The tumescent ranks of direct-to-video sex thrillers swelled to admit several more entrants in 1993, one of which was this poorly conceived affair. Though professionally photographed, WILD CACTUS is structured much like grindhouse porn, with nearly every scene leading to a sexual interlude
of some sort, and little urgency to the tale other than the wait to see which thespian will be the next to disrobe.
Dull botanist Phillip Marcus (David Naughton) is accompanied by his neglected, love-starved wife, Alexandria (India Allen), on a research sabbatical in an Arizona desert community. Meanwhile, violent and lustful ex-con Randall Murphy (Gary Hudson) arrives in the area to stalk his ex-girlfriend
Celeste (Kathy Shower). Along the way, Randall has acquired a kindred spirit, a sleek bisexual hitchhiker named Maggie (Michelle Moffett), impressive in her Louise Brooks hairstyle and bad-chick attire of tight black leather, spiked heels, cigarettes and crucifix. After stripping and shooting
Celeste in her trailer, Randall and Maggie hide out in the Marcus place. With Phillip left for dead in the sands, the criminal pair take turns degrading Alexandria, who decides to use her considerable feminine assets against her captors by seducing each of them in turn. Finally, Phillip arrives
with a sheriff and a hidden rattlesnake that helps send Randall and Maggie to that great S&M parlor in the sky.
Gary Hudson comes the closest to committing a performance, and he's nowhere near as threatening as Brad Pitt managed to be playing a similar footloose killer in 1993's KALIFORNIA. Someone should have put the brakes to Michelle Moffett, who's physically striking but goes laughably over the top
with her gum-cracking nasty-girl act. India Allen was a Playboy Playmate of the Year, and her untenable role is basically designed to show why. Another centerfold graduate, Kathy Shower, really looks ludicrous as the luckless Celeste, barely uttering a word and habitually stroking a pet rabbit;
she's a kind of blonde-bombshell variation on Lenny from OF MICE AND MEN.
Director Jag Mundhra made one of the better direct-to-video sex thrillers, NIGHT EYES, in 1990, but never learned the lesson that a good script is the best aphrodisiac. (The non-story of WILD CACTUS even drags in a comical traveling salesman for a useless filler scene.) While the Arizona
Department of Travel and Tourism might be grateful for the depiction of that state's deserts abloom with ex-centerfolds, WILD CACTUS was actually filmed in Helendale, California. (Sexual situations, extensive nudity, adult situations, violence, profanity, substance abuse.) leave a comment