David Cronenberg directs Peter Weller, Judy Davis and Ian Holm in this surrealist science fiction drama based on William Burroughs’ banned experimental novel.

A bug exterminator / author and his wife become addicted to the green powder that kills the roaches. She is cheating on him with other writers making him a literary cuck. He accidentally shoots her. His typewriter takes on insect form and starts to give him cheery instructions from its friendly anus shaped orifice. Will he follow the orders? Crack the mysteries of the paranoid “Interzone”? Who are the mugwumps? I rented this as a naive 13 year old expecting the star of Robocop and the director of The Fly to deliver further SFX madness in the form a comprehensible drama. Maybe even in an adventure? How foolish I was? Naked Lunch is a fully committed period mindfuck. Slow, obtuse, mature. I don’t remember my reaction to all this back then. I knew it was all beyond me. But today… it is quite boring. Testing. But with lovely creature design…and a morbid sense of the absurd. What to make of the Scooby Doo finale? I’m still not smart enough. Nowhere as near as fun or as horny as the addictive Crash.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Crash (1996)

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