Something Wild starts off very well. Those minutes in the beginning with no dialog showing the aftermath of the attack on Carroll Baker are very realistically done. But when Baker leaves home the story goes off into the unbelievable.
Carroll is a young college student who is attacked and raped on her way home one night. She tells no one about the attack and you take one look at her stepfather and mother and you can see why. Charles Watts is something of a doofus and mother Mildred Dunnock is one of those perpetually sick women who really enjoy being miserable and making others around the same.
Note the scene where Baker carefully destroys all the clothes she wore during the attack and also how she carefully bathes to get rid of every trace her attacker might have left. What you're seeing there is the reason many women do not report rapes, even with the most insightful and sensitive of sex crimes detectives you are reliving horrific events that you want to put out of your mind.
Unfortunately after that the film goes haywire. The man who Carroll eventually takes up, Ralph Meeker, an average Joe, a garage mechanic is just a bit too good to be true. I couldn't see the rest of the story myself at all.
Look for a nice performance by Jean Stapleton as Carroll's rather slatternly next door neighbor in a rooming-house Carroll moves in after leaving home abruptly. It's as far from Edith Bunker as you can get.
Dealing with rape trauma, the film was squarely on the money, but the rest of it I just couldn't buy.
Carroll is a young college student who is attacked and raped on her way home one night. She tells no one about the attack and you take one look at her stepfather and mother and you can see why. Charles Watts is something of a doofus and mother Mildred Dunnock is one of those perpetually sick women who really enjoy being miserable and making others around the same.
Note the scene where Baker carefully destroys all the clothes she wore during the attack and also how she carefully bathes to get rid of every trace her attacker might have left. What you're seeing there is the reason many women do not report rapes, even with the most insightful and sensitive of sex crimes detectives you are reliving horrific events that you want to put out of your mind.
Unfortunately after that the film goes haywire. The man who Carroll eventually takes up, Ralph Meeker, an average Joe, a garage mechanic is just a bit too good to be true. I couldn't see the rest of the story myself at all.
Look for a nice performance by Jean Stapleton as Carroll's rather slatternly next door neighbor in a rooming-house Carroll moves in after leaving home abruptly. It's as far from Edith Bunker as you can get.
Dealing with rape trauma, the film was squarely on the money, but the rest of it I just couldn't buy.