements and blurbs on television that made her sick: she resented how the studio "turned it into such pornographic trash".