User reviews

I felt that this was a good movie. It was very erotic to me. I saw it several years ago and just recently watched it again at a request for the movie by me. Mikey Rourke left a very sensuous impression on me in this movie whereas before I never looked at him in this way. I thought his role was very well performed. He was both mysterious and complicated. I would recommend this movie for couples to watch together. I felt that it was a very romantic and arousing movie. I believe that the review that I read was very harsh. I have found that many times when I watch a movie that doesn't get a lot of stars in its review, I seem to watch them and form my own different opinion. Wild Orchid is one of them. It fills the impulsive fantasies that some people have.

Wild Orchid is one of the most sexually explicit movies I recall seeing as a child. While the film is tame by today's standards when released in 1990 it was very explict. The storyline isn't to much to really speak of but Zalman King keeps Carrie Otis naked enough times to where the male viewer doesn't really care. The final sex scene makes you wonder if Rourke and Otis really went at it.

Quite hard to rate this movie really. I can definitely see what this movie tried to accomplish but I don't think it succeeded well enough at it. However when judging this movie purely as a soft-erotic movie there is no denying it that this is a really well shot movie.

The movie tried to be one about lust and pleasure in sex. It takes on some serious approaches and angles, that I suppose have a deeper feeling and meaning to it all. The story mostly evolves around the Mickey Rourke that is playing hard to get and likes to play games with the females that want him. Something that females normally would do in real life. The one moment they want you but the next they push you away. It leaves you craving for more, insecure and unsure about the whole situation. It's highly annoying when a woman does this, so it's kind of refreshing to see a man doing this to women for a change, though it still remains an annoying thing. Mickey Rourke plays this real slick playboy, that seems to know exactly what women want and what they are craving for. He approach them at the right times, say the right things and gives them just enough for them to want him badly but when they seem to completely surrender to him he alienates himself from them. This is what the movie is mostly about, though there is also a messy and uninteresting plot line in it about an old hotel.

You could say that this movie is a rare mainstream soft erotic movie, with an actual big budget to spend and respectable actors in it. When approaching this movie purely as a more or less erotic movie you have to say that this movie is some of the best that the genre has to offer. Judging this movie as anything else really just makes it a really bad one.

The movie and story at times have an almost surreal kind of look and feeling to it. It suits the sexual tensed atmosphere of the movie real well. The movie its feeling and atmosphere really reminded me of the last Kubrick movie "Eyes Wide Shut".

The movie had a great look to it and its sex scenes were shot really well. It's obvious that director Zalman King (no way that's a real name!) had plenty of experience with the genre already. He and his wife writer Patricia Louisianna Knop (really, these two weird named persons truly fit together) are perhaps best known of the Red Shoe Diaries series fame, that is about the best known, classy looking, soft erotic TV/movie series that is around.

The movie does not have the best acting in it that you will ever see, despite having some big names in its cast. Blame it on the dialog and unusual situation within this movie really.

A bad movie really but as a soft erotic movie it still is simply just one of the best you can watch out there.

6/10

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Back in 1990, people didn't have to deal with the horrible slate of fly-by-night movies that die at the box office after one week. So many movies that would have been rejected by the studio heads for mainstream distribution back then have been allowed in (Glitter, Freddy Got Fingered, Tomcats, Ready To Rumble, the N'SYNC movie, Teen Movie, and 30 lame horror films, etc.), and then throw in the over-hyped blockbusters. Altogether, a good enough reason for a true lover of cinema like myself to stay clear of movie theaters.

Because of all that, I think this movie deserves to be looked at again. If it was the worst film for 1990, then yes, it's a contender. Carre Otis is very beautiful, but her presence as an actress is awful. She either stands there and looks pretty or delivers small lines in a forced manner. Mickey Rourke, playing the same character he portrayed in the "pre-quel" 9 1/2 Weeks, just walks around trying to be cool. Jacqueline Bisset and Bruce Greenwood do a good acting job, but their role in the film are to support the growing sexuality between Otis and Rourke. And yes, the storyline is nothing but an excuse for Zalman King's arty sex coupling.

