"Wild Man" is a porn flick that's trapped in an action picture's body. It doesn't contain enough graphic sex to qualify as a genuine X-rated feature, but the quality of the filmmaking makes you feel like you are watching one. It's probably the closest thing to pornography that you will ever find on the shelf of a Blockbuster store, which, incidentally, is where I discovered the film. As you probably have already guessed, "Wild Man" is directed by a veteran adult film director, Fred Lincoln, who has hundreds of titles to his, er... credit. While I know absolutely nothing about his X-rated work (and the entire business in general), I decided to check out this title for curiousity's sake, since I had admired Lincoln's performance in the Wes Craven classic, "Last House on the Left". Why he decided to stray from his genre and make a genuine action movie is beyond me. He certainly pours all his directorial energies into the sex scenes in the picture, but doesn't seem to have the slightest idea about how to do anything else.
Of course, since "Wild Man" is completely inept in all respects, it is the source of much entertainment value. Those who like to watch X-rated films just to poke fun at the production values will find much to laugh at here and won't have to be worry about being turned off by any hardcore sex. Predictably, the title character, Eric Wilde, turns out to be the stiffest, most boring secret agent in the history of cinema, though you'll be hard-pressed to ever find a movie character more hyperactive than Tommy Lee, the over-the-top villain whose scenery-chewing makes a typical Ric Flair interview from World Championship Wrestling look like a model of subtlety. The action scenes in this film are so badly staged that at one point, when a stuntman falls off a roof, you can actually see a crew member's hands tossing a mattress right in front of the camera for him to land on!! Lincoln himself even has a brief cameo as a wise old INDIAN (!) who gives the hero a special ring that makes him invincible. After hearing the description of that scene, I kinda doubt you're very anxious for me go into the mechanics of the plot. I'd love to give "Wild Man" a hearty recommendation to all "bad film" lovers out there, but they should be warned that it somehow manage to stretch its feeble storyline out to 110 MINUTES, which is quite a long time to have to endure a film of its calibre. The reason that Ed Wood's films have always had such lasting appeal is because most of them run barely over an hour long, which doesn't allow them the chance to become tedious, which "Wild Man" certainly does. But when all is said and done, it's pretty damn hard to resist a movie with a cover box that says, "He's a pistol that's always cocked" - especially when the film itself is so half-cocked.
7 out of 11 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink