Wild Orchid (1990)

Wild Orchid is a ghastly piece of soft-core porn from Zalman King, the trash master behind the Red Shoe Diaries series.

Impotent, vicious and afraid of being touched, Harley-riding millionaire voyeur James Wheeler (Mickey Rourke) enjoys demeaning women, who, nonetheless, find him irresistible.

Claudia, an otherwise shrewd executive played by an alarmingly manic Jacqueline Bisset, is wild to get close to him.

Revlon girl Carré Otis plays Emily Reed, the naive lawyer Claudia has hired to accompany her on a  business trip to Rio.  She, too, is soon in thrall to Wheeler: allowing him to dress her like a whore and watch men pick her up.

There was a rumour that the climactic sex scene between Rourke and Otis depicted an actual act and had not been staged. It wasn’t true that the couple – who went on to be married in real life shortly after this was made – were doing it for real, but rumours like that do no harm to the publicity machine.

The film spawned a sequel (in name only) two years later, Wild Orchid 2: Two Shades Of Blue. Rourke and Otis were wisely missing from it.

James Wheeler
Mickey Rourke
Claudia
Jacqueline Bisset
Emily Reed
Carré Otis
Hanna
Assumpta Serna
Jerome
Bruce Greenwood
Otto
Oleg Vidov
Flavio
Milton Goncalves
Rambo
Antonio DaSilva

Director
Zalman King