Thirty years ago, a jury in Portland was tasked with deciding whether having s** with Madonna could be considered a deadly weapon.

This was the plot of the locally-made erotic thriller, Body of Evidence, which starred Madonna herself, alongside Willem Dafoe and some S&M candle drippings.

Madonna played the role of Rebecca Carlson, who was accused of killing her wealthy, older boyfriend at the Pittock Mansion using cocaine and s**.

Dafoe played her defense attorney, Frank Dulaney, who had to try the potentially fatal domination himself, as is typical in neo-noir films.

Despite being an Oregon-made film, Body of Evidence was heavily criticized for constantly ripping off Basic Instinct, and it’s unlikely that the film will ever be celebrated with loving repertory screenings or an Oregon Film Trail placard.

However, the film did make ample use of downtown Portland and even had its own (baseless) takes on local values.

The film’s sense of place was entertaining, with Portland being used as a glassy noir backdrop.

The attorney spent his evenings in downtown coffee shops, while the mystery manor was perched on the hillside, and the temptress’s s** trap was down on the Willamette.

The best location in the film was Madonna’s swanky houseboat at Sellwood Riverfront Park, where marital vows and attorney-client boundaries applied only on land.

The best scene was the second tryst in the courthouse parking garage, where Madonna climbed onto a car and hung from a ceiling pipe while reverse-sitting on Dafoe’s shoulders.

This was the only scene where the film played with public scrutiny as a turn-on and tension source.

However, the worst scene was undoubtedly the action closer, where Madonna went arch, and the director, Uli Edel, was in a hapless hurry to wrap things up.

Despite this, Joe Mantegna gave a sturdy performance as the district attorney, bringing requisite gravitas to some boilerplate courtroom scenes.

Madonna claimed that the s** scenes were improvised to create surprise and authenticity, but this came across in a way that made it seem like the camera didn’t know where to look.

The Portland Take was that Body of Evidence insisted that Portland was a prudish city, with Frank warning his client that “people here have very conservative views about s**.”

Later, the judge cleared her courtroom because the gallery was so disapproving.

One loose end in the film was Madonna’s character, who supposedly roamed the country ensnaring wealthy men with bad hearts, owned an enormous Portland art gallery that was seen and referenced only once.

Julianne Moore also felt exploited during her gratuitous s** scene, which added nothing but skin.

Doughnuts played a critical role in one scene, but they didn’t look particularly artisanal.

To save the film, Edel should’ve tried some of Paul Verhoeven’s lens gels and intricate boudoir choreography.

More importantly, Madonna and Dafoe should have switched roles.

Casting Dafoe as the Michael Douglas archetype, the white-collar family man primed for a corrupting influence, was a poorly conceived idea.

Madonna might have been better as the corruptee rather than the vacant femme fatale who ended up on screen.

After all, her whole career gleefully plays with the iconography of the good girl gone bad.

In conclusion, while Body of Evidence was shoddy, unoriginal, and curiously not even that hot, it is worth recalling for its massive swing and miss, and it makes ample use of downtown Portland and has its own (baseless) takes on local values.

The film can be streamed on Pluto TV, Roku, and Tubi.