Naked Lunch (1991)

A bug exterminator (Peter Weller, ROBOCOP) gets high by shooting up with his own bug poison. When he accidentally kills his wife (Judy Davis), he flees to the "Interzone" which is in the Middle East and where the "black meat", the dried intestines of giant sea centipedes, are ground into powder and distributed as a hallucinatory. Based on William S. Burroughs controversial 1959 novel, this is a hard film to describe easily as its narrative is essentially one long surreal hallucination while on drugs. It's certainly a film to be avoided if one is in any way entomophobic! If the director David Cronenberg's THE FLY freaked you out, he goes even further here. Typewriters turn into roach like creatures and talk to you (through what looks like a rectum), insect like creatures are ripped apart exposing their innards and giant insects get sexually aroused and join humans for sex. Yes, definitely not for the squeamish. It's a fascinating abstract journey into the mind of a junkie with a precise eye for the 1950s "Beat" generation. The expressive jazz score is by Howard Shore. With Roy Scheider, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, Nicholas Campbell, Michele Mercure and Joseph Scoren.