Firstly let me say that this is not, of course, a family film, being rated 18 and including as it does not inconsiderable doses of nudity and copulation plus even a gory head-shot-off-with-shotgun scene (in the GB version at least - it has always been, since VHS/Beta and Laserdisc days, and still is, masked in the US release).
It's a road movie described as "a twisted homage to "The Wizard of Oz" but other than an appearance to Gage (whilst in a stupour after a savage beating) of the good witch and too many referrals to that film in the dialogue I can't really see any connection. To my mind to be related, then that fact should strike the average viewer immediately and here it just doesn't, other than via things like those specifics.
Though I like Nicolas Gage (who plays Sailor), my one criticism of the film itself is that he doesn't make a convincing criminal - he's just too nice a guy. His snakeskin jacket is rather good though - a touch of Jim Morrison, aka The Lizard King, who had something similar. You also get Laura Dern as Lula, Gage's girl, looking facially like a man wearing a poor wig and her real mother, Diane Ladd, as her film mother, just looking like a fruit-cake of an old slapper (and certainly not deserving an Oscar nomination for doing so, which she achieved largely by smearing herself with generous amounts of bright red lippie, doing a bit of hysterical screaming and calmly engaging hit-men friends to kill people). The two girls playing the Reindeer dancers were more deserving of a nomination. There's also an appearance by singer Billy Swan as himself.
Some classic Lynch surreal touches are here like photographs vanishing before your eyes, a draw-back to show Gage and Dern being looked at in a crystal ball plus the ordinary ones like a close up of a struck match, the road's yellow lines and the title being from a piece of dialogue "I'm wild at heart"
Despite a nice picture, the 5.1 mix isn't up to much, with the sound only very occasionally straying into the rear speakers, as if by accident. I suppose it's a little better than some other old film soundtrack remixes, notably on Anchor Bay releases, but why bother wasting time and money remixing into 5.1 in the first place unless it's going to be superb?
This is not Lynch's best film but is pretty good nevertheless and, as usual, though you'll never fully understand it, by watching it more than once you can see things you didn't see before and come to different conclusions after each viewing.