Not Available On DVD: Lost Highway

It's a pretty good time to be a David Lynch fanatic. You've bought Eraserhead, Inland Empire, and even Wild at Heart in lavish DVD releases, and you've spent the past week buffing your Twin Peaks Gold Box to a showroom polish. Yup, everything's present and accounted for--but wait! Something's missing.

David Lynch's Lost Highway is totally unavailable on DVD in the States. The best you can do is grab the Canadian import (with the ugliest, most embarrassing full-screen transfer in recorded history) or start shopping for multi-region players.

Never one of Lynch's best-loved films, Lost Highway is probably due for a reassessment. Sure, it has its problems--the cast sorely misses the intensity of a Naomi Watts or Laura Dern, or even the cool, blank beauty of a Kyle McLachlan. But Bill Pullman's understated turn as an unlikely wife-murderer is worth a second look, Robert Blake's performance (internet rumor has it Blake's recent... upleasantness has been holding up the DVD release) is terrifying, and the film's mindbending time-travel/identity-swap themes seem like kid's stuff compared to the narrative chaos of Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire.

It's definitely a film worth checking out on DVD--let's hope we get the chance, the sooner the better.