Wild Orchid

Triumph Releasing Corporation | Release Date: April 27, 1990

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

19	METASCORE Overwhelming dislike based on 23 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Harper Barnes

A FEW mildly erotic soft-core sex scenes separated by long stretches of very pretentious, bad dialogue and some travelogue shots of Carnival in Rio: That's about it for Wild Orchid. [25 May 1990, p.6F]

Janet Maslin

Early in his career, at the time of ''Diner,'' Mr. Rourke managed to do this sort of thing very seductively, with a charming nonchalance. This time he seems puffy, sleazy and sadly ineffectual, well over the edge into self-parody. Read full review

Desson Thomson

There's something about Orchid that's appealing, at least for the so-bad-it's-good aficionados. It inspires a guilty combination of howling amusement and rubbernecky fascination, aided by the overpowering, Brazil-meets-lounge music, the sultry images supplied by cinematographer Gale Tattersall and the life's-a-decadent-dinner-party sets of art director Carlos Conti. Read full review

Jack Kroll

Rourke, a good actor, is reduced to doing his whispering-wacko shtik. Supermodel Otis has a marvelous face and can smile and breathe heavily at the same time. Only Jacqueline Bisset gives a real performance, as Claudia, a fiscal whiz who gets her real kicks not form the carnal but the commercial. [7 May 1990]

Roger Ebert

Wild Orchid is an erotic film, plain and simple. It cannot be read any other way. There is no other purpose for its existence. Its story is absurd, and even its locale was chosen primarily for its travelogue value...What is relevant is that I did not find the movie erotic. Read full review

Gene Siskel

Otis` character is one of the most stupid ever placed on film. She mouths platitudes at best; she walks slowly and wears revealing clothes at all other times. If she`s a lawyer, she cheated on her bar exam. Read full review

Matthew Gilbert

It's a movie Playboy spread, with irksome misogynist overtones. And, as the camera swoops liberally along the tropical seaport, it's hard to imagine how such a lovely spot was made to seem so tawdry and so tedious. [28 April 1990, p.8]

John Hartl

The year is still young, but it's not likely to yield a more profoundly vacuous movie than Wild Orchid. [28 Apr 1990, p.C5]

Mike Clark

None of this is erotic, but it is pretty silly. Silly enough to make this the low point of the movie year so far. [30 Apr 1990, p.1D]

Bill Cosford

It's still quite sexy, but hardly erotic. The director, Zalman King, not only has seen entirely too many in the goofy Emmanuelle series, he appears not to know just how stupid those movies are and so has made little more than a knock-off of them. [4 May 1990, p.13]