BUT, if you compare this film with the drivel coming out these days, then this movie is much better. First, it was highly controversial (for a reason or two). Second, I think the sensuality is very erotic, because of the behind the scenes relationship of Mickey and Carre, or in a lot of the other assorted scenes. Third, Rio is a truly beautiful setting for sin, and the movie depicts it's partying attitude in spades (almost too much). And finally, this movie doesn't lie about it's intentions. If you wanted a sexually charged erotic drama/thriller, it doesn't disappoint. Yes, it's pretty slow, but the it's erotic build-up is very good. Bonus: no fake bodies.

Bottom line: It's not Citizen Kane, and for 1990 it was terrible, but for 2001-02, it's a heck of a lot better than today's releases.

Just kidding, I don't know what I'm talking about. You should see this movie if you like:

1) Sex

2) Nudity

3) Hot babes

4) Mickey Rourke

5) Carre Otis

6) Mickey Rourke and Carre Otis going at it for real

7) Perfume commercials

8) Directors trying to make their softcore porn look like art by filming everything sensually and in slow motion, so the film appears to be art-house and "visually stimulating"

9) Really, really, really bad dialogue

10) Lots of good banging and screwing without a plot

11) Mickey Rourke playing a total pimp (which is different than just Mickey Rourke - I mean, there's Mickey Rourke, and then there's Mickey Rourke the Pimp, which is even cooler).

And finally...

12) Hot female characters who wear glasses and carry around clipboards so the audience believes they are smart and successful businesswomen, when in fact they'd have a hard time calculating 1 + 1. (Also see: Alone in the Dark, Tara Reid's character; or Fantastic Four, Jessica Alba's.) Highly recommended to the appropriate demographic.

I could kill myself for buying it.

Wild Orchid... I saw this in early 1990 at a $1 theatre. I had seen ads for it on TV and had wanted to see it but until the cheap theatre, I didn't go.

Now, I was 21 at the time and knowing what was "supposed" to be in the film, I couldn't wait to "see it all".

Needless to say I was quickly let down. I expected a realstory to be with it of course but, I couldn't follow whatever was supposed to be going on with the characters and found the dialouge just downright tedious to pretentious. (Even boring.)

As for the actual sex scenes? Probably I got into "that" at the time (you find few 21 year olds who wouldn't). I know I stayed to the end though, although I had a valid enough reason to walk out, although I don't know why I stayed for the closing credits. .

Maybe the people behind this thought that since it's geared twords sex and Rourke's issues or hers...or both, they had to make little effort in better story writing. I wonder how the director found these acting performances to be good enough. Or anyone involved.

What I find wrong in the movie's characters, is that I have no valid reason to care anything about them. In a movie, we're supposed to be able to understand and maybe even like the characters.

Even more simply put, they dont seem like honest human beings, they're like soulless entities that don't have any emoting ability beyond speaking and 'impersonating' what should be a believable reaction.

I found a video of this sometime ago, in pretty good shape, bought it and gave it a second look. I was thinking, "Hey maybe it wasn't as bad as I recall."

Well, the acting was still as forgettable as it was then and it's overall look , now seriously dated and the movie itself, beyond irrelavant .

The sex scenes , now seemed lifeless and / or robotic.

For me, 1 star . I donated the tape and I'm done watching it for good. (END)

Welcome to 9 1/2 Weeks: the Sequel! Only it's not, because Carré Otis is no Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke (who's supposed to be in control of everything around him...except his libido, apparently...) doesn't come off as half the man he appears as in Weeks, and the script is so re-hashed...it's like a second rate version of Weeks; Weeks without the sensuality and intrigue and solid script. There is no eroticism in this film...the scenes are like second-rate softcore. Art-House without the 'art'. And the unrated version is no different, it just drags the sex scenes out longer. But there's no passion, and that's what made Weeks so interesting.

The worst part of the film is the horrid, trite dialogue; 'I'm afraid if I touch you you'll disappear', 'If you want me, come and hold me right now'; you've *got* to be kidding me!! Zalman King should learn to quit while he's ahead (take a look at the Red Shoe Diaries, for example: the same story recycled multiple times, shamelessly using David Duchovney to draw viewers because it wouldn't attract a single one without him (or, at least none out of high school and not desperately looking for some late-night nudity...)

This film is the same, it uses 9 1/2 Weeks, and Mickey Rourke, to draw viewers even though it can't stand on its own feet because it's so unoriginal and poorly written...never mind the acting (what was Bruce Greenwood *thinking*???)

