6. Naked Lunch (1991)
William Lee is a pest control man who finds out his wife Joan has been using his insecticide as a drug. He begins hallucinating due to exposure to the Bug Drug. He thinks he is a secret agent controlled by a giant bug who wants him to kill his wife who is an agent of Interzone Corporation. Lee dismisses the bug but gets back home to find his wife in bed with a writer friend called Hank. In attempting a William Tell style trick of shooting a glass of water off Joan's head, he accidentally kills her - fulfilling part of the mission. William Lee flees to Interzone. He spends his time, under the controller, writing documents which later become his book Naked Lunch. He hallucinates that his typewriter is a bug whilst he is under the influence of mind-bending drugs. The bug tells him to find Dr Benway and to seduce a woman called Joan Frost who is the spitting image of his wife. Lee reckons that Dr Benway runs a secret organisation in the production of 'black meat' - a drug which comes from centipede's insides. Lee finishes his report, flees Interzone and tries to get into Annexia with Joan Frost. At the border, Lee is asked to prove he is a writer. He does his William Tell act on Joan Frost. Like with the original Joan, things go haywire and Joan Frost is killed. Lee is then allowed into Annexia. Finally a non-heroin film! In real life, Burroughs really did a botched William Tell job on his wife who was also called Joan. He sneakily avoided jail time but admitted that his literary career began after her death. The film is really about the hell of drug use and the creative writing process. It is just showered with metaphors, images and character beliefs that make it highly psychedelic and it looks like it is saturated in some kind of hallucinogenic drug. Drug users will recognise the general themes in the film that relate to narcotics - terrible paranoia, conspiracy theories, evil hallucinations. Anyone who has never taken a drug will not be in a hurry to start dropping LSD or snorting cocaine. The film just shows what a head wreck drugs are.