David Lynch once admitted to making movies about things that frighten him, and after seeing this comedy-noir freak show it's obvious he must be terrified of criticism from the political Far Right. The film is a catalogue of nightmares guaranteed to offend any card-carrying conservative: heavy metal music, raw language, kinky sex and violence, a casual abortion, so on and so forth.
The token storyline, adapted (rather freely) from a novel by Barry Gifford, follows two rebellious young lovers on the lam from an assortment of warped sideshow villains and the usual pathological refugees from Lynch's overwrought imagination. With its almost epic displays of bloodshed and sex the film certainly lives up to its title, but there's a disturbing sense of familiarity about it. By now the peculiar habits and dark obsessions of its director are too well known, and this postmodern nightmare only redefines the same evil undercurrents of his earlier 'Blue Velvet' on a bigger budget and even more outrageous scale.
At its best (in some of the more offbeat digressions) the details are morbidly amusing in a way that recalls Fellini or Buñuel, and the director's hallmark visionary style and outer-limit dream logic are still compelling. But a colorful rut is still a rut, and controversy for its own sake is always an artistic dead-end. In the end the film is just another excuse for Lynch to test how far he can push the censors, with results ranging from brilliantly perverse to just plain embarrassing, and not even the occasional arcane reference to The Wizard of Oz will endear the film to anyone but the most die-hard of the director's fans.
The token storyline, adapted (rather freely) from a novel by Barry Gifford, follows two rebellious young lovers on the lam from an assortment of warped sideshow villains and the usual pathological refugees from Lynch's overwrought imagination. With its almost epic displays of bloodshed and sex the film certainly lives up to its title, but there's a disturbing sense of familiarity about it. By now the peculiar habits and dark obsessions of its director are too well known, and this postmodern nightmare only redefines the same evil undercurrents of his earlier 'Blue Velvet' on a bigger budget and even more outrageous scale.
At its best (in some of the more offbeat digressions) the details are morbidly amusing in a way that recalls Fellini or Buñuel, and the director's hallmark visionary style and outer-limit dream logic are still compelling. But a colorful rut is still a rut, and controversy for its own sake is always an artistic dead-end. In the end the film is just another excuse for Lynch to test how far he can push the censors, with results ranging from brilliantly perverse to just plain embarrassing, and not even the occasional arcane reference to The Wizard of Oz will endear the film to anyone but the most die-hard of the director's fans.