Szadkowski, Joseph (May 25, 2022). " 'Wild Things: Limited Edition' 4K Ultra HD movie review". The Washington Times. Archived from the original on May 26, 2022. Robert Downey Jr. was the first choice for the role of Sam Lombardo, which ultimately went to Matt Dillon. Downey was considered because of his highly publicized drug problems, and although he was in recovery he was seen as too great an insurance risk. Producer Rodney Liber said "we couldn't make it work," and the production company even offered to put up some of the money but "There were just too many lawyers and insurance people and bond-company people involved." [12] Dunn, Jancee (September 18, 1997). "Interview: Neve Campbell". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on January 25, 2022. Hirshleifer, Daniel (July 7, 2007). "Wild Things". DVD Talk. Archived from the original on May 27, 2022 . Retrieved May 27, 2022. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown ( link)

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, praising McNaughton's directing and the plot twists. He described it as "lurid trash, with a plot so twisted they're still explaining it during the closing titles. It's like a three-way collision between a softcore sex film, a soap opera and a B-grade noir. I liked it." [22] Gene Siskel gave the film a marginal recommendation. [23] Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the film in a standard DVD edition, followed by an extended edition featuring the unrated cut of the film in 2004. [31] The unrated cut was subsequently released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on Blu-ray in 2007. [32] In May 2022, Arrow Films released Wild Things in a limited 4K UHD Blu-ray edition featuring both the theatrical and extended unrated cuts of the film. [33] Legacy [ edit ] Bacon also had a no nudity clause in his contract but without giving it much thought allowed McNaughton to use the shot that he thought looked best, and a moment of frontal nudity was included in the film. He was surprised by how many questions he got about it at the American press showing, and noted that the European press did not ask about it at all. [16] Filming [ edit ] Thorburn, John (2010). "John McNaughton's Wild Things: Pop Culture Echoes of Medea in the 1990s" (PDF). In Bartel, Heike (ed.). Unbinding Medea. New York: Routledge. pp.113–123. ISBN 978-0-367-60361-8. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 27, 2022.

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Filming in the Everglades proved difficult due to severe weather conditions. A tornado almost crushed a couple of trailers. McNaughton said production had to be halted and the police called when a real dead body floated into view. [12] [17] Release [ edit ] Box office [ edit ] Wild Things is a 1998 American neo-noir [4] erotic thriller film directed by John McNaughton and starring Matt Dillon, Kevin Bacon, Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, Theresa Russell, Robert Wagner, and Bill Murray. It follows a high school guidance counselor in south Florida who is accused of rape by two female students and a series of subsequent revelations after a police officer begins investigating the alleged crimes.

Boyar, Jay (March 20, 1998). "Twisty 'Wild Things' Just Misses Its Mark". Orlando Sentinel. Archived from the original on January 11, 2021. Literary scholar John Thorburn notes that Wild Things is loosely based on several figures in Greek tragedies, namely Medea, whom he describes the character of Suzie as a "modern-day version of." [5] He also notes that Kelly functions as a Phaedra-like figure, while Sam exemplifies both Jason and Hippolytus. [6] Thorburn suggests that the film's "most under-appreciated element is screenwriter Stephen Peters’s obvious debt to classical mythology, tragedy and, especially, two Euripidean plays, Medea (431 BC) and Hippolytus (428 BC). [7]Clark, Jason. "Wild Things". Allmovie. Wild Things can honestly be called one of the '90s true neo-noirs Speaking of the plot, one critique of Ralph Bakshi's production of The Lord Of The Rings states that about a third of the way through, Ralph shifts gears and simply gives all the neat highlights without any of the setup that links them together to give coherence. Wild Things 2 never shifts gears. It starts out on the assumption that it has given enough exposition to make sense, and simply throws scenes in the viewer's face without any hint of transition. It is almost as if an entire half-hour of footage was deleted from throughout the film, all from between one scene or another. Bovberg, Jason (March 25, 2004). "Wild Things: Unrated Edition". DVD Talk. Archived from the original on May 27, 2022 . Retrieved May 27, 2022. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown ( link) McLevy, Alex (2018). "Wild Things gave us Kevin Bacon's wang and a threesome of sequels". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on January 20, 2021.

