Wild Party (The)
- Director: James Ivory
- Writer: Walter Marks; Joseph Moncure March
- Producer: Samuel Z. Arkoff; Joseph Beruh
CGiii Comment
Before their 'Golden Years', Merchant/Ivory made many an atrocious film...The Wild Party being their absolute nadir. Usually, a film as bad as this would end many a career. But...with Merchant's immutable and questionable production techniques, they continued to produce...with vary degrees of success and failure...that is, until 'A Room...' changed everything. But, we digress...
Loosely based on the Fatty Arbuckle scandal and Joseph Moncure March's monstrously long-winded, narrative poem...Walter Marks [his first and last screenwriting credit] mangled the fact with the fiction...then, James Ivory mutilated his words into this decadent catastrophe of ham-acting and inflated egos.
Supposedly, this was meant to be an all-singing, Tinseltown satire...in that respect, it fails spectacularly...what is does do so successfully is to show that circumstantial luck and dubious production tactics are far more important than talent. If that was - indeed - the intention...then, The Wild Party is a woefully unacknowledged masterpiece...of incompetence!
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
An aging silent movie comic star tries for a comeback by staging a wild party that turns into a sexual free-for-all. The comic ends up killing his mistress and her latest boyfriend.
Cast & Characters
James Coco as Jolly Grimm;
Raquel Welch as Queenie;
Perry King as Dale Sword;
Tiffany Bolling as Kate;
Royal Dano as Tex;
David Dukes as James Morrison;
Christina Ferra-Gilmore as Nadine;
Eddie Lawrence as Kreutzer;
Bobo Lewis as Wilma;
Don De Natale as Jackie;
Dena Dietrich as Mrs. Murchison;
Regis Cordic as Mr. Murchison;
Jennifer Lee as Madeline True;
Mews Small as Bertha;
Baruch Lumet as Tailor