Overall: I rate this what it is: trash. At least Emmanuelle had visual merit, and Camille 2000 had stunning cinematography. This has nothing, and is nothing but an excuse to show lots of gratuitous flesh and sex. Even Mickey fans will be disappointed. So do yourself a favour and watch 9 1/2 Weeks instead...3/10.

Everything about this movie is awful. Otis may have been the worst actress of all time and casting her as a shrewd young lawyer was just over the top; she'd be over her head intellectually as a model (although she is hot). I'd peg her for real porn but I seriously doubt she could moan convincingly on cue. Mickey Rourke is a weird shade of orange (Tan or jungle fever? Not sure.) but he delivers his purple prose as though he was reading the lines off a teleprompter. The dialogue is insipid and and the "plot" worse.

The idea that this film was daring or erotic for 1990 is laughable. 1890 yes, but by 1990 the concept of people having sex in movies was no longer a novelty.

Before the film "Wild Orchid's" opening credits are even over Emily Reed, Carre Otis, has gone from a small town in Kansas to the Big Apple, New York City, after finishing college and law school and then learning a half dozen languages after getting her feet wet practicing law in old Chicago to become a partner in a top international law firm in NYC! speaking of instant success!

Given a ticket to Rio De Jeneiro to handle a business closing by hard nosed business women Claudia Lirones, Jackie Bisset, Emily instead of practicing law ends up practicing something totally different. The movie is one of the weirdest films I've ever seen with this strange off-the-wall cuckoo bird James Wheeler, Mickey Rourke,acting like he's playing chess with peoples lives. Wheeler has them act out his sexual fantasies as he sits and watches from afar or close up whenever the urge suits him. Poor Emily is put through the ringer by Wheeler's crazy cooked up sexual adventures, in which he's only a watcher not a participant, but in the end she gets what she set out to obtain; the deed to the waterfront property that Claudia wanted for her real-estate firm.

Claudia herself had an "affair" with the creep-ed out Wheeler years earlier by impersonating a maid at the hotel that he was staying at and making his bed. This seemed to have been a big turn on for Wheeler, even though he knew who she was but pretended that he didn't, that later he gave her a very expensive dress for the good job that she did?

There are a number of other strange sexual encounters between something like a half dozen wild parties in the movie that make even less sense. Very early in the film we, and Emily, see this couple sneak into a broken down and deserted building and strip off their clothes and then "do it" as a broken sewer pipe gushes water on their heads! was this real or a hallucination on Emily's part? There's also a hot tryst between Emily and Jerome, Bruch Greenwood, at his hotel room with Wheeler, who set up the whole thing, sitting on a bench outside observing it.

Later Claudia blackmails Jerome who turns out to be the lawyer for a client who's suing her company to drop the case. Did Claudia get together with her former lover Wheeler to get Emily to go to bed with Jerome? We also see Wheeler save Hanna, Assumpta Serna, and her wimpy husband Otto, Oleg Vidon, from a group of drunken and partying crazed sailors. The drunks were in the process of raping Hanna in broad daylight right in front of hundreds of party people who did nothing to help the poor women but watch and enjoy the action!

And last but not least there was this beach boy ,who Claudia picked up, who after undressing in front of both Claudia and Emily and parading around in front of them butt naked is grabbed by the hair and kicked out of the penthouse by an enraged Wheeler who just seemed to have popped up out of nowhere! Why did this so disturb Wheeler? Was it that he had nothing to do with setting it up and thus feel that he was being upstaged by the two women?

Wheeler who were told is a self-made millionaire who made it big in real estate and who had a speaking problem as a young boy in Philidelphia, he stuttered and that effected his not having any lasting or rewarding relationships with women, goes through almost the entire movie in what looks like a drugged induced state or just suffering from lack of sleep. It's not until the last ten minutes that he takes off his pants and, like everyone else in the movie, joins the party by letting it all hang out.

Redicules "erotic movie" that was just an excuse for Mickey Rourke to put his girlfriend and real life lover at that time, 1989-90, Carre Otis in the movie as his leading lady and nothing else.

