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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   2062 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 17, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Last night I rewatched Lost Highway, having not seen it for years and having recently heard it described as a psychological horror movie (which is certainly not how I remembered it). Having watched it a second (third?) time, my thoughts on it are largely unchanged and pretty much the same as everyone else's:

  1. The first forty minutes or so, before Balthazar Getty's character is introduced, are as atmospheric and chilling as anything else in Lynch's filmography (especially the first scene with Robert Blake), to the point that they overshadow the rest of the movie. This section is the only part of the movie that can be described as "horror": everything after that is a noir pastiche or a psychological thriller.
  2. Robert Loggia steals every scene he's in. They should show the tailgating scene in driver's ed, it would get a great laugh.
  3. Lynch was attempting something big and ambitious here, and didn't quite pull it off. He attempted something similar in his follow-up Mulholland Drive and had more luck there (I might even put that movie in my top ten). It's hard to put my finger on why Mulholland Drive is so much more effective than Lost Highway. It might be because all of the silly slapstick scenes in Mulholland Drive are near the beginning, whereas in Lost Highway they're in the middle, after forty minutes of steadily escalating tension and paranoia, which is tonally jarring. Both films involve characters transforming into other people, but in Mulholland Drive Naomi Watts is the leading woman throughout: having Bill Pullman suddenly become Balthazar Getty without explanation robs us of the sense of psychological continuity we'd have if it had been two characters portrayed by one actor. And four years later, Lynch had learned that the only thing worse than using a Rammstein song at the dramatic climax of the movie is using the same Rammstein song twice.

My main takeaway from this movie is that, in her youth, Patricia Arquette was fucking gorgeous. She has several nude scenes in this movie, but even just in close-ups of her talking while fully dressed, I was utterly transfixed. Normally when a movie introduces a female character that we're supposed to find beautiful by lingering on them in slomo, I'm underwhelmed (particularly if they're played by, like, Drew Barrymore). In this case I had no trouble understanding why Getty's character would risk it all for her, even knowing that she's a violent gangster's moll.

As you can probably tell, Lost Highway is my favorite David Lynch film, although TBF I've really never given Mulholland Drive its due and I really need to see it again and on the big screen before I'll feel like I've done that. Anyway, a nearby theater did a David Lynch Retrospective after his death earlier this year and I took the opportunity to see Lost Highway again on the big screen. Like you, I hadn't seen it in decades, and despite agreeing with just about everything you say, the entire movie just clicked for me from start to finish. Each and every scene, and in fact each and every beat of the movie felt sublime, flowing inexorably into the next one and the next one, ultimately building to its intense climax and conclusion. It's like I had that same spellbound feeling that you did when Patricia Arquette was onscreen except I experienced it for the entire movie. I left the theater that night feeling like I had fully grokked the film itself for the first time, almost three decades after initially seeing it in the theater. That being the case, I'd quibble a bit about whether or not Lynch pulled off what he wanted to pull of in Lost Highway, because I think he did, and say instead that the issues that you point out are all genuine and ultimately make it much less accessible than a lot of his other work.

Interesting, I've never heard someone refer to it as their favourite of his films before. For me, there are definitely parts of it that work, while other parts felt like a slog.

Totally understandable. For me, I think the reason that I love Lost Highway so much is that so many of the themes and archetypes that it plays with and explores connect with me on a personal level. I could wax poetic about it, and still might if you're interested, but for now I'll just say that I think your first post put the finger directly on the beating heart of the movie: the characters of Renee and Alice, and more specifically, how they drove Fred and Pete each to their respective extremes.

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