But I'm getting ahead of myself; first, a recap of the atrocious plot. The main character is ostensibly Alex, played by fourth-billed Anne Heche, playing a lesbian before she started playing a lesbian in real life and straight women on-screen (well before she got married and admitted to a history of alien abduction). She works for a Southern California bank, that is illogically housed in a high rise, and at night to stave off boredom or any semblance of reality, she works as a high-price hooker named Johanna. Her second job introduces her to all sorts of interesting characters, like Walken’s Bruno, a long-haired, satin-bathrobe wearing loon. When they first meet, he pays her and announces “I have contempt for money.” “Yours or mine?” she asks him. He pauses, pours a drink, stares at her for ten seconds. He never answers the question.

Bruno is an embezzler, and his driver/bodyguard Tony (Steven Bauer) is instructed to test if Johanna is a real prostitute or an undercover cop by paying her to sleep with him. When she refuses, he rapes her, then politely informs her that HE is, in fact, an undercover cop, and that she is now working for him in some elaborately dumb sting operation where the cops give Bruno lots of money and hope they can catch him in the act of taking it. The final player in this insanity is Virginia (Joan Chen), Bruno’s ex-wife who acts as his liaison with Alex’s bank. Naturally, Alex and Virginia - who arrives at their meeting wearing a sports jacket without a shirt or bra - speak for about an hour and then begin a passionate lesbian affair.

What do you expect from an erotic thriller that would not be out of place on late night cable? Films like this are a dime a dozen except for WILD SIDE’s ace in the hole: WALKEN. Anytime he’s on screen, babbling about this or that, you can’t help but laugh. People joke that Walken gets by now doing an impression of himself, and that’s never been more true than in WILD SIDE.

Which brings us back to our main attraction, that stupendous confrontation between Bruno and Tony after Alex has revealed that Tony is, in fact, an undercover cop. In a scene that simply refuses to end, Bruno threatens to kill Tony, then decides to belittle him instead. So he makes Tony apply a prophylactic to his wiener. He dances around like he’s on speed. He asks “You know what you get for rape?” and answers his own question, “Ten years in a cell! With a gorilla! With a PSYCHO gorilla!” He rips off Tony’s underwear (“I bought these! These are MY Calvins!”), then starts smacking him on the behind while yelling, “You’re lucky cause you’re PEACHY!” If it doesn’t make any sense, then you can relax, you are still a normal human being. If the preceding paragraph does sound reasonable, you are applying too much pressure when using Q-Tips.

If that scene isn’t ugly, then there’s nothing is. I know it’s kinda iffy to recommend a movie based primarily on one scene, but trust me, this one scene more than makes up for some of the slower scenes (and really, the movie’s fun in a dumb way pretty much throughout, just not “You’re lucky cause you’re PEACHY!” fun). If you can find a copy of this movie, you’re very lucky. And not at all because you’re peachy.