By Mary Shaffer
and Jerry Bunin
The Tribune

"The whole world is wild at heart and weird on top."

That line from David Lynch's "Wild at Heart" sums up the warped world he's revealed in five feature films and a memorable, short-lived TV series.

TV's "Twin Peaks" and Lynch will resurface Aug. 28 with a big-screen prequel subtitled "Fire Walk With Me."

Lynch is a distinctive, eccentric filmmaker with a unique vision and style. Like the owls in "Twin Peaks," things "are not what they seem" in his universe.

Placid surfaces often cover corruption. Hideous looking things can be compassionate and sympathetic. Dreams and visions hold clues to earthly mysteries. Angels and devils are real. Love triumphs uneasily. Parental love is mostly destructive.

For actors, he's resurrected the careers of such unusual personalities as Dennis Hopper, Diane Ladd and Dean Stockwell and discovered new talent like Kyle MacLachlan and Sherilyn Fenn.

Lynch, who also paints and composes music, defines his characters by color schemes and musical themes. They blend with a slow pace, machinelike sounds, music seeming to play at the wrong speed, startling images and unexplained plot twists to create an atmosphere where everything is suspect, anything can happen and nothing is ever fully resolved.

Lynch seems more interested in shocking and disturbing than entertaining. He takes you where you've never been before and may never want to go again.

One film we'll never see again is "Eraserhead" (1977), Lynch's surreal debut about a paranoid loner with bizarre hair who fathers a monstrous baby, imagines a tiny stage and singer in his apartment radiator and dreams of being fodder in a pencil factory.

The experimental horror film, which we found, ironically enough, in the comedy section of a local video store, is a cult classic. But its incomprehensible plot will alienate all but the most die-hard fan.

It impressed Mel Brooks who hired Lynch to direct "The Elephant Man" (1980), his most emotionally satisfying film.

Anthony Hopkins plays a Victorian era surgeon who liberates the grotesquely deformed title character, John Merrick (John Hurt, nominated for an Oscar), from a London freak show. The doctor uses Merrick to advance science and his medical career until discovering the intelligent, sensitive soul inside.

"I am not an animal," Merrick cries. "I am a human being!"

Lynch makes Merrick's revolting physical appearance less offensive than the perversion of those making a living from his misery or the voyeuristic fascination of those paying to see him, including the film audience.

Hardly anyone paid to see Lynch's "Dune" (1985), a confusing, boring, big-budget adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic science-fiction novel.

Despite a few distinctive touches, including a cameo appearance by Lynch and the debut of MacLachlan (who's become Lynch's on-screen alter ego), "Dune's" hokey special effects and unconvincing action sequences prove Lynch is no Steven Spielberg and "Dune" is not a true Lynch film.

He returned to familiar ground in "Blue Velvet" (1986), the critically acclaimed inspiration for "Twin Peaks."

MacLachlan plays a young man who finds a severed ear. It leads to an exotic singer (Isabella Rossellini, Lynch's real-life mate), a sadistic criminal (Hopper is unforgettable), and a possible kidnap-murder.

Like classic Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, Lynch sees evil lurking below idyllic facades in typical American towns. The Montana native described the heartland as "a dream world [of] droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass [and] cherry trees. But then on this cherry tree would be this pitch oozing out."

That's why he opens "Blue Velvet" with Bobby Vinton's title song playing while a man routinely waters his lawn. Then cuts to the hose snagged on a branch and the faucet rumbling just before the man suffers a seizure.

His dog, thinking it's a game, jumps on him and bites at the spraying water. The music turns ominous as the camera moves closer, into the grass to reveal swarming black insects.

"I'm seeing something that was always hidden," MacLachlan's character confesses later. "I'm in the middle of a mystery and it's all secret."

Lynch likes secrets and raising questions without answers. "Twin Peaks" (1990-91), which Lynch called "Blue Velvet" meets "Peyton Place," remains one of TV's great lingering enigmas.

An instant hit and cultural phenomenon, "Twin Peaks" died just as quickly. Most viewers wouldn't stick with Lynch's circuitous, tongue-in-cheek approach long enough to find out "Who killed Laura Palmer?"

But its brief run made Lynch a household name, made "damn fine coffee" an inside joke, and convinced network TV to take chances with quirky shows like "Northern Exposure," a popular series exploring spiritual and physical frontiers and paying homage to Lynch by starting every episode with an owl's cry.

"Twin Peaks" was a bigger hit overseas, especially among the Japanese, as in those visiting Cicely, Alaska, in "Northern Exposure." Simultaneously, "Wild at Heart" (1990) earned him international recognition, winning top honors at the Cannes Film Festival.

This wildly excessive love story/road picture--Elvis meets "The Wizard of Oz" on "Route 66"--is sexy, violent, shocking and funny. It makes you laugh at sick humor and then makes you wonder why you find dismemberment and decapitation amusing.

So Lynch and his fans are strange. But when his new film opens, we'll be there, knowing that whatever happens will be different and it may even explain the end of "Twin Peaks." Anything is possible with Lynch.

Mary Shaffer works at Cal Poly. Jerry Bunin is a Telegram-Tribune reporter. They like to think they're wild at heart and weird on top.