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Synopsis:
It is a world of menace, grandeur and intrigue. The planet Dune - 10,000 years into the future ; giant mile-long snadworms guard its most precious and priceless assets, the spice Melange, which permits travel through Time and Space. Whoever control the spice and its secrets conrols the Universe. An epic conflict grips the Galaxy as Paul Atreides leads his people into combat against the evil Harkonnens for possession of the planet. But, on Dune, Paul discovers that he has an even greater destiny to fulfill...

David Lynch's Dune is the brilliant but fatally flawed would-be epic feature film version of Frank Herbert's novel of the same name, the bestselling science fiction novel ever written. It is a complex but too heavily simplified version of a far more elaborate book, a darkly Gothic far future space opera revolving around an imperial, dynastic power struggle on the desert planet of Arrakis. With what was in 1984 an enormous $40 million budget, Lynch retained a surprising amount of the industrial/Victorian feel of his previous features, Eraserhead (1976) and The Elephant Man (1980), and was able to bring to the screen some of the most imaginative and awe-inspiring production designs, costumes and action then seen. Indeed, as a spectacularly atmospheric vision of the future Dune has as much to recommend it as the far more celebrated Blade Runner (1982), with which it even shares the female romantic lead, Sean Young--here just one star in a superb cast. The problem, which an unauthorised extended TV version failed to fix, is that Lynch's original vision of Dune was massively cut for length, and as such the final third is so rapidly paced as to undermine the superb first two thirds. A director's cut is sorely needed, the cinema version playing like a butchered masterpiece. Also available is an entirely unconnected four-and-a-half-hour mini-series, Frank Herbert's Dune (2000), which is less visionary but more coherent.

Director: David Lynch
Composer: Toto
Stars: Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen,
Stars: Max von Sydow, Francesca Annis,
Stars: Sting, Patrick Stewart, Linda Hunt
Publishers: Dino De Laurentis Corporation
Region: 2
Length :135 minutes
Discs :1
Year Released: 1984
Year Product Released: 1999
Audio: 5.1
Where From: BigW, Norwich
Rating: 15
Date Added: 2002-01-09
Time Added: 00:00:00