The last thirty minutes of my life has proven that it’s impossible to try and summarize this film.  There are so many un-understandable points in this film that I have no idea as to what happened or what it meant.  I could easily write a two-hundred word paragraph giving away every plot point of this film, but I’m sure I would only confuse those who haven’t seen this movie even more.  Let’s just say a lot of weird things happen, and somehow Fred (Bill Pullman) goes to jail and transforms into Pete (Balthazar Getty) and they both encounter this mystery man, played by Robert Blake.

When the film finished I realised that there was so many questions left unanswered but I really didn’t feel like asking them.  Just like Wild at Heart I felt that there was so much of it that just went over my head.  However, in this instance I found myself actually drawn into this not so logical world where people who don’t want to die by electric chair can magically change into different people after having a really bad headache.  There’s even this Mystery Man (Robert Blake) that I think represented the Devil, but I have no idea whether I’m right or not, that I found myself constantly curious about and pissed that we never get to spend enough time with.

This is a film that constantly wafts the idea of an interesting mind bending story, but you never feel like you get there.  Or better yet, you never understand how you got there but at the same time you really never care.  The character of Fred is married to Renee (Patricia Arquette).  In prison he changes to Pete who falls for Alice (Patricia Arquette).   We’re given these obvious links between Fred and Pete but there is never a real understanding of why these links are made.  If you think of it that Pete is really Fred, but while he’s Pete he doesn’t know he’s Fred you can follow Pete’s storyline as a completely separate plot.  However, I get the feeling that there’s more to it than that and irks me that I’m struggling to find the deeper meaning of these characters.

I know to this point all I’ve spoken about is how difficult it was for me grasp the concept of this film but the truth is that at the end of it all I kind of liked it.  It’s not a film that I’d add to my collection and watch every year to remind myself of its brilliance, but it’s definitely a film worth seeing if it’s missing among your ‘watched’ David Lynch films.  I particularly loved the character of Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia), especially in the scene where he deals with the annoying tail gate driver – I hate tail gaters.

IMDB says 7.6/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 59%

I say 7.0/10