When this came out in the pictures we hated the way everyone would crack on about how indecipherable the film was. Well, we saw it and we understood what was going on and we were only puppies at the time. Mind you, one of the first things we understood was that it was shite. No, we didn’t like David Lynch’s infamous piece of ‘career insurance’ – whatever he does in the future, it’s always going to look good in comparison to this po-faced chuntering marathon – but in mitigation there are some good points: that tank-bound ‘navigator’, the blocky duelling force fields and Kenneth McMillan bursting out all over the place are all nifty enough bits of prod-design and Jose Ferrer is very good. On the other hand – and it’s a mighty, calloused, horny old hand as well – just about everybody else is supremely rubbish and the script is so leaden it makes the words for The Ten Commandments sound like a piece of Robin Williams riffing. Any film that tries to imbue the line, “I am the Shadout Mapes…[dramatic Pinteresque pause]…the housekeeper!” with meaning doesn’t really deserve to be taken seriously on any level. The horrible thought is that there were supposed to be another five of these the prospect of which even made Kyle ‘Paul Atreides’ McClachlan admit to Terry Wogan when being interviewed that he had a lucky escape from. Not just you either, mate.
