There's a story, that when asked what "Wild At Heart" was about, David Lynch responded "It's about two hours". A director who doesn't like to explain himself, he prefers viewers to take whatever they want to take from his work, and as far as he's concerned, whatever they read into the film is the right meaning. Does this mean that the jury at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival (which was led by another director in love with the strange, Roman Polanski) who gave the film the Festival's top honor, the Palme d'Or (and film critic Roger Ebert, who gave the film one star), are both right?

I'd side with the Cannes jury on this one. "Wild At Heart," is like most of this director's body of work, a wild ride straight into his subconscious imagination that works several extremes at once. For the jaded gorehound, there's a head bashing set to a speed metal guitar riff, the bloody aftermath of a car accident, a severed hand, a shotgun blast to the head, an abortion sequence and a genuinely disturbing shot of a woman's face covered in red liptick and little chunks of vomit. For the raincoat in the theater crowd, there's copious nudity and multiple sex scenes (not to mention the scene that involves, in the words of one character, "makin' a pornographic movie -- Texas style!"). And for fans of post modern, referential art there are multiple allusions to the Wizard of Oz and Elvis.

The storyline is simple enough -- Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) loves Lula Fortune (Laura Dern) but her mother, Marietta Fortune (Diane Ladd) is against the affair. Mainly because in the time before he started dating her daughter, he happened to witness the murder of her husband (partially at her hands). When she sends an ill-prepared goon to do in Sailor with a switchblade knife, Sailor responds by killing the thug with his own bare hands. After he's served his jail time for this self-defense killing, Sailor decides to break parole by taking Lula on a trip to California. In return, Marietta hires a detective (Harry Dean Stanton) to track the pair down and a hit man (J.E. Freeman) to kill Sailor, once they're found.

Oh, and it all unfolds in about two hours.

There is more depravity and weirdness going on in "Wild At Heart" than in just about any other David Lynch movie, and that's saying something. In addition to the hit parade I described above, there is a scene between Willem Dafoe, playing a mung-toothed killer named Bobby Peru, and Laura Dern that is both intensely scary and intensely funny. In the space of a couple of minutes, in which Dafoe seemingly plans to rape Laura Dern and tries wearing down her resistance by repeating the instruction "say fuck me" over and over in a whispered voice while feeling her up in a hotel room, and an explosion of rage when she initially refuses to comply serves to remind viewers just how scary Willem Dafoe can be when he's not playing kindly pothead army sergeants or Jesus Christ. But then the scene ends with such an abrupt mood swing on Dafoe's part that you're left laughing at the unexpected turn (and feeling a little uneasy about laughing about it at the same time). Indeed, Dafoe's turn in "Wild At Heart" is among the best of his career, and he just rules the movie during his all-too-brief appearance (he's actually only on screen for about a half-dozen scenes).

Another notable but brief turn in the movie is the cameo of Crispin Glover as Lula's cousin, Dell ("Jingle Dell", as he is also known) that is like a little short film unto itself. This has to be seen to be believed, and only a performer as, ahem, OFF CENTER as Glover could have pulled it off. You will never hear the words "I'm making my lunch" in quite the same way again.

This is a road trip to hell that is worth taking ... that is, if you want to go to hell. A good Monster At Play will feel right at home.

MGM took their sweet time releasing this title to dvd, but they obviously spent the time pretty well. Not only is this transfer of the film the best this movie has ever looked (even better than it looked when I saw it in the theater), the disc is loaded with special features. There's no commentary track (since David Lynch is one of those directors, like Steven Spielberg, who doesn't do commentary tracks) but it has a long making-of featurette that covers the ground of the movie's making and its reception pretty well. New interviews with Lynch and most of the cast and crew, including Barry Gifford, who wrote the novel on which the film based, are quite informative, and an extra feature titled "Dell's Lunch Counter" gives us some outtakes from the featurette that are definitely enlightening. Dafoe's story about filming the scene with Laura Dern has one of the biggest laughs to be found on the disc.

There are also still photos, the theatrical trailer, a second featurette titled "Specific Spontaneity" in which members of the cast and crew line up to kiss David Lynch's butt (they all talk about how great he is to work with, and they sound sincere about it, and I'll just join in here with them and say that I'm sure he is great to work with) and one of the most curious things I've ever seen on a dvd -- an interview with the film's director talking about the transfer made for the dvd. I mean, it's a great transfer, but I don't think I've ever seen any other disc that has a feature like this. But I always enjoy hearing from David Lynch, and it's obvious he's pleased with the dvd. He should be.