Now, the performance of Robert Blake as the Mystery Man who essentially drives Fred to kill his wife shouldn’t go overlooked. Blake, four years after Lost Highway’s release, was put on trial and ultimately acquitted of his wife’s murder. Whether or not Blake committed that crime, his performance as the Mystery Man adds another skin-crawl inducing layer in retrospect. Blake is eerily perfect in the role and his laugh that won’t leave your head anytime soon.

Before Renée is brutally murdered, Fred seems to disappear into another realm; he walks down a pitch-black hallway and reappears only to discover a video tape of the ghastly crime scene. He mentions early in the movie, he doesn’t like video cameras because he prefers how he remembers things, rather than a recording telling him what happened — of course, when he sees himself covered in blood next to his disembodied wife, he’s stunned and has no memory of the murder. Lynch would later switch from film to video filmmaking, going from Mulholland Drive to Inland Empire, and the violent scenes he shoots in video here are a precursor to the imagery we'll see years later.

Much of Lynch’s projects revolve around a place beyond ours, a place of light and dark — The Black Lodge is a running motif which is seemingly where the Mystery Man comes from and where Fred disappears to before he murders his wife. Like Twin Peaks, we see a Bob-like character and we have a murderer who claims not to have control of his own body — there are even red curtains signifying the connection between Lost Highway and Twin Peaks. Can you go to that dark place and come back the same? And what will you bring back with you? These are the questions constantly Lynch asks.

The Los Angeles murder of a wife, the maintained innocence of the husband — it’s no surprise Lynch and co-writer Barry Gilford were influenced by the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Lynch doesn’t like to analyze his own work, but even he admits the Simpson story was too much in the public consciousness that it had trickle into the film. Lynch was intrigued by how Simpson went from (allegedly) murdering two people in cold blood one day, to going out to play a round of golf the next, like nothing happened. Lost Highway is about the fugue state, a man trying to flee the violent act he’s committed by creating a new world and a new identity to inhabit. Steven Soderbergh’s Schizopolis, which was released in the same year, tackles some of those themes, as well — “Yeah! A whole different take on the same thing!”, Lynch says about the Soderbergh's film.