Naked Lunch (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

This show was made from a book by a one of a kind author who lived a unique life & combined his life & his talent to create this story. William S. Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" was a novel many wanted to turn into a movie but it had to wait for F/X & a Director capable of filming its unreal expression of the Author's inner turmoil. David Cronenberg & modern film making combined to make it a unique & shining reality.The cast is dynamite & do a tremendous job of portraying Mr. Burroughs characters. Peter Weller from Robocop as Bill Lee, Judy Davis as Joan Lee/Frost their wife, Ian Holm of Bilbo fame as Tom Frost, Julian Sands as Yves Cloquet & Roy Scheider as a Doctor of deception & others you'll know.WARNING this show takes flight earlier & does not return. Get drinks first. A married exterminator & drug addict hooked on using his "bug powder" for intoxication as well as work begins his journey into psychosis on the train of hallucinations. His wife, then perceived as a problem, is easily removed at the direction of Bill's controller. It then becomes time to go undercover in a truly foreign country. Once there he will send out reports on enemy agents hiding in the same culture he is in. There are new customs, new friends, new enemies but still the same old Bill to try & deal with it all. That's this story line in a nutshell.It gives you No Idea about what is visually contained in this movie. All of these scenes play out in an exquisitely detailed & totally outlandish manner thanks to the direction of David Cronenberg. He was truly the one director to handle the job of book story to finished film here. What he accomplished before doing this film was only training for the making of "Naked Lunch".This movie is not ethereal & otherworldly the images are recognizable by anyone (I'm assuming you know what a typewriter is). Bill Lee our lead character is truly a stranger in his own strange land (pardon me Mr. Heinlein). To watch this show is to be in the middle of a psychotic mind visually. If you are a fan of the weird, the unusual, the bizarre & the unique you will love this. If you are a David Cronenberg fan this show is a non-stop Cronenberg fantasy you shouldn't miss.This was worth the wait & a BIG thanks to all the people that backed off trying this because they knew it wasn't time to try yet. 5 BIG STARS!

Regardless of how you feel about the novel or the film, you gotta commend Cronenberg's nerve at attempting to make Naked Lunch into a movie. Cronenberg's adaptation of William S. Burroughs seminal groundbreaking novel is an oddity not just in the world of cinema but also in Cronenberg's film career. In many ways I think Cronenberg was stretching the film medium as far as it could go as Burroughs did to the novel decades prior. From the outset you should be aware that this film is not a straight adaptation of the novel. Cronenberg wisely understood that to make a straight adaptation you'd need "400 million dollars and it would be banned all over the world". Instead of attempting the impossible he sought to create a more structured narrative that centered around the creation of the novel with bits and pieces from the novel popping up here and there. As a result though the film is far more limited in its scope than the novel was. Burroughs scathing metaphors for control, authoritarian abuse, scientific cruelty, and political corruption are not really featured within the film. The way in which Cronenberg makes up for this though is by giving an insightful cerebral look into sexuality and the human condition through Bill Lee. If you are into mind bending cinema that will challenge you with thought provoking imagery and themes this one will surely not disappoint.Criterion really packed this Blu-Ray with some great special features. They included marketing trailers, behind the scenes footage and interviews, slide shows of the extensive special effects and designs, an hours worth of Burroughs reading from Naked Lunch, commentary from Cronenberg and Peter Weller, and a fantastic making of feature. Pick this one up folks!

Based on (but really inspired by) the William S. Burroughs book “Naked Lunch,” David Cronenberg crafted one of the weirdest, yet subtle, movies I’ve ever seen. Taking a lot of liberty with the book and infusing a lot of stuff from Burroughs’ own life, Naked Lunch the movie is equal parts off-beat, ugly, terrifying, depressing, intelligent, bewildering, calculated, chaotic. It’s been interpreted as a sort of paranoid fantasy about the struggles inherent in the creative process, but with how hallucinatory and surreal it is from the beginning, the film defies quick analysis.Two stand-outs: Peter Weller of Robocop and Buckaroo Banzai gives a cold, gaunt, hypnotizing performance as Bill Lee, the fictional foil for the book’s author; the soundtrack is a great mix of bebop jazz and ominous noise and manages to both fit the time period (1940s-50s) and also double-down on the sense of dread that courses through the whole thing.This is a Criterion release; Criterion DVDs never disappoint, everything is high quality from the picture and sound quality to the level of bonus features all the way down to packaging. Worth the price of admission especially if you enjoy William Burroughs, Cronenberg, or weird, slow burn horror.

I like this classic acid trip like story about a mans decent into madness wonderfully done by David Cronenberg. A rare story.

Criterion Collection: Naked Lunch

Where on earth do you start with this? I think that you either ' get ' William S. Burroughs or you don't and luckily for me he couldn't do anything wrong.Whether writing, painting, acting,' singing ' or just talking this man was a true genius. Cronenberg's Naked Lunch is a mixture of Bill's cut-up novel, autobiography and the writing of the novel and to my mind is absolutely sublime. The Criterion bluray isn't perfect but it's much better than any other release currently on sale and I highly recommend it.I was going to list all the details, extras etc. But www.Bluray.com does it far better than I, so leave me, go there, read and order this immediately!

Amazing sound, amazing picture, lots of neat special features and really liked the disc art sadly I did not enjoy the movie but a great film remaster nonetheless with nice extras

Full recommendation!