A jealous saxaphone player (Bill Pullman) is imprisoned for murdering his wife (Patricia Arquette) until one night he transforms into someone else (Balthazar Getty) and is released.
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This was my first David Lynch film. I’d like to say that I rented it because I was an 8th grader with an amazingly sophisticated film palette. But that’s not the truth. My friends and I rented this movie because we heard there was a lot of nudity in it. Needless to say, by the time the movie came to an end, we were much more terrified than titillated. It is absolutely impossible to divorce the sex scenes from everything that surrounds them. You simply cannot ignore those darkened corners in the bedroom. Lynch’s images are already overpowering enough on their own, the sex just intensifies it. The slow motion, smoke, blurry focus and flashing lights all combine with the eerie and bombastic soundtrack to cast a haunting and uneasy spell over you. And I haven’t even mentioned Robert Blake’s character!
Some people might complain that the plot makes no sense, but that’s just because they are trying too hard. If you just take the images as they come, one after the other, I promise you the whole thing will make absolute emotional sense. And though it is clearly not a traditional horror movie, you won’t find many films more horrific than this on a lonely night.
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