'Dead Calm' (1989)

Safe to say that most Americans got their first look at Nicole Kidman in "Dead Calm" -- flat on her back on a hospital gurney, her nose bloodied, an ugly rubber gag stuffed in her mouth. Badly injured, Rae Graham's just lost her little boy in a horrific car accident. Later, distraught with grief, she's pale and fragile, her considerable height shrunk down into a child's slightness as her husband (steady Sam Neill) embraces her. Thirty days into a healing sea cruise, blue-eyed Kidman owns the screen, all long, elegant legs, her redhead's skin rich with freckles, crowned by an unruly thicket of orange-red hair that catches and holds the sun. This ripe peach of a girl presents herself to the camera as though she feels its gaze as hotly as a lover's caress. Crazy Billy Zane, a whack-job photographer who's offed a few folks on another boat and abandoned her husband at sea, peers into Kidman's face to compliment her "magnificent bone structure." When he drawls, "You have to look behind the face to see what's holding it up," he might be describing the routine penetration of the movie camera, as it celebrates and consumes the flesh of beautiful women. Shot from behind as she seduces her captor, the girlish nakedness of her long spine and round bottom signals vulnerability. But Kidman's on top, and even when Zane finally mounts her, the actress turns a cool, calculating gaze toward us, welcoming -- yet proof against -- our hungry eyes.

(Image: Warner Bros/Everett Collection)