I have been a David Lynch fan since the early eighties; oddly because I saw Eraserhead on basic cable of all places. There are some of his movies I like more than others, but I am always ready to give Lynch the benefit of the doubt.
But I really love Lost Highway. And it's because Lynch masterfully blended Film Noir and the horror movie.
Lost Highway is one of Lynch's movies that turns off some viewers due to its inscrutability. I don't blame them. But I think the best way to view Lost Highway is to recognize that it's actually three stories. It's two noirs and a horror story.
(Spoilers) The first Noir opens the movie with Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette living together in a shadow drenched apartment filled with unnerving angles. The front door buzzer awakens Pullman in the middle of the night; someone on the intercom mutters: "Dick Laurent is dead." Pullman goes to the windows but no one is there. The next morning an unmarked envelope containing a videotape is found on their doorstep. They watch it and it is just grainy footage of the front of their building.
Pullman, a saxophone player, asks Arquette to attend his show that night. She demurs, and it's clear that Pullman is suspicious that she is lying. It also becomes obvious that their relationship is in trouble. Pullman looks like he is on the verge of physical disintegration. Here, Lost Highway reminds me of the classic Noir Detour, where the protagonist is a failing musician who loses his girlfriend and tries to follow her to Hollywood, beginning a downward spiral to hell, ending in physical and mental collapse of the doomed protagonist.
At this point, horror begins to insert itself into the story. Pullman is approached at a party by a bizarre figure: Robert Blake, made up in a white-faced make up that makes him look like Peter Lorre's love child with Vampira. Supposedly, Blake created the make up himself - good on you, Baretta! Blake tells Pullman they met before, in his apartment. He says "In fact, I'm there right now," and hands his phone to Pullman and asks him to call home. Pullman does so, and Blake answers.
They continue to receive videotapes; one shows the sender moving through their apartment, pausing over their bed where they are asleep in bed. The police are called but provide no answers. (Hapless cops are another Noir standard)
Fast forward: Pullman is found next to Arquette's dismembered body, covered in blood. He is quickly convicted of her murder. He can't remember what happened and is unsure that he actually killed her. This is classic Noir territory; the character framed for a murder that they can't remember committing, provided the plot for several of them. But instead of the classic resolution of the accused clearing themselves by finding the real murderer, Pullman just disappears from his cell and is replaced by Balthazar Getty.
Now we have switched to Noir #2: Screwing the Mob bosses' girl. Getty is released from Pullman’s jail cell and when he returns to his job as a mechanic he crosses paths with gangster Dick Laurent or Mr. Eddy (???), played by Robert Loggia. When Loggia drops off his Cadillac for service, he is accompanied by a blonde Patricia Arquette, who is now a different character (or is she?).
Getty and Arquette quickly fall into bed together and it isn't long before Loggia makes it clear he's on to them. Arquette suggests to Getty that they rob a pornographer she knows to provide a getaway stash. The robbery goes wrong and Arquette reveals herself as a classic femme fatale. Standard Noir fare to this point.
Then Getty turns back into Pullman and Blake's spooky character returns. Arquette disappears, but Pullman finds her – now reverted to his dead (?) brunette girlfriend, having sex with Loggia in a motel. Pullman kills Loggia, then returns to his apartment, presses the intercom button and mutters, "Dick Laurent is dead." Then he flees with the police in pursuit but escapes, maybe (?) by warping out from inside his car.
The end.
So what you have is two fairly standard Noir stories knit together by a bizarre horror story involving swapping identities via time/space warp, masterminded by a creepy puppetmaster with unclear motivations. I do believe that watching this as three distinct stories, an anthology with a linking story perhaps, can help to understand the movie, but ultimately, asking: "What does it all mean?" in a David Lynch movie is kind of beside the point.
This is the first time I watched Lost Highway with an accumulation of Film Noir knowledge. I could see how much Lynch relied on Noir plots, characters, and the aesthetic to build the film. I was particularly struck by how the setting of the cabin in the desert set on stilts resembled the setting of the house on the beach in Kiss Me Deadly. And to make the parallels very obvious, just like the house in Kiss Me Deadly, the cabin in Lost Highway explodes in flames at the end.
So how about running Lost Highway in the background of your Halloween party and throwing a Robert Blake Make Yourself Up as a Creepy Freak contest?
For me, LOST HIGHWAY is a fascinating warm-up for MULHOLLAND DR which takes the former's structure and reverses it. While LH starts in reality and moves into the mind of the protagonist, MD starts off in the mind of the protagonist and moves into reality.