Naked Lunch

As you might expect from the director of Videodrome, Crash and The Fly, the film weaves an inventive fantasy concerning the creative process, centring on writer William Lee (Robocop's Peter Weller). Addicted to the bug poison with which he earns a living as an exterminator, a party routine ends in the death of his wife Joan (Judy Davis - Barton Fink, Husbands & Wives) and forces Lee to flee to Interzone, an imaginatively demented version of Tangier, where his latent subconscious begins to assume control.

With a menacing score from longtime Cronenberg collaborator (and Oscar winner for Lord of the Rings) Howard Shore, brilliantly performed by Weller, Davis and Roy Scheider as the far-from-sane Dr Benway, and littered with moments that are as horrific and absurd as anything in Cronenberg's filmography, Naked Lunch has assumed its rightful status alongside Burroughs' novel as a counter-culture classic.