`LOST HIGHWAY' A BUMPY ROAD TO TRADEMARK OTHERWORLDLINESS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

David Lynch fans, rejoice. ``Lost Highway'' is the purest, most unadulterated dose of the controversial director's sensibility since he unleashed ``Eraserhead'' in 1978.

If you're not an eraserhead, though, be prepared for, to put it mildly, a challenge. An inscrutable nonstory about ... Well, it has a lot of noirish, femme fatalish moments and a couple of people who turn into other people halfway through. From there, you're on your own.

Whatever it may not be in rational narrative terms, ``Lost Highway'' is undeniably a mood masterpiece. From its slow, deliberate, hardly-anything-happening start to its feverishly hallucinogenic climax, ``Highway'' sustains a sense of cosmic dread and impinging madness that is more felt than understood, but remarkably consistent.

It eventually gets pretty kinky, too, as only a David Lynch movie can. But, dabbling sadist that he is, Lynch puts us through a long, minimally eventful wait and some neck-breaking plot turns before getting to the (comparatively, anyway) good stuff.

Here's what we saw. We think.

Bill Pullman is jazz musician Fred Madison. He lives in an underdecorated, Hollywood Hills home with his red-headed kewpie doll of a wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette). She's not as affectionate as he thinks she could be. He's probably a lot angrier than he appears to be.

Anyway, these attitudes are hinted at for half an hour, as a series of unsettling videotapes are delivered to the Madisons' home. They appear to have been taken inside, while the couple was there but apparently unaware of any intruder.

At a party, a white-faced Mystery Man with no eyebrows (Robert Blake) asks Fred to call home, where the Mystery Man who's standing right in front of him answers the phone. After that, things really start happening.

Someone kills Renee. Fred is convicted of the crime. Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty), a young mechanic from the San Fernando Valley, is found alone inside Fred's locked cell.

Pete then meets Alice Wakefield, a platinum-blond bombshell also played by Patricia Arquette. Her boyfriend, Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia), is a volatile crime boss. She vamps Pete into helping her kill a pornographer with whom she has a past. When they head out to the desert on that lost highway, things really go berserk.

Not surprisingly, at this point Trent Reznor, Marilyn Manson and Rammstein commandeer the soundtrack from the low-growl itch of Lynch's regular composer, Angelo Badalamenti. That's about the extent of Lynch's outreach to a wider audience, though. Which is great, in its way. Cinema has many possibilities beyond the simple storytelling purposes we tend to limit it to, and Lynch's aestheticized imagery, dreamy inferences and explosions of raw emotion point the way to powers and beauty that otherwise go pretty much untapped.

But ``Lost Highway'' often seems as indulgent as it is daring, as well as more than a little derivative. Mr. Eddy's furious spasms are a coarse echo of Dennis Hopper's dangerous rantings in ``Blue Velvet,'' and the movie's languid otherworldliness recalls ``Twin Peaks'' too closely.

Also dancing on the artsy-indulgent edge are the increasingly fetishized portrayals of Arquette, who gives an unquestionably courageous performance in scenes that raise serious questions of misogyny. Of course, Lynch has covered himself by making a movie that's open to endless interpretation on all fronts.

Which is also a bold thing to do. But kind of cautious too, depending on what you want to read into it.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Lost Highway'' (R; violence, sex, language, drug use).

The stars: Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Loggia, Robert Blake.

Behind the scenes: Directed by David Lynch. Written by Lynch and Barry Gifford. Produced by Deepak Nayar, Tom Sternberg and Mary Sweeney. Released by October Films.

Running time: Two hours, 15 minutes.

Playing: Selected theaters.

Our rating: Three Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Jazz musician Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) and his wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette), are a troubled couple in ``Lost Highway.''