Naked Lunch (Cronenberg)

REVIEW
William Burroughs' 1950s free-form classic, with its nonlinear narration and shocking imagery, had long been thought "unfilmable." Director Cronenberg has done the impossible, for this hallucinatory horror/sci-fi/comedy/drama is a witty and imaginative interpretation. Weller stars as Burroughs' monosyllabic alter ego, Bill Lee, a bug exterminator who, along with his sharp-tongued wife (the amazing Davis), gets hooked on his own bug powder. Lee, swimming in a narcotics-induced paranoia, sees his Remington typewriter come alive in the form of a slimy, bug-shaped creature who informs him that he is really an underground agent on a mission to fight a worldwide "Interzone" conspiracy. This leads him to "travel" to Morocco, where he meets other agents Holm, Sands and, in an additional role, Davis. An audacious and demanding foray into the psyche of a drug-addicted artist that will prove for some to be disgusting and incomprehensible - a response that would have delighted Burroughs.