I have no idea why the movie is criticized so harshly. It truly is one of the best movies I have ever seen in some terms. First, the music of this film is just beyond the world. It's very erotic and sensual; has got a certain raw, intense element to it. I've listened to a lot of music but none has been like I heard in this film. The music used is a mix of songs by artists and some standalone pieces especially created for this movie. Too bad the OST was never released commercially. So every time I feel like listening to some parts, I have to run the whole movie :P Second, the feel and "ambience" of this movie is very erotic, visually and acoustically. It's not one of the best movies, I admit. But it doesn't have to be, like so many other movies in the world. There are movies which one likes only for certain things, not cos it's one of the best mind blowing movies ever in all respects. We should learn to appreciate things for what good they offer. In that respect, this movie is certainly a piece of art. I highly recommend it.

beautiful naked women, beautiful naked men, beautiful Rio de Janeiro. what a shame to waste them on this grade-C exploitation.

Mickey Rourke as a character whose motivation is about as far-fetched, hard to swallow as can be imagined, so what can he do? he plays Mickey Rourke. Does it darn well too!

Add a series of coincidences only Hollywood could stand, an over-eroticized fantasy of a city that doesn't need any exaggeration to be super-erotic -- i9t's a real loser. If you have to watch this movie, turn the sound off and just watch the images, because the plot is mega-too-ridiculous.

As an old professor of mine once said (of something completely different), this movie is intellectual indecent exposure.

There is more, I think, to this film than most people give it credit for. Sure, it's full of sex and naked people, but it also manages to be erotic and sensual at the same time. It's certainly not the commercialized absurdity that you'll find late night on certain premium channels. More than that, though, is that it's a decent psychological study of a man who's completely divorced himself from reality. Like so many celebs of our time, money and success has allowed him to distance himself from whatever parts of reality that make him uncomfortable. Emily's naive and honest approach manages to reach him. His speech near the end, before the final 'scene,' is really impressive, and Mikey really is a great actor. Sure, Ms. Otis leaves something to be desired, but she's working in a role where her lack of comfort helps the part. Emily is out of her element, just is the actress playing her is, and even if this makes her transparent, it also makes her believable. Jaqueline Bisset is wonderful as always. All in all, if you watch this film without fast forwarding from sex scene to sex scene, you'll see a fairly human story mixed with a sexual journey that I think Zora Neale Hurston would have appreciated.

Some people see Carré Otis as lacking acting abilities. I don't. I have a hunch she's an HSP(*) and her biography seems to point out in that direction too. Therefore, she WAS acting and expressing emotions within her own range, and she did express them intensely as per her own emotional register. But since about only 15% of the population is HSP, no wonder that most people did not react to her performance. I see a lot of subtlety of emotions, DESPITE the requirements of acting her part. Ditto for Rourque whom I absolutely hated when I saw him in 9 1/2 weeks when it came out, way back then.

In contrast, Jacqueline Bisset's performance, is more "solid", yet, I perceive it more as "good acting", i.e. she's clearly more distanced from her character, clearly less convincing in the eyes of an HSP than Rourque and especially Otis.

Also, it seems that any movie that has a lot of sex in it must be deprecated, as per intellectual elitism spirit. I do not go along with that school of thought If you're not an HSP, you'll get bored by this movie because you simply cannot catch the subtle cues that HSP are so good at picking up.

If you're an HSP, you'll it. I gave it a solid 7

(*) HSP: Highly Sensitive Person. They are people that have a physiological enhanced sensitivity of their emotional system. The whole of their nervous systems, ranging from emotions to sensations behave as if someone has turned the microphone sensitivity setting to MAX while the rest of the population is comfortably set at 30%. HSP are, on average, more intelligent, get bored more easily and also gets to blow their emotional fuses more easily. While normal people have a dynamic range between 0 and ten with ten emotional levels in between the extremes, HSP operate in a narrow range between, say 4 and 7, and with ten times more gradations in between the lower and upper limit of their comfort zone than non-HSPs. For further info on HSP, hit the search engines.

Emily Reed (Carré Otis) is a Midwestern girl hired into a law firm. Her boss Claudia Dennis (Jacqueline Bisset) brings her and her language skills to Rio to close a property deal. The seller is stalling and Dennis takes off to chase him down in Buenos Aires. Reed takes over her dinner with wealthy James Wheeler (Mickey Rourke). Emily is soon taken in by exotic sexualized Brazil and the mysterious Wheeler.

