The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981 film) the "charged chemistry" between Nicholson and Lange, and stated that Nicholson admitted that he was smitten with his co-star, remarking that she was a "big consensus movie sex bomb". The film was nominated by the American Film Institute in 2002 for the AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions list. The star of the 1946 version, Lana Turner, expressed her disapproval of the remake. She especially disliked how the studio "turned it into such pornographic trash", and admitted that although she did not watch the remake, she had seen advertisements and blurbs on television that made her sick. The Postman Always Rings Twice
Lana Turner as an actress has divided critics: Upon Turner's death, John Updike wrote in "The New Yorker" that she "was a faded period piece, an old-fashioned glamour queen whose fifty-four films, over four decades didn't amount, retrospectively to much ... As a performer, she was purely a studio-made product." Defenders of Turner's acting ability, such as Jessica Hope Jordan and James Robert Parish, cite her performance in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" as an argument for the value of her work. Her role in the film has also resulted in her being frequently associated with film noir and the femme fatale