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The movie opens on a scene of almost stomach- churning racism as white trash dimwit Sailor Ripley savagely beats a black man to death by smashing his skull repeatedly against the wall and floor until there is little left of it but a bloody, squishy pulp. Sailor, you see, is desperately, passionately in love with blonde bimbo Lula Fortune. Unfortunately, Lula's wack-job mother isn't so keen on that and hired said black fella Bob Ray Lemon (fresh out of prison, of course) to stick a shiv in Sailor's gut. That didn't work out so well for Bob Ray, but Sailor gets put away for a couple of years for manslaughter, which makes Lula's momma temporarily happy. As soon as he gets out, though, Sailor busts parole with Lula in tow and the two embark on a cross-country road trip to escape their crazy pasts, only to find a series of exceedingly eccentric hit-men on their tails trying to bump off Sailor and bring Lula back home.

That's about as much sense as the plot makes. What little story the film has and its road movie structure are merely excuses to string together a series of individual sketches and non-sequiturs that were probably rattling around in Lynch's brain for years with no place to go. Although ostensibly based on a novella by Barry Gifford, the movie is about 90% Lynch and 10% Gifford; the original story can be read from start to finish in less time than it takes to watch the movie.

Everything about Wild at Heart is too far over the top. There's a mob boss surrounded by topless maids, a crazy Cajun hit-woman with her leg in a brace, flashbacks within flashbacks that contradict each other, Crispin Glover sticking cockroaches in his underwear and obsessively making sandwiches in the middle of the night, a dog running off with a human hand in its mouth (an image lifted from Yojimbo), and countless overbearing references to The Wizard of Oz, Hollywood musicals, and Elvis. That's just a small sampling, and doesn't even begin to prepare for Diane Ladd's full-bore Wicked Witch of the West on crack routine, complete with seething stares directly into the camera, her face entirely covered in bright red lipstick. Or for Willem Dafoe's psychotic, nub-toothed Bobby Peru, perhaps the slimiest man who has ever walked on planet Earth.

In other movies Lynch can make weird material work in service of an actual story and engaging characters. The problem here is that he was trying too hard to live up to his reputation for being "quirky", and threw in any crazy idea he ever had as if ticking them off from a list. There isn't a scene in the whole film without something perversely strange going on in the background, in the foreground, and all around the edges, and none of it adds up to anything of substance. What is the point, exactly, of the Jingle Dell story other than to be a little piece of extra weirdness? Why does Freddie Jones show up in a cameo to rant about pigeons in a helium voice? Do either of these scenes have anything to do with anything else in the movie? Sailor and Lula themselves are basically the only connective tissue between one section of the film and the next, and their presence is almost incidental to most of them.

There are things that work, of course. Lynch is too talented to make something completely worthless. The movie may be style over substance, but what fantastic style it is. Many filmmakers over the years have tried to imitate Lynch, but none has ever captured the real flavor of the original. A David Lynch film is distinctively, uniquely his own. Wild at Heart is an eye-popping fantasy of candy colors, photographed in the palette of the necklace Lula wears in later scenes. The film drips mood and atmosphere. Lynch's movies exist in their own peculiar universe where any oddball occurrence fits in as naturally as sunshine at noontime. When we see a gaggle of obese naked women prancing around in the back of a scene and are informed, "Them are makin' a pornographic movie, Texas style!", it's about the least strange thing that has happened up to that point.

Lynch finds beauty in the grotesque, and can craft a fascinating image out of even the most repugnant subject, such as a puddle of vomit buzzing with flies or Bobby Peru's stunted teeth seen through a nylon stocking mask. You don't get stuff like that from any other filmmaker, certainly not in the way that Lynch can make these visions both disturbing and compelling at the same time. Wild at Heart also contains several bravura set-pieces that outside the context of this movie are among the best that Lynch has ever directed. Sherilyn Fenn's brief scene as a slowly-dying car crash victim is extraordinarily tragic and emotional, and Bobby Peru's attempted seduction of Lula is a tour de force of dark eroticism, both terrifying and alluring.

