Review of Naked Lunch (1991) by Stuart K — 23 Apr 2012

After Dead Ringers (1988), David Cronenberg wanted to move away from body-horror and try something new, so he announced he was going to tackle an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' 1959 drug-soaked, extreme novel.

Cronenberg decided not to do a straight adaptation, but he explored a way of doing a fictionalised biography of Burroughs and the novel's origins, it's a weird film indeed. New York, 1953, and bug exterminator Bill Lee (Peter Weller) has become addicted to his own bug powder after his wife Joan (Judy Davis) turned him onto it.

He accidentally kills Joan while doing a William Tell routine with a gun, and he flees to the exotic, Arabian land of Interzone, where he writes reports for an unknown force. Under the influence of drugs, black meat made from Brazilian centipedes, he see's his typewriter as a giant bug that talks to him and gives him instructions on what to do next, and find the mysterious Dr.

Benway (Roy Scheider). He becomes acquainted with American writer Tom Frost (Ian Holm) and his wife Joan (Davis again), who resembles his dead wife. It's a different kind of Cronenberg film, and it would help to have a knowledge of Burroughs, and his other works, to understand this film.

But, it does work, only just. But, it's very experimental, and it makes you wish Cronenberg attempted to life some of the book's obscene prose, but he does well with this offbeat riff, which is mindbending and well-written.