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Wild Things — Vintage Movie Tee (1998)
Few movies capture the sleazy, glossy, completely unhinged energy of late-’90s cinema quite like Wild Things.
Released in 1998, Wild Things stars Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, Matt Dillon, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Murray in a sun-drenched South Florida neo-noir involving sex, money, murder, blackmail, and enough double-crosses to make keeping track of who is conning whom nearly impossible.
Campbell and Richards play Suzie Toller and Kelly Van Ryan, two high-school students from opposite sides of the tracks whose accusations against guidance counselor Sam Lombardo set an increasingly ridiculous—and ridiculously entertaining—scheme into motion. What follows is part erotic thriller, part crime movie, and part trash masterpiece.
The relationship between Suzie and Kelly became one of the movie’s defining elements, particularly the infamous pool scene and their unexpected shift from rivals to lovers and co-conspirators. Like much bisexual representation in 1990s erotic thrillers, it was designed heavily around heterosexual male fantasy. But the film is also unusually slippery about sexuality: desire is another weapon everyone can use, alliances constantly change, and the supposedly straightforward characters frequently turn out to be anything but.
That combination has helped Wild Things acquire a substantial camp and queer following. Denise Richards emerging from a swimming pool, Neve Campbell looking like she knows considerably more than everyone else, Kevin Bacon going memorably full-frontal, Bill Murray stealing every scene he enters—it practically assembled its cult audience in advance.
Initially dismissed by many critics as lurid exploitation, Wild Things has since been reevaluated as a surprisingly clever neo-noir hiding underneath an extremely trashy exterior. The trashiness, naturally, remains essential.
