75 of 77 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Beware!, April 27, 2005
Those of you hoping to track down the director's version of this film, don't get your hopes up with the "unrated" listing among the technical specifications. This is still the 95 minute R-rated rush-release, it just doesn't list it on the packaging. The director's cut (apparently available only in Region 2) runs 111 minutes.
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56 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
NOT THE DIRECTOR'S CUT; DO NOT BUY THIS JUNK, August 3, 2001
This review is from: The Wild Side (DVD)
How DISGUSTING that this film has been put out in its awful BUTCHERED version, the one Donald Cammell took his name off, just to capitalize on the recent big public Lesbian love-affair of Anne Heche and Ellen De Generais. This is the version that has been showing up on lists of the worst films ever made, BOMBS, etc., and needs to be thrown on the trash heap where it belongs. And if that weren't enough of a disgrace and insult to Cammell's artistic vision, the Full-Screen Only specification should clue you in to what kind of charlatans you're dealing with here. You should know for your own good that people are just trying to take your money and run when they offer only a full-screen version on a DVD!
Fortunately, through the efforts of some of Cammell's friends we now have the original version which should be put out on a good DVD as soon as possible. In fact, I just saw (at the American Cinemateque in Hollywood)a pristine print of that ORIGINAL DIRECTOR'S CUT, meticulously reconstructed by Frank Mazzolla, Cammell's editor, from detailed notes Cammell left right before he shot himself, and was COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY by it (no pun intended). I haven't laughed so hard and been thoroughly fascinated at the same time for a long, long time. The great, very long, leisurely paced and quite erotic Lesbian scene between Anne Heche and Joan Chen is maybe the least of the original film's virtues. Cammell's vision seamlessly puts together amazing cinematography, hilarious farce, off-kilter dialogue that goes everywhere you don't expect it to, virtuoso editing, and above all, the semi-improvised performances of their careers from the three main leads (Anne Heche, Christopher Walken, Steven Bauer), into a near-masterpiece that only a talentless producer could've ever turned into a 'bomb,' a film, that in the final analysis, can hold its own against "Performance," and "White of the Eye" (the two mind-blowers that made Cammell a living legend, albeit one who couldn't find work!).
You might ask who's Steven Bauer? Steven Bauer is the guy who's mostly known for having played Al Pacino/Tony Montana's brother in De Palma's "Scarface." Now you know EXACTLY who he is, because he was so excellent in "Scarface" that people always wonder what happened to the guy! Well, he's done quite a lot of mediocre stuff just to keep working, but when given the chance, as here, under Cammell's direction, he's done truly exceptional work. The scene where Bauer has to 'bend over' to prove his loyalty to Christopher Walken and has his underwear torn off, with a non-chalant Anne Heche in the room amused by the goings-ons, is maybe one of the two or three most hilarious, daring, pulling-out-all-the-stops, semi-improvised virtuoso acting scenes in recent cinematic memory. This film will yet have its day!
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Wild Side, February 27, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: The Wild Side (DVD)
The only edition available on DVD is apparently the R-rated one which does not contain the hot scene with Heche and Chen.
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