Zalman King was the ruler of late-night TV soft porn and big screen overwrought erotica during a small slice of time. The production is luscious. Rourke is perfectly creepy and alluring. Otis is a blank. She is a deer caught in the headlines. In some ways, that performance works but she is never believable as a Midwestern girl. There is good production value for a softcore porn but this is not a good movie.

Wild Orchid is a steamy erotic flick that probably won't please everybody. Young lawyer Emily is signed to a law firm and flies with her boss to Rio and when Emily's boss leaves for a meeting, she sets Emily up with Wheeler, a successful real estate developer who Emily is attracted to, but cannot have because he is impotent. This leads to Wheeler setting Emily up with an American business man for sex, cross dressing, and steamy sexual pairings. While the R Rated cut of Wild Orchid is quite graphic, the Unrated version is even more so. If you like trashy drama and erotic scenes, then you might enjoy Wild Orchid.

Wild Orchid is Unrated for extremely strong graphic sexuality, nudity, adult language, and for some mild violence.

Wild Orchid makes my all time bombs list. Bad, Bad, Bad. The writing is sixth grade level, stupid, indulgent, pretentious without any hint of intellectual depth. (There is a rumor that the original script was done in crayon.) The acting is absolutely horrid and over the top. You know, some of these people were in good movies at various times in their careers. What happened here? Maybe an idiot director drugged up on his own ego and happy to waste OPM (other peoples money).

For a good laugh, check out the wardrobe and hair-dos, and don'ts. The credits say 1990, but it looks more like 1983.

I believe this movie experience brought on the downward spiral of the previously brilliant acting career of Mickey Rourke.

Spoiler alert not necessary with this piece of 'dirt, nothing to spoil in terms of plot or suspense. PSA // STINKER ALERT!

It's amazing how the entire culture of a country can be so poorly depicted. As a Brazilian I'm very disgusted with this film; it depicts Brazil as if it was the United States' nude beach, or even worse, whore-house. It is filled with stereotypes about Brazilian society views towards sex and nudity. I will not list all the factual errors about Brazilian society because I don't have enough time, but here are the ones that hurts most my "brazilianity"... The bar where the character of Mickey Rourke takes the character of Carré Otis plays African music and the hostess greets them speaking Portguese as if she was from Portugal. Carnival celebrations in Rio doesn't happen everyday, and not in open places like beaches since God knows when, and they don't feature Latin music so often. There are major differences between Bahia (which features trio elétricos on the streets) and Rio (the one with the "samba schools" and the sambódromo) carnival celebrations. Where are all the cops of Rio? The city is filled with them in times of carnival (specially because it's the time when the city welcomes more tourists than usual). Nudity and sex - specially by females - are much less tolerated in a machista society like the Brazilian... Brazil has strict laws concerning public nudity, and who don't respect them actually go to jail... But I guess none of this matters in a semi-pornographic motion picture with decadent stars. This movie only "improves" the international image of Brazil as the place where people from the first world come to promote their orgy balls.

P.S.: The only good thing of this film which I can think about is that it revealed the talent of axé queen Margareth Menezes to the rest of the world.

This was a boring movie I saw the NC17 version and could hardly stay awake. The story was so boring and was hard for me to pay attention to it. I actually watched it over the course of 2 days because it was so bad. Just a waste of two hours. I would have rather seen the R rated version just to shave a few minutes off the stupid picture. Like most erotic films they seem to try and make it artsy and just fail at it giving it a bad story and breaking the film as a whole.

2 out of 10.

If there was an Academy Award for bad make-up, this excuse for a movie would have been a contender. Since it is described as soft porn, it should be judged as such. The acting is so weird you wander if there was a real director anywhere in the immediate vicinity of the actual filming. Production values, on a scale of 1 to 10, are about 1.5.The story (or script as it is referred to in cinema) is a bad joke...although the dialog is hilarious. But remember, it's not supposed to be funny...soft porn is serious business. So to judge it as such, in all fairness, by the accepted criteria of the genre, I would give this crud a 1 out of 10 because it does not succeed in being erotic or sexy...it's just too dumb and ugly. The poor quality distracts from any possible sexiness that nudity and sex scenes could and should provide.

