I was originally going to try writing this like William S. Burroughs. However, I think after the third or fourth scene where me and some broad rape an Arab kid and then break his neck, you'd probably stop taking me seriously.
Removing all the strange snuff-pornography ripped from Marquis de Sade and all the explanations of how homosexuality is somehow the best disguise for a secret agent may have actually made one of the best Cronenberg films ever made.
I always had a soft spot for Cronenberg, to be honest. He somehow makes movies that always entertain me, even though I can tell that they are usually of no better quality than any other run of the mill horror film. But he has such a nice way of portraying crazy people, like in Spider, or stuff that makes us squirm, like in The Fly. In this moviefilm he uses both of them, and it's a pretty fuck yes combination.
See, uh, Naked Lunch is an adaptation from a novel that doesn't make any sense at all, although what you can glean from it can either be disgusting in an awesome way, or disgusting in a disgusting way. The film, however, uses both Naked Lunch and real events from Burroughs' life in order to make something vaguely coherent. It's tough, because it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense and rarely tries to explain itself. So I'm going to try to explain it as best as I can.
RoboCop plays an exterminator who also has the distinction of being William Burroughs in a self-insert role. Basically, when he's at work one day, he realizes that he's out of bug-killing powder even though he's not supposed to run out. Turns out that when he comes home, his wife who also has the distinction of being William Burroughs' wife Joan, likes to inject bug-powder into her breasts. It makes her "feel like Kafka", which is one of many lines that don't make any sense at all.
Anyway, RoboCop hangs out with some beat poet jerkoffs who have the distinction of being Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg because RoboCop is also a beat poet jerkoff, although for the sake of the movie he claims that he's been "over" writing since he was ten. Regardless, these two characters pretty much do nothing of note in the movie, except fuck his wife in front of him while Ginsberg reads poetry and hits on poor Billy Burroughs.
Meanwhile, RoboCop's been shooting the powder up too. One day he gets caught by two typical noir-film flatfeet, who proceed to question him like they're going to kill him, although suddenly they whip out a box with a giant bug inside, and leave RoboCop with it. The bug then starts bathing in powder and talking to him, telling him that he must kill his wife, and that he must "do it real tasty".
The movie begins to make even less sense after this, but in a way that is worth all 120 orgasmic minutes. There are giant bugs that transform into typewriters, typewriters that transform into abortions, typewriters that transform into giant bugs and abortions that eat each other, giant aliens with dripping penises on their foreheads, and a man struggling with his homosexuality while the world around him is filled with nightmarish homoeroticism typically witnessed in Aphotica K. Lector's subconscious. And a classic story about a talking anus. And Ian Holm as a tiny dapper fag.
Go in with the expectation that you will likely feel a little nauseous and very confused, and you won't be disappointed.
