Wild Thing Movie 1986

[Marilina Crawn]

SomethingWild is a 1986 American comedy thriller film directed by Jonathan Demme, written by E. Max Frye, and starring Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels and Ray Liotta.[3] It was screened out of competition at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.[4] The film has some elements of a road movie combined with screwball comedy.

Charlie claims the cash he is carrying is for his Christmas club account, but Lulu persuades him to pay for a room at a roadside motel. Once inside she handcuffs him to the bed. She phones his boss and puts the receiver to his head while they are having sex, forcing him into an awkward conversation. Later Charlie pretends to phone his wife but Lulu is unaware that his marriage ended nine months ago.

After sharing a meal with Lulu at an Italian restaurant, Charlie realizes he is unable to pay with what little cash he has left. Lulu leaves him with the check, forcing him to flee the restaurant to escape an angry chef who demands payment. After spending the night at a motel, Lulu and Charlie awaken to find a police officer and tow truck near the car she drove down an embankment and into a signpost the night before. Lulu abandons the car and buys one from a sleazy used car dealer, leaving Charlie wondering where she got the money. He starts to enjoy Lulu's free-wheeling lifestyle and realizes he is falling in love with her.

Lulu confesses that her real name is Audrey and introduces Charlie as her husband to her mother, Peaches, at her Pennsylvania home. She appears as a demure blonde, having removed her brunette wig. She takes Charlie to her high school reunion, where a former classmate recognizes him as his office colleague. Audrey's violent ex-convict husband, Ray Sinclair, also appears and makes clear that he wants her back. After ditching his date, Ray takes Audrey and Charlie along while he robs a convenience store. He pistol-whips a clerk and breaks Charlie's nose. They drive to a cheap motel, where Ray forces Charlie to admit his wife left him (having learned this from Charlie's colleague at the class reunion). Realizing Charlie has deceived her, Audrey stays behind with Ray.

Despite Ray warning him to stay away from him and Audrey, Charlie secretly tails the couple as they leave the motel. Charlie confronts Ray in a Virginia restaurant with several police officers seated nearby and threatens to reveal Ray's parole violations unless he allows Audrey to leave with him. He demands that Ray hand over his wallet and car keys and leaves the check with Ray to force him to stay behind as they flee. Ray is saved from this dilemma by a shop girl he had met earlier.

Charlie takes Audrey to his Stony Brook, Long Island, home, but their idyllic suburban retreat is literally shattered when Ray hurls a patio chair through their sliding glass door. He severely beats Charlie and handcuffs him to the pipes under the bathroom sink before attacking Audrey. Charlie frees himself by pulling the pipes apart and strangles Ray with the handcuffs. During the scuffle, Charlie retrieves Ray's dropped knife. Ray dies when he accidentally impales himself on the knife Charlie is holding. Audrey is taken away for questioning when the police arrive.

Charlie later quits his job and looks for Audrey at her apartment, but finds she has moved. Outside the diner where Charlie met Audrey, a waitress accuses him of leaving without paying. Audrey suddenly appears with the cash he left on the table in her hand. Stylishly dressed and with elegant makeup, she smiles and invites Charlie into her woodie station wagon and back into her life.

Something Wild was released on VHS by HBO Video on July 15, 1987. The film was released on DVD by MGM on June 5, 2001, presented in its original 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio. The only special feature was the original theatrical trailer.

On May 10, 2011, Something Wild was released by The Criterion Collection on DVD and Blu-ray. The Blu-ray has a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Tak Fujimoto and approved by director Jonathan Demme. It also features new video interviews with Demme and writer E. Max Frye, the original theatrical trailer, and a special booklet featuring an essay by film critic David Thompson.[17]

The film's soundtrack was released on LP and CD, featuring only 10 of the 49 tracks in the title credits. Notable omissions from the CD were the school reunion songs performed by The Feelies (including "Fame", "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" and "I'm a Believer"), and The Troggs' "Wild Thing" (which gave the film its title and which was sung in the convertible scene).

