“horny” has killed more people than all the volcanos on earth combined —@dril
“I just think I’m looking at a dead man, though.” —Carrie Ann
By the standards established by these eminent students of the human condition, I would like to report at least three murders committed by Dr. Elizabeth Clay in the very first moment we see her on this fateful night. There’s the galoot in the wifebeater, Bobby Axelrod, and another guy right behind her who’s about to pay the iron price for having the best seat in the house. Worth it!
Despite being terminally horny, I don’t often write about it anymore because it seems…I dunno, both distasteful, coming from a person in my privileged position, and superfluous, since now every single human being above the age of about 16 with an Internet connection is writing things like “I want Timothee Chalamet to rip out my esophagus and toss me into a nearby body of water to float downstream face-down” every two seconds. I made an exception for Carrie Ann in what is and remains the hottest goddamned moment in any move I’ve ever seen, of course. In a more abstract way I talk about how attractive Denise and Dalton are, although Denise doesn’t hit me where I live so to speak, and I’m too tediously straight to feel legit randy towards even Patrick Swayze in his prime.
But I am unashamed to say that my first thought every time I see the Doc make her grand entrance in the middle of Dalton’s parking-lot brawl against Boot-Knife Ketchum and the Goon Guys Present The Sounds of Barbershop is a spit-take, a low whistle, that springy series of noises when a machine malfunctions in a Looney Tunes short, va-va-fucking-va-voom.
My second thought: Why is she wearing a picnic blanket, and why does her hair look like what happens when you lose the ponytail accessories for an old Barbie doll? Because man alive, that is an odd dress, and that blonde lizard frill sticks out like it broke free of her earlier French braid on its own steam. It’s wild.
It’s to the Doc’s testament that she can make it work. Her body is nearly as nuts as Dalton’s is, that much we can gather, and we’ll get a better look at it later still. Both she and Kelly Lynch, the actor who plays her, are both very pretty women, with a face that seems severe until she smiles, at which point it’s open and warm and kind of adorable. There’s a bit later in the film where Dalton razzes her and she kind of open-palm smushes his face, and that goofy sweet horseplay makes sense the moment she grins.
But the dress commands the eye in the end, and it’s what makes her entrance so striking. Even among the hooting and hollering heteros with whom I first watched the movie, the drunken “Hel-looooo nurse!“s were quickly followed by “What the hell is up with that dress?”, but you’ll notice the order of the two exclamations. When you see this extremely accomplished person—her accomplishments are all we know about her at this point—arrive in clothes that make this loud a statement, you wind up not caring much that the statement is borderline incomprehensible. You just think “How can I meet and entertain and hopefully impress this person without fucking up? She’s a surgeon in a gingham mini for chrissakes!”
Considering how badly Dalton bobbles the first date (though as it turns out he doesn’t bobble it half as badly as it seems at first blush) this appears to have been his primary response as well. It’s unnerving, I’d imagine, to have just finished kicking the asses of four men sent to murder you and then still find yourself several score professional and sartorial steps behind a person who just showed up to take you on a date. Your rules won’t help you now.