"Wild Orchid" opens up with that trick used heavily during the late 80s of cueing drifting saxophone music as foreshadowing of erotic things to come. The film follows a particularly convoluted and downright nonsensical storyline involving an uninspiring globe hopping middle-aged woman, her naive young female protégé, a mysterious millionaire with a penchant for revealing his chest hair, and some sort of "deal" that shows itself to be nothing more than a poorly played out McGuffin.

Mickey Rourke brings his usual brand of creepy machismo to the role of the millionaire. His calculating scoundrel via faux-romantic lead is quite a similar part to the one he played in the heavily flawed but comparatively genius "9 1/2 Weeks" a few years earlier (notably by the same screenwriter). His character's personality is bereft any emotion, and at times feels like a complete rip-off of the one James Spader greatly pulled off in "sex, lies, & videotape".

With that in mind, though, Rourke's performance is award winning compared to model Carré Otis' portrayal of the fumbling, perhaps virginal, seemingly sleepwalking female lead. For a character involved in every scene of sexual allure and provocation that account for the film's real reason for existing, she appears frustrated, awkward and bored. Perhaps she mimics the audience in this regard.

The real trouble with these sorts of films, of which there are far too many, is that they attempt to stretch several interspersed hot sex scenes across a weak foundation of a plot teeming with intrigue. Beyond the dreadful acting, the rice paper thin storyline, and the elevator musical score, the love scenes are so tepid they're likely to inspire abstinence.

This is a beautiful looking Movie with sumptuous colors and a lot of Fandango. Everyone is dressed to the 9 and 1/2's. It can't help but be appealing on the surface and reminds one of Magazine ads or upscale Feminine advertising found in Vogue or some other slickness.

The soundtrack is infectious as much as the "scenery" both animate and inanimate and the Actors are equal in the eye-candy department. But, unfortunately it all goes from there in a downward spiral of very vapid dialog and not much else to help it rise from the Erotica that is its central conceit.

It is sensuous enough, if that's your cup of carnality. It is never lewd, just softly explicit and not at all shy about its pre-late-night-cable nudity and sexual activity. There is kind of a back story of inhibition and hang-ups, Lawyer shenanigans and Rich Folks wheeling and dealings. But that all takes a backseat in the this Limo driven, Pretty People, decadence of fun in the sun.

Overall it is very pleasant to look at and is easy on the ears, when there is no dialog, so it is not the embarrassment many Critics make out. It is a kind of interesting, voyeuristic peek at the Jet Set. We see that with all their wealth and free living, there is as much or more Neurosis there as anywhere. It is just more colorful.

During the screening of this, some 20 years ago (which I got free tickets to, thank goodness!), I turned around and tried to detect any facial expressions resembling my own from my poor fellow moviegoers - am I awake? Is this for real? Could it be the worst movie ever made, on this level? Well, fellas, it's a real contender.

The 'script' of female American lawyer embarking on sex adventures in Rio, Brazil, makes any $2 trash pit novel seem like a Pulitzer prize winner, as seemingly 1/3 of it is made up of leftover travel brochure footage. The dialog is so hilariously bad it is downright embarrassing where that one scene in a taxi cab takes the poison cake! And finally, Mickey Rourke is a scream as a "sexy, mysterious" millionaire with bronze makeup and cotton in his cheeks ... his paycheck was probably the roll in the hay with plastic mannequin Otis. So, hold on to your jaws, they might drop to the ground when the end credits roll, unless you haven't left this crap way before that. Hey - you were warned!

1 out of 10 from Ozjeppe

The biggest thing about this movie is how beautiful it is. Yes, symbols are somehow too transparent, plot and music a bit cheesy,a bit too superficial, but it is so beautiful that you kinda forget those things. actors are beautiful , setting is beautiful, sex scenes are beautiful. Very sensual, but making-love-in-the-light-of-a-setting-sun-on-the-beach kinda way. however the funny thing is that you will enjoy the film nevertheless and not only because of sex, but somehow this film is appealing. thought you understand the flaws of this film, you still get aesthetic pleasure on some basic, unspoiled by good taste and good movies level. I like this film because it proves that good film can be made in any genre. You should remember that this is an erotic film. otherwise, if you expect an independent film about love, you should watch something else.

Interesting film. Bisset is a great actor and carries her part very well. The ingenue, Carré Otis is not impressive. Just there for nudity and sex. The Brazilian culture is interesting. Perhaps worth watching ....