"Sam Kinison was absolutely fearless. He was like a comedy combination of Chuck Yeager and Evel Knievel. Most people go to the edge and then stop. Not Sam. He'd see the edge and then just keep going. And I think that scream he was famous for was just the sound he made on the way down." - Robin Williams

Kinison's life was bookended by automotive tragedy. He was hit by a truck when he was three years old - an accident causing him permanent brain damage - and he died in a car crash in 1992 at the age of 38. In the years in between he went from being a Pentecostal preacher to one of the most original and acclaimed comics in America. In the Eighties he was a true sensation, one of the first comics to take the "comedy of hate" to serious arena-sized heights.

He was the man who inspired Bill Hicks to push his own envelope, a stand-up comedian who indulged his passions for alcohol, drugs and women. He was the frat-house Lenny Bruce, a white Richard Pryor, the most rock'n'roll comic to ever fill an auditorium. He was the high-school dropout raised on the Bible who delivered sleaze with sledgehammer subtlety.

He certainly walked on stage like a rock star. I saw him for the first time in the spring of 1987, at the Comedy Store on LA's Sunset Strip. And he was ferocious. He ambled on stage like Bob Dylan with a grievance, surly and snarky before he'd even opened his mouth. I was sitting close to the stage, and I remember feeling terrified in case he decided to pick on me. The only other time I've been scared in the presence of a comedian was when I saw Sandra Bernhard in London in the Nineties, I was sitting in the front row just hoping she wasn't going to notice my tie (loud, unnecessarily self-regarding).

Kinison, though, was something else. This was the sort of comedian you would have expected to play the Roxy or the Vortex during the London punk years, if punk had ever entertained comedy, that is. Kinison's stage presence was strictly on/off. With him there was no dimmer switch. He would shout, he would scream, and then he'd do it all again, louder. And there was nothing the audience could do apart from capitulate. Because the audience was his bitch. And we never knew where to look.

For starters he looked like a child molester. He wasn't what you would call a typical comic, nor a typical rock star come to that. He was pudgy - he was short and weighed more than 14 stone - and looked like a chubby Che Guevara, or a deranged Muppet. He'd wear baggy T-shirts, a billowing flasher's coat and a beret, looking more like a beggar than a gold-rated comic.

Kinison was a slash-and-burn comedian with a potty mouth and a megaphone for a larynx. His stand-up routines were characterised by an OTT style that was out of kilter with the popular stand-ups of the early Eighties, a "fire and brimstone" style based on his Pentecostal preachings, and always punctuated by what became known as his trademark scream. He would start singing what appeared to be straightforward versions of songs, and then go off on mad tangents, ranting and raving with extraordinary precision; he did this once on The Tonight Show, during a performance of Elvis Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", terrifying the audience in the process.

To judge from his rants, you could be forgiven for thinking that Kinison lived in an emotional world that mirrored Bruegel's "Triumph Of Death", one of his portraits of extravagant human suffering. Most of his material was the result of his disastrous first two marriages, to Patricia Adkins (1975-1980) and Terry Marze (1981- 1989). These relationships were responsible for so much material it could often fill up an entire performance. When I saw him at the Comedy Store almost the entire set was based around this, a vehement litany of disaster, attrition and hate. "I don't worry about terrorism," he'd say during this time. "I was married for two years."

After he and his first wife were divorced, he abandoned preaching and took up comedy as a profession. "I have lived a carnal life," he'd cry, moving around the stage like a prize fighter, swaying from side to side, ever keen to make his point. "My view of life is, 'If you're going to miss heaven, why miss it by two inches? Miss it!' I don't have to go through the thing of paying for it in the next life. I know I'm screwed in the next life."

His scream soon became Kinison's trademark, his calling card, his "thing". It stemmed from the relationship with his wife Terry. They'd been arguing for three days, and on the third day he was due to appear at the Comedy Store, and he went on stage in a complete rage. Right down the front, there was a couple, cuddling, kissing, publicising their love. Looking at this picture of young love, Kinison suddenly snapped, and started addressing them from the stage. "Do you love her?" he asked the guy. "I don't know - we're just dating," said the man.

Kinison said: "Look at her. This is the best it's ever going to be. Look at her. If you ever decide you want to marry her, and you want to have a little house with the white picket fence, I want you to remember this face."

Bill Kinison [Sam's elder brother] was in the audience that night: "He got down and he just screamed in the guy's face. Only, Sam's mad. It's not a joke to him. He is so p*d off this couple is sitting there, like they're going to live blissfully ever after, and he was living in s. It happened to end up being his niche - that scream."

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