DUNE

Here's a movie that I saw a long, looooong time ago that left two indelible images in my mind: 1) a grotesque fat man flying around a room in circles, cackling madly, and 2) A very hot, very oiled-up, spiky-haired Sting, wearing only a wing-shaped codpiece. Imagine my suprise up on viewing Dune again some 20 years later that these two moments are within about one minute of each other in the film. I have to admit that I suddenly wondered whether I ever saw the whole movie the first time around!

Based on the highly obsessed over sci-fi book by Frank Herbert, the rough story of Dune takes place in a world (or worlds, rather) where a rare spice farmed on this one planet Arrakis is the hottest commodity in the universe. Except that the planet is a desert of the most severe type (humans have to wear nifty muscle suits that recycle their own sweat into drinking water), and happens to be populated by giant sand worms that burrow after vibrations and can swallow whole mining stations in a single gulp. Ooops. Needless to say, battles are often fought over Arrakis (which sounded more than a little like Iraq to my ears)—everyone wants to control the rare and valuable spice.

Enter young Paul Atreides, son of a Duke, and heir apparent to controlling the planet. Paul is played by lovely young Kyle MacLachlan, pre-Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet fame. His hair is black, fluffy and feathered; his skin fair and flawless. You know he is destined for greatness because he can put his hand into a Box of Pain and pull it out unscathed. He has visions where he tosses and turns and shouts out in his sleep things like, "Dune! Spice! Planet!" Lynch inserts mysterious arty images of water drops going plop, and people with glowing blue eyes. Pretty much every character has voice-overs, where they think things like, "She wants to tell me something..." and then they say out loud, "You want to tell me something..." And just when Paul thinks things are going well and that he and his royal family are welcomed to their new planet, his father the Duke is assassinated, and Paul and mom are forced to go and hide out with the rebels out in the desert.

Paul, being the son of the Duke and a high priestess, of course is the sort of messiah that these people have always been waiting for. He teaches them how to fight, and how to give their guns and weapons an extra "boom" by yelling "rrrRRAAAHHHRRR!" when they shoot. (I should try that next time I play tennis!) Anyways, in no time, Paul is riding those big sand worms like a sand cowboy and he takes the universe back in the name of all that is good. Or something like that.

The truth is, the movie Dune doesn't always make much sense. It sure is great looking, and you can tell that tons of production money went into the making of the movie. But it is also a David Lynch movie. He revels in weirdness, like making the aforementioned flying fat man (a bad guy, of course) have nasty pus-filled blisters all over his skin. Sting, by the way, plays the fat man's nephew, and I believe the only reason he is in the movie is to make crazy eyes, go "ha HA!" a lot, and have a rather anti-climactic showdown with Paul at the end. Oh, and to show up wearing a codpiece with his lithe muscular frame all oiled-up. (According to the extras, Sting was ready and willing to go buck naked for the scene! Damn.)

David Lynch's movie interpretation has both gotten a bad rap and gained a cult following for its unique brand of weirdness. Hardcore fans have long believed that there was a longer Lynch version out there—the ultimate Dune movie—that has been buried in the vaults this whole time. One thing you'll learn from the extras on this deluxe 2-disc Extended Edition set is that what you see is what you get. The movie was too darn expensive to leave much on the cutting room floor. However this DVD set does contain a version, about 45 minutes longer, that was shown on TV. This version has a lot of filler, some added narration that clarifies a little bit more of what is going on, but otherwise is lame enough where Lynch took off his name, and the dreaded Alan Smithee got directing credit. (For those who don't know, "Alan Smithee" is the pseudonym slapped on a film for when directors want to be completely dissociated from a film.) Curiosity seekers may wish to stick with the basic extras in this pretty slick collector's set—the long version is for hardcore fans only.