Kevin Bacon movies span a lot of genres, from his horror movie roots in Friday the 13th through to the drama movies and thriller movies that made him a respected character actor. But one of his ‘90s movies was almost very different.
In 1998, Bacon starred alongside Matt Dillon in the detective movie Wild Things. Dillon plays a high school guidance counsellor accused of rape by female students, while Bacon plays the cop investigating the claims. Naturally, it turns out he’s involved.
It’s a knotty thriller full of misdirection and secrets, but it almost featured an intimate shower scene between Bacon and Dillon revealing that their conspiracy stretched to them being lovers, according to the director.
John McNaughton, who also directed the controversial Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, reflected on the abandoned sequence in an interview with Yahoo to mark the 25th anniversary of Wild Things.
“In the original version of the scene, Matt walks into his bathroom to take a shower and there’s Kevin. They were supposed to look each other up and down and then wham — go at it,” said McNaughton.
The filmmaker said one of the two actors was not keen on the scene, and so it was never shot. “I love surprise, and I love stuff that I don’t see coming. But in that moment it was like ‘you win some, you lose some, we’re moving on’.”
The abandoned scene would certainly have made one of the movie’s subtextual ideas more obvious and, in a 2005 interview, Bacon blamed the financiers for getting rid of the revelation.
For more from the past, present and future of Hollywood, check out our list of the new movies heading to cinemas in 2024, as well as the best teen movies, the best zombie movies, and the best anime movies you can watch right now.