Naked Lunch *** (1991, Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, Roy Scheider) – Classic Movie Review 13,366

David Cronenberg’s ambitious, astonishing looking 1991 surrealist sci-fi drama film Naked Lunch stars Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, and Roy Scheider.

Writer / director David Cronenberg’s 1991 Canada, Britain and Japan surrealist science fiction drama film Naked Lunch stars Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, and Roy Scheider.

The infamous 1959 William S Burroughs experimental ‘antinovel’ Naked Lunch comes to the screen in ambitious hands, those of the challenging film-maker David Cronenberg.

Peter Weller, star of RoboCop, grabs his chance to impersonate the hallucinating homosexual William Lee, and it is an excellent performance, very 1950s with his journalist’s hat, typewriter and writer’s block as his constant companions while he tries to carve out a writing career (he’s writing Burroughs’s Naked Lunch) despite, or perhaps because of, the oddball types around him.

The film looks astonishing, really chicly atmospheric, thanks to Peter Suschitzky’s smokey noir photography with lots of dark hues and key lighting on vital parts of the face or the scene.

But, as screen-writer, Cronenberg makes no sense on screen of a novel that was always considered impossible to film. The challenge Cronenberg faced is that Burroughs’s book follows no clear structure, chronology or geography but jumps between abstract and surreal loosely connected episodes (Burroughs called them routines) though it is book-ended with a realistic crime story.

The other characters in the film remain a gallery of grotesques, with classy actors like Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, and Roy Scheider reduced to striking poses. And the little rubber monsters of bugs and typewriters seeming just incredibly silly or endearing like the Muppets.

Repellent and confusing though it might be, the film’s striking surrealistic visuals and arresting themes ensure its enduring cult status.

Naked Lunch was first published with a misprinted title as The Naked Lunch) in 1959 by Olympia Press.

William Lee is the same character played by Daniel Craig in Queer (2024).

William Seward Burroughs II (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997).

The shooting of Joan Lee (Judy Davis) is based on the story of Joan Vollmer, Burroughs’s common-law wife, whom he shot and killed in a drunken game of William Tell at a party at a friend’s apartment in Mexico City on 6 September 1951. He fled to the US and was convicted in absentia of homicide and given a suspended sentence of two years.

Chris Walas does the special effects for the film, which has 50 bug typewriters.

Shooting started on 21 January 1991 in Toronto on a $17 million budget. Its box office take in North America was only $2,641,357.

Release dates: 27 December 1991 (US) and 24 April 1992 (UK).

The cast

The cast are Peter Weller as William Lee, Judy Davis as Joan Frost / Joan Lee, Ian Holm as Tom Frost, Julian Sands as Yves Cloquet, Roy Scheider as Dr Benway, Monique Mercure as Fadela, Nicholas Campbell as Hank, Michael Zelniker as Martin, Robert A. Silverman as Hans, Joseph Scorsiani as Kiki, Peter Boretski (voice) as the Creatures, Yuval Daniel as Hafid, John Friesen as Hauser, and Sean McCann as O’Brien.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,366

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