Seme selvaggio

I rarely watch a movie twice, but I have seen this many times. I fell in love with Michael Parks. This film is so moving and I love the slow character development. Yes, Ms. Kaye's acting is a bit stiff, but I think as the movie goes along, you begin to feel her fall in love with him. It was for me, a movie that I hated to end. This movie can be found now on YouTube for free. Enjoy.

Universal released some odd balls during this period, in a faint attempt at developing new talent and making some higher-brow pix.

They tried to give "Wild Seed" the art house treatment by having the world premiere at the short lived Playboy (yes, that Playboy) theatre in Chicago on May 5, 1965. Some dates were in the midwest that summer, and it was often double billed with "McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force". All in all, this film barely had a release and is VERY obscure today. How did you people even see it?

Had this little film been made five or ten years earlier, it might have achieved minor classic status. Unfortunately, it allows us an image of a 1950s style rebel that showed up on screens in 1965, a year after the Beatle invasion and the hippie movement had begun. Bad timing! But not a bad movie, by any means. Celia Kaye, who was briefly hyped for stardom, plays a runaway girl searching for her biological father. On the road, she meets a Jack Kerouac/James Dean drifter, in a black leather jacket of course, played by Michael Parks, who was then being hyped as the new James Dean - unfortunately, Dean style acting had gone out of fashion a few years earlier. Too bad for Parks, because he really had a nice quality to his performances, if something about him seemed to belong to an earlier decade. He had his last big shot at potential stardom four years later playing a biker in Then Came Bronson, sort of TV's watered down answer to Easy Rider, but when it didn't click in the ratings, his career never recovered. Hollywood was looking for a new kind of late sixties/early seventies star; Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, etc. Anyway, back to Wild Seed: the relationship of the two leads, as they experience anecdotal misadventures, is truly touching and quite compelling, as you wait to see if friendship will bloom into romance. One of those films that almost never plays anywhere anymore, not even on Turner Movie Classics. Worth rediscovering, certainly!

Saw this movie on TV so many years ago. Loved it! Wish it could be available on DVD- would love to see it again! Something made me think of it, and I decided to search for it on IMDb. Agree with other reviewer that this is a wonderful, forgotten gem. Not at all sure why it did not do better in the theaters, but suspect it wasn't marketed effectively.

This was a better movie than I was expecting; Michael Parks is extremely good as the young drifter (I was astonished that this was his first film) - it makes it that much more disappointing that his career didn't take off at all. He's very effective in showing both the protectiveness and vulnerability of the character, and really shines when the camera holds on him for a long time. On the other hand, Celia Kaye's performance didn't really strike me as anything special. There were moments when it struck me as fairly amateurish (in an unintentional way). The film is well directed and the supporting performances were quite good, although this is essentially a 2-person film. It's also VERY beautifully photographed by Conrad Hall; it's no surprise that his career took off after this debut feature, leading to movies like The Professionals and Cool Hand Luke right afterward. He had an excellent eye for the sweeping outdoor locations, and a lovely, delicate touch in the more intimate scenes. The script and dialogue are very moving as well, and completely believable in all situations; the exchanges between the older and younger characters are very well-written. Although not particularly surprising or unusual in setup or plot, it's altogether a very moving and touching story - a strong 7 of 10, close to an 8.