Inasmuch as Wild Things uses the humid deliria of South Florida to serve as a representative paradigm for the vulgar desperation of American life as a whole, so too does it presciently use Sam Lombardo to presage the “Florida Man” trope of the 21st century—maniacal, insanely confident men who make headlines by getting self-ensnared in bizarre, Rube Goldbergian schemes of their own making, men whose unflagging confidence in their own intelligence blinds them from their own blood-simple naivety.
