David Lynch’s sleazy genre B-movie (in spirit, at least). Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern are two crazy kids in love, but the world wants to drive them apart so they hit the road together and run into a series of weirdos and psychos across the American south. It’s a three-way collision between The Wizard of Oz, Elvis musicals, and couple-on-the-run movies like Gun Crazy and They Live By Night. As an “art film”, it’s dumber than canned ham. As a campy midnight movie freak show though, it’s solid entertainment. David Lynch says that the film’s theme is finding love in Hell, and to create “Hell” he throws more blood, guts, and gross-outs on screen than he ever has. There isn’t a single sane character in the movie. EVERYONE is outrageous. Nicholas Cage’s entire performance is an Elvis impersonation. Diane Ladd (Laura Dern’s real life mother) chews up the screen like a lawn mower as the insanely jealous mother who wants Nicholas Cage dead. Even the people in the background are from Mars. Most of the cast either puts on a fake southern accent or a fake Cajun accent. Willem Dafoe wears yellowed tombstone teeth, bolo ties and a few gallons of hair pomade. Even Isabella Rossellini dons a silly blonde wig and some weird false eyebrows.
The original cut was reportedly much more violent, but test audiences (a bunch of idiots, probably) walked out during those scenes so Lynch willingly toned it down.
Based on the novel by Barry Gifford who would later co-write Lynch’s Lost Highway.