‘Dune’ Is ‘Star Wars’ For Goths

American filmmaker David Lynch’s greatest cinematic masterpiece is not Twin Peaks. Nor is it Mulholland Dr (widely cited as the best film of this millenium), or even his Palme d’Or winning Wild At Heart. All notable works, no doubt, but nothing can touch his 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic science-fiction novel Dune. The movie is an extravagant and cerebral epic that tells the sweeping story of a galactic empire at war thousands of years in the future. The big-budget blockbusters of that era were designed to entertain ten-year olds. But not Dune. I loved it dearly because I was a very sophisticated ten year-old who didn’t have many friends.

No one at school liked Dune. They were fans of other movies. But Dune was mine and mine alone. It was my Goth Star Wars.

Prior to Dune, David Lynch had been celebrated for directing two movies: the experimental waking nightmare Eraserhead and the heartbreaking period flick The Elephant Man. It is a minor miracle that Hollywood decided to give him a massive budget to create a movie that could compete with Spielberg and Lucas’ best. Yes, it was a critically reviled box-office flop. Sure, 1984 was a year where movies like Ghostbusters, The Terminator, and The Karate Kid were released. But those movies told me exactly what to expect from them in the titles. What else could The Karate Kid be but a movie about a kid who is good at karate? When I saw Dune in a theater I was mesmerized by Lynch’s bizarre, and often erotic, spectacle that included evil nuns, poison teeth, and a mostly naked Sting glistening with sweat. I had no idea what Dune was about and, in some ways, I still don’t.

The studio that produced Dune dreamed of making millions off of merchandisng. Those dreams would be dashed, however. Still, the toy stores were full of action figures inspired by Lynch’s baroque sci-fi fever dream. You could purchase the heroic and handsome hero Paul Atredes or the horribly disfugured Baron Harkonnen, the movie villain who floated around and bathed in the blood of young men. But I wanted the sandworm, the all important monster that lives on the planet Arrakis. The sandworm toy was an 18-inch bendable, ribbed tube that split open at one end to reveal a pink mouth full of teeth.

I loved it. I wanted it. For some strange reason my mother bought it for me and let me run around the neighborhood with a toy that resembled a giant dildo. My sandworm murdered Boba Fett, Destro, and Skeletor because my sandworm was a good sandworm. Sometimes I would let heroes ride him but only if they had true hearts. The great thing about my sandworm was that none of my friends ever asked to borrow him the way the asked to borrow my precious AT-AT.

Somethere in a box in the back of a closet in Texas is my sandworm. If the movie Toy Story were true, that sandworm still slithers around in his box wondering when John will finally come home to play with him.

My love of Dune never served me well. No one ever wanted to talk about whether Gurney Halleck could beat Glossu Raban Harkonnen in a force-field fight. No one would let me name the class gerbil Muad’Dib. If there had been a DuneCon I would have showed up in a sardaukar warrior costume made from garbage bags.

Once, in high school, I wrote an English paper about how, in the movie Dune, the important natural resource “spice” – a substance that bends time and space – is a metaphor for oil. I thought it was absolutely brilliant and did not appreciate the B-. Dune forever shaped my political worldview: power is treachery, faith in technology folly, and never fuck with an indiginous people who have blue glowing eyes.

I even read the book. It’s a good book. I remember finding it at a thrift store a few years after I saw the movie and thinking “there’s a novelization?” I’m not the type of person to chose between a book and its adaptation. That said, Lynch’s adaptation can never be improved upon and that’s called an opinionated fact.

Years later I wrote a comedy sketch for a comedy group in New York City called “Dune Weatherman” which was just a regular weatherman whispering “Never a drop of rain on Arrakis” over and over again. They didn’t get the joke and I didn’t get to be in their comedy group. A few years ago I wrote the following topical joke tweet: “He who controls the pumpkin spice controls the universe.” It got zero retweets. Anyway, THE KWISATZ HADERACH is a great name for a band and I wished I had learned to play the drums.

This movie was made by an outsider for insiders who then exiled the outsider once the money and praise didn’t roll in. I didn’t know this when it came out. I just thought it was perfect. I watched it over and over again on VHS while sitting on the couch with my friend, sandworm. I did, eventually, learn that the movie’s failure wounded Lynch but eventually it led him to create dark, funny, personal movies about good and evil and America. Which is a powerful lesson.

If you’ve never seen Lynch’s Dune you should do so immediately. I’ve rewatched it 5,000 times. I would happily buy a ticket to a John DeVore-only screening of Dune at Alamo Drafthouse. It’s like Game of Thrones meets leather codpieces & space cocaine & monster nightcrawlers. It stars Dougie, and the Exorcist, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard. A race of sexy witches have lethal thimbles. There are living computers with bushy eyebrows. The story is a simple timeless one about competing royal houses and mutated bratwursts who need to snort drugs to transport spaceships between planets and a magical desert planet. Guess what the planet’s name is! Correct! To survive on Arrakis, you have to wear a rubber body suit that recycles your poo and pee and makes you look like S&M Batman.

There’s so much to recommend! The hero becomes the terrorist leader of dirty Burning Man hippies and then teaches them how to blow up stuff using magic kung-fu noises. I forgot to mention how Lynch uses voiceovers full of inscrutible exposition that make no sense whatsoever! Just open your heart and take in Lynch’s perfect vision of a future where the doomed father of the hero walks a pug around his palace.

I forgot to mention that Dune also features a sweet ass rock score by 80’s band Toto. I want the melancholy power cords of the final song in Dune, “Take My Hand,” to play while I die and as space-time folds in on itself, and I fall backwards into the light past my memories, I hope I get one final glimpse of a lonely boy happily running down Old Chesterbrook Road waving a plastic penis in the air like a magic wand.

John DeVore is a writer who lives in Brooklyn, the Paris of Long Island. Follow him on Twitter @JohnDeVore for Twin Peaks updates.

Where to stream Dune