Review of Naked Lunch (1991) by Ami I — 21 Oct 2010

Naked Lunch is a 1991 film adaptation, directed by David Cronenberg, of William S. Burroughs' novel of the same name.

William Lee is an exterminator who finds that his wife is stealing his insecticide for recreational purposes. When Lee is arrested by the police, he believes he is hallucinating because of bug powder exposure. He believes he is a secret agent whose controller (a giant bug) assigns him the mission of killing his wife, Joan Lee, who is an agent of an organization called Interzone Incorporated. Dismissing the bug and its instructions, Lee returns home to find his wife sleeping with Hank, one of his writer friends. Shortly afterward, He shoots her while performing a William Tell routine.

Having inadvertently accomplished his "mission," Lee flees to Interzone, where Interzone Incorporated is based, and spends his time writing reports on his mission, which become the titular book. While in Interzone, the typewriters Lee uses are themselves living creatures, usually giving Lee advice on his mission. Clark Nova, one of Lee's typewriters, tells him to find Dr. Benway, by seducing Joan Frost, who is a doppelgänger of his dead wife.

After finding out that Doctor Benway is the head of a narcotic harvesting operation, producing a drug called "black meat," derived from the guts of giant centipedes, Lee completes his report and flees Interzone to Annexia with Joan Frost. Stopped by the Annexian border patrol, and instructed to prove that he is a writer as he claims, he shoots Joan Frost in the head, in the same manner that he shot his late wife. The border patrol then welcomes Lee to Annexia.