- Actors: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, Roy Scheider
- Directors: David Cronenberg
- Writers: David Cronenberg, William S. Burroughs
- Producers: Gabriella Martinelli, Jeremy Thomas
- Classification: 18
- Studio: First Independent
- Run Time: 115 minutes
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B000055Z1J
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 14,667 in Video (See Top 100 in Video)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
You are now entering Interzone, William S Burroughs' phantasmagorical land of junk, paranoia and crawly things. Best travel advice: "Exterminate all rational thought". In David Cronenberg's superbly shot, unnerving warp on the Burroughs novel, Naked Lunch, the novelist himself becomes a main character (played in an implacable monotone by Peter Weller), with elements from Burroughs' life--including the shooting of his wife during a "William Tell" game, and bohemian friends Kerouac and Ginsberg--added to frame the book's wild visions. This is, ironically, a somewhat rational approach to an unfilmable book (and it makes a hair-curling double bill with Barton Fink, another look at writerly madness, with both films sharing Judy Davis). Cronenberg is a natural for oozing mugwumps and typewriters that turn into giant bugs, of course. But in the end, this is really his own vision of the artistic process, rather than Burroughs' hallucinatory descent into hell. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
Like many previous Cronenberg outings 'Naked Lunch' deals with ideas on how by affecting the body, you alter your reality. In fact there probably wasn't a better director around who could so accurately evoke Burroughs visions.
Although 'Interzone' is set in Tangiers, the film crew had to shoot all the interiors in Toronto as North Africa was off limits during the first Gulf War. Films about writers usually involve a static quality where the writer spends a lot of their time in front of the typewriter. Cronenberg has made his writer live the hallucinatory situations that made him put pen to paper. 'Interzone' becomes William Lee's hallucinatory state of mind, where his writings are not just musings on past events, but 'reports' on everything he sees and experiences around him at that moment. Like Max Renn in 'Videodrome', Cronenberg sees Lee's imagination as a disease, as a mind constantly 'on', unable to turn off the constant stream of images that prevades his reality.
Cronenberg totally reshaped the original book for the screen, most noticably in playing down the homosexual aspects of the original novel. The 'bug powder' and the black stuff given to Lee by Dr. Benway were used as a euphamism for drugs. Obvious references to coke, heroin and crack weren't used so that there wouldn't be a 'Just Say No' campaign against the film. Although even if named drugs were overtly mentioned, it's difficult to see a mainstream audience coming to a movie like this. 'Naked Lunch' is unlike any movie you've seen before or anyone you're likely to see hence and for that reason alone, it's worth the admission price.
Format:DVD
This 1959 novel is William Burroughs's finest work, I think. Critics have hailed it his 'seminal work' and 'a landmark in American Literature'. It is a cross-genre experiment, somewhere between Burroughs's usual weird real-lfe 'beat' works like 'Junky' and dark fantasy. The book amounts to a series of loosely-connected vignettes, based on the writer's experience while taking various drugs. These little chapters, according to Burroughs, can be read in any order.
What about the film? David Cronenberg gave the novel the treatment it deserved, to a point, with his 1991 adaptation: it features Roy Scheider, Peter Weller, Ian Holm, and Julian Sands. Cronenberg takes Burroughs's novel and a selection of his other fiction and mixes it up into what is the screenplay for 'Naked Lunch' the movie. But there is much missing from the novel. The prominent things taken from the novel include: the talking a-hole, Dr Benway, William Lee, the Mugwumps, 'Black Meat' (a fictional drug), and Interzone and Annexia.
Film Plot:
William Lee is an exterminator of bugs using a blend of highly toxic substances. His wife is stealing his stock for recreational use. Because of much exposure to his toxic substances, Lee begins to have weird experiences. He believes he is a secret agent for Interzone. He is sure he has been hired to kill his cheating wife. He then kills his wife, who he finds sleeping with another man. Back at Interzone HQ, Lee writes up his mission and while here, his typewriters turn into bug-like things. Clark Nova, his personal typewriter advises Lee to seek out Dr Benway.
Benway is seeing a woman who resembles Lee's wife; much time spent with her reveals stuff about Benway that Lee didn't know. That Benway is harvesting a drug called 'Black Meat' that is made from the guts of giant centipedes. He joins Annexia. Here he question by the Annexian Border Patrol to prove he is a writer and he shoots Frost.
Not faithful to the novel, Cronenberg's adaptation nevertheless works well. He aptly transfers Burroughs's characters to film, while providing his own narrative framework. The film, like the book, mixes reality and fantasy. Only a director like Cronenberg could pull it off. Genres: off-beat, horror, science fiction and just plain weird!
Both book and film are open to a multitude of interpretations.
Recommended:
Criterion Collection: Naked Lunch [DVD] [1991] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]
Where The Buffalo Roam [DVD]
Factotum [DVD]
Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas [DVD]
The Rum Diary [DVD]
Source [DVD] [2000] [US Import]
Naked Lunch: The Restored Text
On the Road: The Original Scroll (Penguin Modern Classics)
Matt Lee-Williams
What about the film? David Cronenberg gave the novel the treatment it deserved, to a point, with his 1991 adaptation: it features Roy Scheider, Peter Weller, Ian Holm, and Julian Sands. Cronenberg takes Burroughs's novel and a selection of his other fiction and mixes it up into what is the screenplay for 'Naked Lunch' the movie. But there is much missing from the novel. The prominent things taken from the novel include: the talking a-hole, Dr Benway, William Lee, the Mugwumps, 'Black Meat' (a fictional drug), and Interzone and Annexia.
