Lost Highway

By Drew Turney

From the surreal end of David Lynch’s catalogue comes another of his ‘which is the dream, which is reality’ oeuvre.

We meet an enigmatic married couple, saxophonist Fred (Bill Pullman) and his scorching hot wife Renee (Patricia Arquette, whose several scenes naked and half dressed are more erotic than the most brazen pornography) who are being left videotapes of their house, even them together in bed.

Just when you think things are going to turn nasty, they turn nastier than you would have thought possible when Fred (Pullman) finds himself watching one of the eerie tapes in which he’s murdering his wife. Next thing we know, he’s being thrown in the slammer and condemned to death.

He wakes up one morning in the shape of a young mechanic (Getty), who’s friends with a fearsome gangster (Loggia) and soon falls for his moll, played again by Arquette but this time as a platinum blonde.

Embarking on a dangerous affair where the dame who’s nothing but trouble encourages him to even shadier dealings so they can be together, Fred suddenly reappears, along with the scary-faced man who taunted him at a party with a phantom phone call, a remote cabin exploding in reverse slow motion, and a dozen other Lynchian Macguffins and red herrings.

I’ve got no idea what it’s about, but the sinister, brooding sense of murder and mayhem just over the dark horizon put it on a par with ”Inland Empire” for a sense of malice.

Blu-ray details and extras :

While not a vast improvement over the DVD edition, the audio and video transfer of “Lost Highway” is a slightly superior one. There’s lots of colour, detail and only a smidge of grain, but it still doesn’t ‘pop’ the way many would’ve hoped it would on the format.

Not surprisingly, considering Lynch’s woody for sound, the audio track is terrific.

Extras-wise, some stuff as the previously released DVD had – interviews, making of, etc.