Though based upon Barry Gifford’s novel, director David Lynch’s Wild at Heart takes on a deranged tone and feverish temperature all its own. The winner of the 1990 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the movie — equal parts unhinged road trip and American Gothic head trip — follows the careening love affair of Nicolas Cage’s snakeskin jacket-clad Sailor and Laura Dern’s gum-smacking Lula, two headstrong delinquents whose passion for one another is “hotter than Georgia asphalt,” in the latter’s inimitable words.

Of course, love is never easy, and in Sailor and Lula’s case it’s endangered by Lula’s psychotic mother (Diane Ladd, Dern’s real-life mom), who puts a hitman on Sailor’s scent when they hit the road and elope — one of but several shady characters looking to do them ill. Sexy, surreal and yet also strangely, almost indescribably affecting, Wild at Heart is eminently watchable because it shocks and disgusts even as it makes you laugh and lean forward with tension. It’s also studded with some wonderful (and wonderfully unsettling) supporting performances, notably from Willem Dafoe, Grace Zabriskie and Cristin Glover. Most notable, however, is the brand new transfer and mix of the movie, supervised by the notoriously meticulous Lynch himself. Cruddy VHS tapes can now be slapped up on eBay, though why anyone would bother to bid on them when taking a look at, say, the crisp improvements in the dark night scenes set in Big Tuna is beyond me.

The disc’s extras are headlined by a superlative and fairly comprehensive half-hour making-of documentary that includes new interviews with Lynch, Cage, Dern, Gifford, Dafoe, Ladd, Glover, director of photography Frederick Elmes and many more. “Leftovers” from this main doc are then divvied up into nine more two- to four-minute segments under the banner of “Del’s Lunch Counter.” A featurette on the “specific spontaneity” of Lynch’s colorful, abstract direction, a music-set image gallery, a DVD introduction of sorts from Lynch detailing the release’s color-timing and remixing process, the theatrical trailer and several TV spots also follow.

There are the few nagging issues left unfulfilled, particularly for hardcore Lynch fans. Some sort of material on the film’s wonderful score and music — be it an interview with frequent collaborator Angelo Badalamenti or the inclusion of either of the two music videos for Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” — would seem to have been a no-brainer, but neither are anywhere to be found. Additionally, it’s always slightly irritating when deleted and extended scenes are explicitly mentioned and discussed in interview material, and then left out. But these miscalculations of omission aside, Wild at Heart is still a sterling catalogue release, with a flowchart of the movie’s characters for your dunderheaded roommate and a nice slipcase to boot. Now fans need only await a proper release of Lost Highway to bring Lynch’s oeuvre more fully up to the digital age. A- (Movie) A- (Disc)