Maslin, Janet (March 20, 1998). "FILM REVIEW; Schoolgirls Make Alligators Look Like Ingenues". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 22, 2022. Guidance councillor Sam Lombardo is popular with the kids in a small town. However when he is accused of rape by Kelly, the daughter of the powerful Van Ryan family, he finds this existence starting to fall apart. Things look worse when Sgt.'s Duquette and Perez find that Suzie Toller also claims he raped her. But when the case goes to court with Lombardo defended by Ken Bowden, things take the first of many unexpected twists. Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised Campbell & Richard's performances, and also McNaughton's direction for adding "a decadent gloss to this far-fetched, quintuple-crossing tale", although she criticized the plot as being "loony". [24] John McNaughton said Denise Richards' first audition was good but her much improved second audition convinced them to cast her. [13] Richards' lawyer negotiated a detailed contract about how much nudity would be filmed, including the option to use a body double. Richards did not use a double and filmed the scene herself after drinking a pitcher of margaritas with Neve Campbell. [9] [14] Campbell's contract had a strict no-nudity clause. [9] Campbell took on the role wanting to challenge herself, to do something different from her Party of Five character, and to avoid being typecast. [15]The film's screenplay was written by screenwriter Stephen Peters, who had previously written the independent film Dead Center (1993). [9] John McNaughton, who had garnered acclaim for the horror film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), became involved with the project as he was seeking to make a more mainstream feature. [8] I was at a point in my career where I needed to do a commercial picture, and that was one of the key reasons I chose the film. I really liked the script, but it was also me asking myself 'What sells? Sex and violence. You want sex and violence? Well, here you go. How much can you take?'" Wild Things was followed by three direct-to-DVD sequels: Wild Things 2 (2004), Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough (2005), and Wild Things: Foursome (2010).

McNaughton commented in 2018 that he considered Wild Things his "most political film" due to its focus on social class, concluding: "Who wins? The girl from the trailer park! She’s all alone on the ninety foot sail boat, out on the Caribbean. Pretty much everyone else is dead. That was the nineties, with the concentration of wealth. But the girl from the trailer park takes ‘em all down. You know, I’m from the striving working class. A lot of the kids I grew up with, the parents didn’t care if their kid dropped out of school. But some of us had parents who insisted their children have an education, go to college, escape all that. So that’s where my heart always lies." [34] Related works [ edit ] Kem Nunn was appointed to perform some rewrites of Peters's original version. [8] McNaughton commented that Peters's original draft "is brilliant on plot and we didn't change any of it, but I felt Kem Nunn was stronger on texture and character and place. The producer, Peter Guber, sent us off to Florida, where none of us had spent much time and we spent ten days there getting shepherded around to places and meeting people who were like people in the story. When I read the script I thought As crazy as it is, I do believe it could happen in the world that we live in. Once I believe that a story can happen in the real world, then I know how to direct it." [8] One of the standout features of Wild Things was that in spite of having an obvious emphasis on the eye-candy content, it also contained enough to keep the other areas of the mind stimulated. In addition to a cast that was very pleasant to look at, doing some things that were equally pleasing to the eye, it had a credible plot that read like an everyday event in parts of America. Most importantly, however, the original Wild Things wasn't afraid to recognise that adults have a right to be entertained, too. a b c d Rowlands, Paul (October 2016). "An Interview with John McNaughton (Part 2 of 3)". Money Into Light. Archived from the original on April 15, 2021.

Cast of Wild Things

Marr, Madeleine (June 25, 2018). "Remember 'Scarface?' That movie and others have put South Beach at the top of the list". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on November 24, 2020. In a retrospective on the film celebrating its twentieth anniversary, Entertainment Weekly writer Chris Nashawaty noted that Wild Things marked a peak in lurid sex-themed thriller films in the late-1990s, summarizing: "As a rule, movies like Wild Things fight an uphill battle with critics who would want to seem above titillation. But this was one of those rare films whose underlying smarts couldn't be denied." [9]