Even if, on the whole, Wild at Heart does not amount to anything more than a grab-bag of intriguing bits and pieces slammed together with no coherent structure or purpose, a bad David Lynch film is still more interesting than the best that many other filmmakers are capable of achieving. I'll take a failure by Lynch over a success by Michael Bay or Joel Schumacher, for example, any day of the week.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

Wild at Heart has had a history of what I call Bad Video Karma. For years there was not a decent home video edition of the movie in any format. The old VHS was hopelessly cropped, and although the laserdisc was letterboxed it had just about the noisiest video transfer in that format's 22-year existence. After the Samuel Goldwyn Company went bust, the rights to the film jumped around for a number of years and it seemed like it would never show up on DVD. Now, finally, after many delays MGM Home Entertainment has released what is thus far the definitive edition of the movie, with a video transfer painstakingly supervised by David Lynch himself.

The DVD preserves the film's widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio with anamorphic enhancement, and the full width of the frame is essential to convey Lynch's strong sense of artistic composition. The movie has an intentionally gauzy photographic style that looks a little soft, but the DVD has very good textures and details. There is no video noise or compression artifacting, and very little grain at all. Black level is rich and shadow detail is excellent. Colors are clean and accurate, but a little subdued at Lynch's request. They don't pop off the screen as often as you'd expect, but look very good nonetheless.

Some minor edge ringing is visible in a few scenes, but fortunately not intrusive for the majority of the movie. It only stands out as objectionable during the opening credits and the "Cape Fear" on-screen text at the beginning of the film.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, also supervised by Lynch, is really more of a 3.1 mix. In recent years Lynch has developed a strong aversion to surround sound, feeling it gimmicky and distracting. There is basically no rear channel activity at all in the mix. The front soundstage, however, is alive with rich dynamic range and full-bodied stereophonic musical presence. The movie has a fascinating sound design, moving from periods of whisper quiet to loud bursts of noise. Every sound effect is crisply recorded and presented with excellent fidelity here. The track is also surprisingly bassy, and can reach down into the lower registers.

The DVD also preserves the original theatrical sound mix in Dolby 2.0 Surround. This track lacks the range of the discrete mix, but has a lot more surround envelopment and is preferable in some respects.

A Spanish dub track is also available in Dolby 2.0 mono. The disc offers optional subtitles in English, French, and Spanish, as well as true English closed captioning.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

How ironic that Lynch's worst film gets the best Special Edition treatment. Although Lynch himself still prefers not to comment on what his films mean or are about, MGM has nevertheless thrown together a package of interesting supplements.

The 30- minute documentary Love, Death, Elvis & Oz: The Making of Wild at Heart is similar in tone and style to the documentary on the Blue Velvet DVD (though was not produced by the same people). Like that one, it is an extremely well put-together overview not just of this film but of David Lynch's career and working methods. Many of the original cast and crew appear for all-new interviews.

The Dell's Lunch Counter section of the disc contains 9 short segments approximately 2 minutes each. These appear to be excerpts that didn't make the final cut of the documentary, but go into some useful detail about the quirkier aspects of the movie.

Specific Spontaneity: Focus on David Lynch is a 7-minute love-fest for David Lynch, with everyone attempting to explain what makes his films unique. It's a little fluffy but interesting. David Lynch on the DVD is Lynch's only personal appearance in the bonus features. It's a 3-minute explanation of the pains necessary to get the new video transfer looking so good. This is followed by the Original EPK Featurette (7 minutes), an obviously promotional and lightweight piece that is pretty good for what it is anyway.

The Sailor & Lula Image Gallery is a 2-minute animated montage of production photos. The four TV spots provided all look identical to me. I'm not sure why we needed all of them. The theatrical trailer is anamorphically enhanced at the movie's original ratio, but is in very poor condition. It's a good trailer, though, and makes me wish I liked the movie more than I do.

The disc concludes with some promos for unrelated junk from MGM.

For those keeping track of such things, the disc contains the original American theatrical cut of the film. In order to secure an R rating, Lynch added a digital smoke effect over a particularly grisly gore effect during the movie's climax. It lasts about half a second. Some foreign DVD editions contain the version without the smoke. Having seen it both ways, honestly the smoky version is a lot better. Unobscured, the gore looks pretty fake. The smoke adds a nice texture to the shot and is consistent in theme with the many references to smoking and fire throughout the film.

Not found anywhere on the DVD, unfortunately, are references to the alternate climax, any deleted scenes that didn't make the final cut (Lynch overshoots all of his movies and weeds out the parts that don't work in editing, and the Wild at Heart script had a lot of material that didn't make it to screen), or the Chris Isaak "Wicked Game" music video that has accompanied every previous home video edition of the movie.

Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?

There are no DVD- ROM features on this DVD.

Final Thoughts