After his hippie parents are murdered by a drug dealer named Cutter (Robert Davi!), a young boy is taken in and raised by a homeless woman (Betty Buckley). The boy eventually grows up to be Wild Thing (Robert Knepper), an urban Tarzan who jumps from rooftop to rooftop at night and who protects the neighborhood for evil doers (like Cutter). A social worker (Kathleen Quinlan) hears the legend of Wild Thing and eventually finds him. She continues his education, explaining to him why people do the “body bump.” Carrying a bow and arrow and accompanied by a surprisingly loyal cat, Wild Thing fights the bad guys and seeks revenge for his parents.
Wild Thing is one of those movies that should be incredibly bad but somehow it isn’t. John Sayles was one of three writers to work on the script (Sayles was the only one to get credit) and the film has a self-aware sense of humor similar to the scripts that Sayles wrote for films like Alligator, Battle Beyond The Stars, and Piranha. A young Robert Knepper is probably about as convincing as anyone could be as an urban Tarzan who speaks broken English and who carries a bow and arrow as he makes his way across the rooftops of his neighborhood. As always, Robert Davi is a good villain. Davi knows that he’s appearing in a live action comic book and he gives an appropriate performance.
Wild Thing is a surprisingly enjoyable movie and yes, the song Wild Thing is heard in the movie but not as much as you might think. There’s a few scenes where the song starts to play and is then cut off, as if the movie is teasing our expectations. I just wish Sam Kinison had been invited to perform his version.
