Notoriously unadaptable and an abject commercial failure… 30 years after its release, this film has become a cult classic!

David Cronenberg, now 80, is considered one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema. After giving us Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Zone and Faux-Semblants (which hits theaters on October 25th), the director signed on to Le Festin nu in 1991. This feature film, one of the author’s most unknown, was released in cinemas. on October 11.

The story takes us to 1953. We follow a recent detox addict, William “Bill” Lee, played by Peter Weller. A man who trained as a pest exterminator discovers that his wife, Joan (Judy Davis), is stealing insecticide from him to inject into him.

Excited by this recreational use, she advises him to do the same. The addiction is immediate, so much so that William is forced to turn to Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider).

The latter prescribed an apparently effective replacement treatment. Unfortunately, William is in police custody for possession of psychotropic substances.

Without treatment, he had hallucinations. Struggling with an uncertain and volatile reality, he finds himself a secret agent and his “dial officer”, a giant insect, entrusts him with the mission to kill his own wife.

According to the insect, he is an agent of an organization called Interzone Inc. Deciding to ignore the giant insect and its orders, Lee returns home. He then finds his wife in bed with Hank, one of his writer friends. But shortly after, while playing a William Tell-style shooter, Lee accidentally shoots Joan.

An inappropriate novel?

The Naked Feast is based on William S. on Burroughs’ famous non-adaptive novel. The film, like its source book, bears many similarities to the life of the American writer. Thus, Bill Lee, Peter Weller’s character, takes his name from the pseudonym Burroughs adopted to publish his first novel. Junkin 1953.

A drug addict like the writer, the character accidentally kills his wife while playing William Tell, just as Burroughs did in 1951. While on a trip to Mexico, the author drunkenly kills his wife with a bullet to the head while trying to reproduce the play. William Tell, who split an apple on his son’s head with an arrow. Accused of premeditated murder, he was arrested and spent some time in prison before being released.

Among other similarities, we can note that between the Interzone where Bill Lee is lost and the Tangier International Zone where Burroughs wrote. A naked holiday in 1959. Finally, Kiki, played by Joseph Skoren, is named after a young man with whom the novelist had an affair while in Tangier.

Fun fact: Actor Peter Weller, the famous interpreter of Robocop, refused to participate in the 3rd opus of the robot-cop saga so that he could star in the naked holiday. It was for this reason that he was replaced by Robert John Burke.

Stunning special effects

In 1992, the film’s eye-popping special effects, especially the imaginative and delusional bestiary surrounding Bill Lee, are the work of Chris Wallace when it hit theaters in 1992.

The latter is a specialist in the genre: he has already worked on Scanners and Cronenberg’s The Fly, as well as Gremlins, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Return of the Jedi.

Morocco in Canada

Originally, The Naked Feast was to be partially shot in Tangier, on the very scene where William S. Burroughs wrote his novel. However, fears of the 1991 Gulf War forced the teams to remain in Canada.

Two huge scenes were created to convey the atmosphere of the Moroccan city. A huge painting was also painted and hung on Bill Lee’s bedroom window to depict the landscape.

Released in theaters in 1991 in the United States and 1992 in France, The Naked Feast was an abject commercial failure for David Cronenberg. It only made $2.6 million on a $16 million budget. In France, it drew 95,000 viewers. Note that the director’s biggest success in France remains La Mouche in 1987 with 2.1 million tickets sold.