Naked Lunch
d. David Cronenberg, 1991
There's really not much I can say about David Cronenberg's wonderfully strange and brilliant movie Naked Lunch. Having not read the Burroughs novel myself, I can't compare it to its source; but I understand Cronenberg took elements from Burrough's other works and from his life. The result is a spellbinding film that stands as a collection of short paranoid vignettes revolving around exterminator William Lee (Peter Weller giving a brilliant performance). The special effects - including the creature pictured above - are quite astonishing, as is the photography by Peter Suschitzky, who's shot every Cronenberg movie since 1988's Dead Ringers. In its devotion to its distorted narrative, Cronenberg may have crafted in Naked Lunch the definitive movie about drugs.
