Product Description

'reckless romance, comedy and a wild-side ride [you] won't soon forget (Newsday)! Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith and Ray Liotta star in this classic comedy thriller about losing yourself, finding your heart and kidnapping a date for your high-school reunion! Nominated* for three Golden Globe awards, Something Wild captures the giddy exhilaration of jumping into a car, hitting the road [and] chucking it all (LA Herald-Examiner)! Mild-mannered Charlie Driggs (Daniels) thinks he's a closet rebeluntil he meets a real one. Sexy, free-spirited and totally reckless, Lulu (Griffith) hijacks Charlie for an outrageous spree filled with offbeat sex, petty larceny and hilarious mayhem. But when Lulu's psychotic ex-con husband Ray (Liotta) puts the brakes on their joyride, Charlie suddenly realizes that his walk on the wild side may not only cost him his job and his girlfriendit just might cost him his lifein this wonderfully zesty romantic thriller full of unexpected plot curves (New York Daily News)! *1986: Actress: Melanie Griffith; Actor: Jeff Daniels; Supporting Actor: Ray Liotta

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36530 in DVD
• Brand: GRIFFITH,MELANIE
• Released on: 2001-06-05
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .24 pounds
• Running time: 113 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Jonathan Demme's sexy 1986 road comedy, a story about the liberation of a stuffed-shirt businessman (Jeff Daniels) by a free-spirited punkette (Melanie Griffith), looks better and better as the years go by. By dressing Griffith in a bowl-cut black wig and giving her character the resonant nickname Lulu, Demme establishes a clear link with G.W. Pabst's 1928 Louise Brooks melodrama Pandora's Box--except that in this case the influence of a sexual free spirit is not seen as malign or corrupting. The turning point comes when the girl's hard-edged manner is discarded along with the wig and the nickname: Lulu turns into Audrey, a touchingly vulnerable, fluffy blonde. Ray Liotta, making his first big splash as Audrey's ex-con ex-husband, a hot-wired collection of homicidal tics, personifies the menacing aspects of the "wild side" of life. The intensity of the final showdown between Daniels and Liotta startles some viewers, but it provides a needed catharsis. The film's glorious soundtrack album featuring David Byrne's peppy title track became a hit in its own right, and is still readily available. --David Chute

Customer Reviews

Why has time forgotten this classic?
I thought Demme walked on water after seeing this movie (and its follow-ups, Married to the Mob and Silence of the Lambs). I love the layers of texture to this movie--there's always some set decoration I never noticed before, and the performances he wrings out of his stable of actors is great. This movie defined "alternative" when it was released, and deftly pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of starting out screwball comedy and turning violent halfway thru without losing its voice. All three leads have never done better than they did here (okay, maybe Liotta in Goodfellas). So why is SW subjected to the basement of video VHS? This movie made tons of critics top 10 lists for the Eighties (sadly not much of a challenge, but still...) and yet can't even get a DVD date to prom. Wild...

My favorrite movie... on DVD at last!
I first saw this movie in the theaters, and I remember sitting spellbound, utterly enthralled by the adept manner in which Jonathan Demme blends comedy, romance, drama, and suspense in a single film. For years, I would catch it whenever I could on cable -- or, if I were hanging with a "virgin" friend who had never before seen the film, I'd scrounge up a rental copy (pan-n-scan, of course) at the local video store. All told, I've seen it about a dozen times, twice as many times as I have seen any other movie -- but only once in the widescreen format in which it was originally composed.

When people ask me what my favorite movie is, I tell them without hesitation, "Something Wild." Inevitably, a look of comprehension is absent from their face. I briefly explain the plot, describe Melanie Griffith in the black wig, Jeff Daniels as the nebbishy accountant, and Ray Liotta as the Lulu's sinister ex-con (IMHO, career-best performances for all three), and faces begin to light up. Most people have caught at least a part of this film on Comedy Central and recognize it (if only slightly) from those heavily edited screenings, which is a shame because this movie needs to be seen in its unexpurgated form in order to really gain an appreciation of its genius.

So you can imagine my delight when I opened a birthday gift from my girlfriend and found inside a copy of "Something Wild" on DVD. If I were capable of squealing, I would have. You see, I was under the impression that this was one of those "lost titles" that would never be released on DVD. Yet there it was, in my hands, a true cinematic masterpiece, one of the best films of the 80s, my favorite movie. Sigh. What a great birthday present!

Now that I have recovered from the initial giddiness of actually owning the flick and watched it once or twice, I can report objectively that the DVD release isn't perfect. The transfer is average (but nevertheless widescreen -- yay!), with a slightly washed-out look that minimizes some of the impact of the garish 80s couture. And the disk is pretty straightforward. You can select from 16 scenes, watch in the original English or dubbed Spanish, watch with French or Spanish subtitles, and view an irrelevant theatrical trailer. Or, you can just live with the fact that this great film is finally available on DVD and watch it start to finish, over and over again.

Great musical time capsule for the time
First, the music in this movie. Director Jonathan Demme has always put good songs in, but "Something Wild" might be the best example. Just about every song used reminds me of the good things about inventive creative music from the 80's, while leaving the garbage out. Thus the "time capsule" header, as this is the way I'd like to remember that era.

The movie itself is a wild roller coaster that is somewhat of an updated version of a Hitchcock movie. The comparison here is based on an everyday guy getting himself drawn deeper and deeper in to a situation, where he not only at times escape is fairly difficult, but he'll eventually have to fight for his life.

But what makes it more intriguing is that when the everyday guy does get a chance to escape, he finds his situation so intriguing that he changes his mind. He not only spies on the situation he probably should be running away from as fast as he can, but he also confronts it in one of the most ballsy scenes in movie history. The restaurant scene where he virtually walks in and takes the girl from the nasty bad guy is a cinematic treat.

So is the casting. Jeff Daniels is perfect as the everyday guy. It's disappointing to see Melanie Griffith today, because in this movie she absolutely sizzles as the bad girl who gets him into the predicament, but also has a good side that wants to get out of the bad life. And the screen debut of Ray Liotta is absolutely electrifying as an intelligent violent man, and I'm sure this is what got him the recognition that led to "Goodfellas". I'm amazed that I saw this movie while well into my adult life, and considering that was already sixteen years ago, I'm starting to feel old again.