Film Plot:
William Lee is an exterminator of bugs using a blend of highly toxic substances. His wife is stealing his stock for recreational use. Because of much exposure to his toxic substances, Lee begins to have weird experiences. He believes he is a secret agent for Interzone. He is sure he has been hired to kill his cheating wife. He then kills his wife, who he finds sleeping with another man. Back at Interzone HQ, Lee writes up his mission and while here, his typewriters turn into bug-like things. Clark Nova, his personal typewriter advises Lee to seek out Dr Benway.
Benway is seeing a woman who resembles Lee's wife; much time spent with her reveals stuff about Benway that Lee didn't know. That Benway is harvesting a drug called 'Black Meat' that is made from the guts of giant centipedes. He joins Annexia. Here he question by the Annexian Border Patrol to prove he is a writer and he shoots Frost.
Not faithful to the novel, Cronenberg's adaptation nevertheless works well. He aptly transfers Burroughs's characters to film, while providing his own narrative framework. The film, like the book, mixes reality and fantasy. Only a director like Cronenberg could pull it off. Genres: off-beat, horror, science fiction and just plain weird!
Both book and film are open to a multitude of interpretations.
Recommended:
Criterion Collection: Naked Lunch [DVD] [1991] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]
Where The Buffalo Roam [DVD]
Factotum [DVD]
Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas [DVD]
The Rum Diary [DVD]
Source [DVD] [2000] [US Import]
Naked Lunch: The Restored Text
On the Road: The Original Scroll (Penguin Modern Classics)
Matt Lee-Williams
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This film is immense in all aspects. The film starts with a conversation in a restaurant, about the ability of writing, and whether revising your words or writing in the moment, without addition, is the way to write an honest portrayal of ones abilities. The main character Peter Weller has given up on writing to become a bug killer. He seems to become delusional about the idea of writing, and sees his passion as something that only comes naturally from an influence in a cock tail of drugs and later his infatuation on his sub-conscious desire in homosexuality. To deal with his state of being and to continue his endeavour to write he derails from reality. With these drugs he creates a mind boggling hallucination that he masters as reality and portrays as a mission in which he is an agent reporting the situation as it happens.
It is difficult to see just what is reality and what is fantasy in this film. There are so few hints to the real life scenario that it is hard to grasp the it all; really you only know that it is conclusively glorified. On top of the crazy drug infatuated hallucination, he is been manipulated and or been taken advantage of; it is difficult to see exactly how and where, as near all the conversations seem like delusional jargon between completely delusional people. Who ever they are, they certainly want him to write and in that take drugs.
This is the first David Cronenberg film I have seen. And it is absolutely amazing. It is a must see for anyone that enjoys the quirky darker side to film. I rank this up there with David Lynch and his wild side.
It is difficult to see just what is reality and what is fantasy in this film. There are so few hints to the real life scenario that it is hard to grasp the it all; really you only know that it is conclusively glorified. On top of the crazy drug infatuated hallucination, he is been manipulated and or been taken advantage of; it is difficult to see exactly how and where, as near all the conversations seem like delusional jargon between completely delusional people. Who ever they are, they certainly want him to write and in that take drugs.
This is the first David Cronenberg film I have seen. And it is absolutely amazing. It is a must see for anyone that enjoys the quirky darker side to film. I rank this up there with David Lynch and his wild side.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Naked lunch Revieuw
This movie is sick , i watched it the first time when I was younger and liked it alot so , when it went missing from my collection ( never lend out this dvd ) I bought it right... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Joachim
Mind-Mess
What can be said about this movie? Well it is definitely not for the weak of mind or heart! This movie is so messed up and exists on so many parallel planes of a twisted existence,... Read more
Published 21 months ago by FullovStars
not sure
i have been looking forward to reading the book but i thought i would save some time and watch the film too. Read more
Published on 8 April 2008 by Ms. F. I. Macdonald
Cronenberg Mark-1 Saliva Swab
This isn't the book, Caveat Emptor. I can understand that filming thousand's of drug-addled hipsters storming through the United Nations whilst defecating on "pacts and treaties"... Read more
Published on 11 Aug 2007 by Brady Orme
Umm, I didn't get it...
I was anticipating great things from this film, but unfortunately I just didn't get it. Way too weird for me - sorry
Published on 13 Oct 2005
Twisted drug induced fantasy
If you are expecting a film with an understandable story, then sadly you've come to the wrong place. Read more
Published on 5 Jan 2004
bizarr, intelektuell, einmalig, genial
Naked Lunch glänzt mit ausgefeilten Dialogen, sureallen Szenen und einer Geschichte, die sehr viel Platz für interpretationen lässt... aber vorsicht... Read more
Published on 20 Sep 2000
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