Naked Lunch [M]

When an exterminator develops an addiction to his own bug-killing powder, he begins suffering from graphic hallucinations and accidentally kills his own wife. After her death, he flees to the Islamic port, Interzone in Africa, where he is enlisted as a spy and becomes involved in a covert government plot that is being orchestrated by giant insects. 

WHAT THE HELL?!.... WHAT THE HELL??!! This has to be the weirdest and most graphically disturbing film that I have seen… as yet. Even after reading the film’s article in The Book, I cannot make heads or tails of it. Seriously, from start to finish I was completely lost and trying to make sense out of the thing probably would have caused my brain to explode. 

When an exterminator develops an addiction to his own bug-killing powder, he begins to suffer from graphic hallucinations and accidentally kills his own wife. After her death, he flees to the Islamic port, Interzone in Africa, where he is enlisted as a spy and becomes involved in a covert government plot that is being orchestrated by giant insects. 

Although the credits claim that this is an adaptation of the book of the same name by William S. Burroughs, The Book informs me that it is actually an assortment of a number of his works: Naked Lunch, Queer, Junkie, and Exterminator! as well as elements of the author’s life. So, I can tell you that about the film. 

I think the best way to describe this film is surreal: like the old school usage of the word. Like staring at that famous painting of a melted clock hanging over a skeletal tree’s arm, having your sense of reality completely uprooted and shaken. David Cronenberg has done something very clever by keeping his audience completely in the dark in regards to what’s real and what’s not. The entire film seems to be made up of these hallucinations that the hero suffers from: giant bugs that are also typewriters, and then typewriter fragments that are actually a huge assortment of drugs… the whole thing is just really bizarre and really messes with your head. 

The star performance from Peter Weller was very impressive, I have to admit. Aside from moments of suffering from withdrawal symptoms, he seemed completely unfazed by any of the bizarre and genuinely frightening creatures that surrounded him. 

I have to say at this point that I do not agree with the film’s rating. According to the cover, this film is rated M, but throughout the film we are shown really graphic and disturbing images, one major one that involves a giant centipede with a human face being brutally intimate with a man. Not to mention that the C word is used, and quite frankly I think that that is the worst word to come out of the English language, it’s just so hard on the ears. 

Starring Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, and Roy Scheider, Naked Lunch is a really bizarre film that starts off sort of comically weird, but then gets really freaky, a bit like Reefer Madness the Musical. Filled with giant insects, gruesome creatures, drugs, drama, suspense, and just plain weirdness, it’s a film that I can say that I’ve seen, but I don’t think I could see again.