The storyline of the Frank Herbert sci-fi novel is hopelessly buried beneath an avalanche of unfamiliar vocabulary and proper names -- beneath Arrakis and Atreides and Caladan and Giedi Prime and Kaitain and heaven knows what all. One doesn't have the luxury in a darkened theater of referring to the glossary at the back of the book. The actors, similarly, are swallowed up beneath additional tonnage of sets, props, costumes, and those arbitrary signposts by which we recognize that we are in an alien universe. There is a disembodied brain with a mouth and eyes, afloat in something that looks like a refurbished cable car. There are lots of shaved heads, and several others with a sort of reverse Mohawk -- a path mowed right down the center of an otherwise well-thatched dome. (But the pretty-boy hero, so as not to be alienated from the viewer, looks entirely suitable for the lead role in The Student Prince, complete with a bandmaster's braided uniform and a snooty Robert Vaughn up-tilt to his face.) There are some sort of ice-cube shields for hand-to-hand combat; there is an inflated suit that enables the most robustious villain to float around like a helium balloon (no one else seems to possess one of these suits); and there is a method of travel known as "folding space," which permits the traveller to move without moving, and is thus not a very cinematic means of travel. Even the dreaded Sandworms, which are said to be up to 1500 meters in length but never quite convey their full dimensions, are a bit of a letdown on screen. To gaze into the four-cornered mouth of one of these creatures is, on a scale of wonder, somewhat below a time-lapse sequence of the opening of a rosebud, and somewhat above an overcooked manicotti noodle. With Kyle MacLachlan, Kenneth McMillan, Jurgen Prochnow, Jose Ferrer, and Sting; directed by David Lynch. (1984) — Duncan Shepherd