Naked Lunch (1991)

Screenshot from trailer

I hadn't (and haven't) read Burroughs' book of the same title, the basis for this film, but I had long associated it with other books that I would recommend to a young, angsty, misunderstood teenage boy. These books include the great works of Vonnegut to the overrated works of Palahniuk, as well as many others--all very "boyish", many very enamored with drugs and sex.

Based on this film, the book probably would sit with these others nicely. The film itself fits nicely next to Hitchcock's movies, whom Cronenberg no doubt took a few pages from. The is also my first Cronenberg movie,by the way, so forgive me for not referencing his own other works.

First let me say that Naked Lunch is beautiful. Not rolling hills and soft perfection beautiful, but bold, symmetrical, startlingly precise beautiful. It is engaging by aesthetic alone, and the cinematography is clearly thought through, creating a sense of reality or unreality, subtly used to tug the audience into the whirlwind of this drug-infused daze of a story. I could watch this movie with the sound off on repeat.

Screenshot from trailer

Bill (Peter Weller) has an unusual intensity to his appearance, so normal, yet so unnerving with his skin that clings to the shape of his skull and his big bright blue eyes under his hat. He looks clean, but he is anything but, hopelessly addicted to bug poison, wandering through a world which blends our reality to one where grotesque bugs speak and emit juices that people willingly suck from their tentacle-like protrusions, where death flitters in and out, where the United States transitions to Morocco.

The film is utterly disjointed. It is a movie about a bizarre, overwhelming dive into drug abuse. Never are the lines between reality and hallucination clear, never are many questions answered. Yet you keep watching, yet you wince when you see a such grotesque (as that is the word I keep coming back to) scenes of wrinkled flesh with hair follicles poking out here and there, speaking to you.

Screenshot from trailer

Unfair not to note is that Joseph Scoren as KiKi is fantastic. He is youthful and sweet, mesmerizing us in this topsy turvy world.

There is a lot jammed into this movie, and a lot that is hard to keep track of, but I never wanted to look away.

Watch the trailer here