Whether the two halves of Something Wild -- the offbeat romp and the horrifying wallow -- fit successfully in the same film is debatable... But, viewed on their individual merits, both halves are brilliantly crafted.

Something Wild is based more on first principles than anything new, but it applies them with such vigour that the movie has a sense of limitless freedom. It tastes like free-range chicken, rather than battery-produced.

Something Wild is rough-edged. It doesn’t have the grace of Demme’s Citizens Band and Melvin and Howard or the heightened simplicity of his Stop Making Sense. It has something else, though -- a freedom that takes off from the genre framework.

With his unobtrusive camera, Demme’s regular cinematographer Tak Fujimoto makes the mid-summer, mid-80s mid-Atlantic appear verdant, lively, and awake with possibility.