Kevin Bacon recalls dead body being found while filming ‘Wild Things’

Nothing could’ve prepared Kevin Bacon for the truly wild thing he witnessed while filming the 1998 erotic crime thriller, Wild Things.

As part of a recent Variety video, the 66-year-old actor was challenged to read some of his most iconic lines and correctly identify which movie they came from. And while he might not have recalled his exact verbiage from Wild Things, Bacon certainly remembered the moment when the cast and crew discovered a dead body while on a late-night swamp shoot. 

“We were out in the swamp one night — a lot of mosquitoes, wow — and we were shooting some scene, I don’t remember what it was, by kind of a river,” Bacon explained. “They had floated a raft out there so that they could put out a light.”

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It also illuminated something else floating nearby. “All of a sudden I hear across the walkie-talkie: ‘Hey, uh, I think I just saw a floater.’ And it was a body that was floating by,” he continued, laughing to himself. “It was kind of indicative of the vibe of the movie.” 

The film’s director John McNaughton previously told Entertainment Weekly as part of our 1998 Spring Movie Preview that they were in the process of filming a scene in a marsh in the Everglades when a dead body suddenly floated in front of their cameras. Production was then halted until authorities arrived at the scene. 

“We called the police, and they actually grabbed the body and kept it from getting into our shot,” he explained at the time.

Executive produced by Bacon, Wild Things follows teenagers Kelly (Denise Richards) and Suzie (Neve Campbell) as they team up with their high school guidance counselor Sam (Matt Dillon) to scam their way into obtaining an early trust fund settlement from Kelly’s mom (Theresa Russell).

With Sergeant Ray Duquette (Bacon) hot on their heels, it becomes clear that everyone involved in the incident is willing to double-cross each other to ensure that they receive the final payout and that their secrets remain buried, prompting a whole host of surprising twists and turns.

Speaking with EW in 1998, Bacon noted that his initial reaction to reading the erotic thriller’s script was that it was “the trashiest piece of crap I’ve ever read.”

However, he found himself becoming more and more intrigued as its tale got progressively more twisted. He continued, “But every few pages, I kept discovering that it wasn’t what it seemed. Every few pages, there was another surprise.”

Watch Bacon recall the experience in the video above.