What do you get when you cross a brown-haired Barbie Doll with a former teen-age model aspiring to be an actress? Give up? Anyone that watched last year’s Starship Troopers or the new thriller Wild Things knows Denise Richards is entitled to the designation of this little riddle.

If sultry sex was truly meant to divert our attention for more surprises, then McNaughton deserves some credit, but sex for sex’s sake would not be entirely unlikely here because the cast is hardly made up of frequent ugly pool swimmers.

Either way, Wild Things made for a somewhat enjoyable contemporary thriller other than for reasons already mentioned because this movie takes more turns than a cross-eyed cab driver on a morphine-induced highball with a strong Bloody Mary in one hand and a loosely rolled doobie pressed between his quivering lips.

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The film’s ignition kicks in when accusations of rape fly at the handsome high school guidance counselor Sam Lombardo (Matt Dillon). The rape cries come from Lombardo’s student Kelly Van Ryan (Richards), the seductive daughter of Blue Bay, Fla.’s, millionaire matriarch, Sandra Ryan (Theresa Russell).

Days later, another student comes forward with a rape story with Lombardo as the culprit. While Kelly comes from Blue Bay’s upper crust, Suzie (Campbell) belongs to Blue Bay’s less than esteemed class of swamp trash. Regardless of the two’s polar opposition on the social scale, they manage to destroy Lombardo’s teaching career, cripple him financially and land him in jail.

For his trial, Lombardo elicits the help of attorney Ken Bowden (Bill Murray), a surface ignoramus who happened to pass the bar. He actually wears a neck brace for the trial in lieu of winning an insurance settlement, but consistently turns his head in all directions.

Along with fooling insurance agents with his utterly undeceptive props, Bowden manages to break Suzie on the witness stand into admitting the rape incidents were total scams. The admission prompts Lombardo to sue for his wrecked life and he makes out of Blue Bay with a hefty sum of dough courtesy of Sandra Ryan.

Detective Ray Duquette (Kevin Bacon) smells something fishy about the girls’ contorted plan and begins to piece together a perverted case of revenge, sex and murder. Juicy stuff, indeed. Enough to keep me engaged in the story, anyway, or maybe it was the near soft-core porn scenes that kept me interested.

I have to admit Dillon creates a perplexing character as Lombardo. I think he could have took it a little farther and turned the role into something more unpractical. Richards is no Meryl Streep, but I doubt the casting call was made on her acting skills. I don’t know what it is, but the girl just looks too perfect for me, like a walking, talking human clone, molded from plastic and run on a few D batteries.

To say Murray’s humor wouldn’t work in this mystery thriller is like saying Milli Vanilli made great contributions to pop music. Murray provides the best scenes of the movie and shows worthy foil characters should show up in any thriller no matter how sexual or intense because it keeps the movie real, pulling us in.

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But Murray’s scenes are limited and McNaughton offers little in terms of suspense, though he does keep us guessing up to the end as to who’s good and who’s bad even if the camera seems to be loitering around Richards’ wet, dry, clothed or oh, I’ll wear just a bra today body. It may be cinematic garbage, but it’s the fun-to-look-through kind of trash.

Directed by John McNaughton

Written by Stephen Peters

Kelly Van Ryan………….Denise Richards

Sandra Van Ryan……….Theresa Russell