The Spice Must Flow!

Above is a prop I recently purchased from Reel Art in Florida: a resin model of the crysknife from the 1984 movie Dune. I'd made a mistake on my shipping address and gave them a call to make sure it was mailed to the right place. One of the owners asked me what I planned to do with he knife and assumed I'd be using it for cosplay. I told him I planned to display in in a shadowbox, but should have told him that I was going to settle a score with Sting for those last 10 solo albums he released. Boy, did they suck.

I'm an unabashed Dune fan. I love the original Frank Herbert books, as well as David Lynch's film. It's a lush, smart movie that doesn't get enough credit and holds up incredibly well bracketed between The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet.
On the other hand, if you were expecting Star Wars then you were probably a little baffled. Dino DeLaurentis certainly marketed the film as though he believed Dune was another summer action movie for kids, stopping just short of including sandworms in McDonald's Happy Meals (although a cinnamon-flavored "Spice Shake" would have been awesome.)
Still, a lot of the Dune merchandise was grossly inappropriate. I don't know which is more baffling: coloring books based on Frank Herbert's heady, neofacist religious parable ... or that someone once tried to sell toys based on characters in a David Lynch movie.

Among the products aimed at the youth market was the Marvel Comics adaptation, which was (and still is) pretty damn great. Illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz, it's the closest we're ever going to get to a "Classics Illustrated" version of Dune. This comic is a terrific piece of art in its own right.

DOWNLOAD the comic here.

(Note: The art above is the unadulterated cover for a pocketbook edition of the comic, which collected the entire miniseries.)


Most certainly NOT aimed at the youth market was an audio interview recorded by Waldenbooks with Frank Herbert and David Lynch. Herbert has passed away since this was recorded in 1983, while Lynch has pretty much stopped trying to explain his movies in any conventional manner. He's also stopped talking about Dune in any way, shape or form ... so it's refreshing to hear him so enthusiastic about the project and talking about the scripts for the planned sequels.
Below is a download link for the six-part Herbert/Lynch interview. It also includes a seventh MP3 file of an unrelated interview with Herbert.

DOWNLOAD: Dune: A Recorded Interview