10 Creepiest David Lynch Characters

Wild At Heart, a road movie starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, is one of David Lynch's most straightforward stories. It follows two rebels, Sailor Ripley and Lula Pace Fortune, as they go on the run from hitmen hired by Lula's unhinged mother. The narrative is fairly simple, and the action is, for the most part, grounded in reality, but that's not to say there aren't bizarre and frightening aspects. After being beaten, Sailor has a vision of an angel (played by Laura Palmer herself, Sheryl Lee), and at one point, Sailor and Lula find a girl who has been in a car accident, the back of her skull broken.

The most disconcerting thing about the film, however, is Bobby Peru, a gangster who befriends Sailor in order to murder him. Played with aplomb by perennial creepy guy Willem Dafoe, Peru is sleazy, treacherous, and downright disturbing. At one point, he confronts Lula in her hotel room and threatens to rape her, before screaming that he will, "tear her f***ing heart out."

Later, Peru and Sailor go to rob a feed store. The sight of Peru's face clad in a stocking is creepy enough, but when he wildly kills the two clerks and then admits to Sailor that he is there to kill him, it takes on another level of horrible. Finally, Peru is confronted by the police, and accidentally blows his own head off with a shotgun, an image that will stay with you long after the credits finish rolling.