366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 146

The Date: February 23

The Movie: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

What Is It?: A year after his TV series’ cancellation, David Lynch returns to the sleepy, creepy town of Twin Peaks to show us just what happened during the final days of Laura Palmer’s life. It is not pretty.

Why Today?: On this day in 1989, Laura Palmer is killed.

Review: “Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery” Blu-Ray: Part 1

After months of anticipation for "Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery" —and years of anticipation for the mythic deleted scenes from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me— I finally own my very own solution to the many mysteries bubbling up from the darkest little town on Earth. While delving into the jam-packed blu-ray set is nothing short of a thrill for the Peaks Freak, it’s a challenge for the reviewer and downright frustrating for the Peaks Freak/reviewer because there’s just so damn much of it. So I am going to try something a little different here, and instead of trying to sum up all it entails in a single post, I’m going to give this home entertainment event the attention it deserves by beginning a series of reviews each focusing on a small patch of “The Entire Mystery”. This may take some time, especially since I really want to savor the HD-restored series. Sorry, but no binge watching for me. Plus, “Twin Peaks” is an autumnal show and I absolutely refuse to watch it during the hot, sticky summer, so I won’t even get started with that until September. The extras, however, are fair game.

Review: “Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery” Blu-Ray: Part 2

For this next installment of my ongoing review series on the new “Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery” box set, I’m focusing on three extras: “A Slice of Lynch” (uncut), “Return to Twin Peaks”, and the Season One photo galleries.

A Slice of Lynch (uncut)

Ten Outstanding Performances in David Lynch Works

David Lynch a master of conjuring uncanny, dreamy atmosphere, of terrifying viewers with films that aren’t quite horror movies, of blending genres into swirling nightmares that defy pat analysis. This is the stuff of which the term “Lynchian” is made. But let’s not forget that he is also an expert conductor of actresses and actors, and he has superb taste in them despite his cheeky use of specimens like Billy Ray Cyrus every now and then. The emotional and logical demands of a David Lynch script require remarkably talented interpreters and very often result in thoroughly unique, flat-out stunning performances. Here are ten of the greatest.

1. Jack Nance as Henry Spencer in Eraserhead

Jack Nance would deserve a place on this list if for nothing but his commitment. Eraserhead famously took five years to make as Lynch kept running out of money. That meant Nance had to both remain in character for five years and wear Henry Spencer’s—ummm—distinctive hair style for five years. Nance’s work in the film is far more than that though. With a bare minimum of dialogue, he relies on his subtly expressive face and masterfully controlled body language to convey the real emotion roiling away beneath Henry’s placid surface as he contends with his monstrous, mocking baby. The slightest smile conveys a flash of fatherly pride, the upturn of eyebrows conveys his despondency with his lot in life, his restful expression at the end of the film let’s us know that he finally feels loved, and it is a most moving climax. And when Nance does speak, his choked delivery draws out the film’s humor and sadness with expert balance. Lynch regards Nance as one of the most expert actors with whom he’s ever worked and handed roles in almost all of his films to Nance until the actor’s death in 1996.

2. Freddie Jones as Bytes in The Elephant Man

The Psychobabble Movie Challenge: 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me' (1992)

Mike:

While running Psychobabble from 2009 through 2011, I occasionally moonlighted over at my good friend Jeffrey Dinsmore’s site Awkward Press.com. Together we played amateur Siskels and Eberts, sifting through classic and not-so-classic movies in a feature we called The Awkward Movie Challenge. Precisely 16 months after our farewell analysis of The Lost Boys, Jeffrey and I are resuming the challenge here on Psychobabble to take a twentieth anniversary look at David Lynch’s big screen prequel to his small screen cult classic “Twin Peaks”.

One of the reasons I called on Jeffrey’s help for this piece is because I’ve written about Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me quite a lot on this site, particularly in last year’s 120 150 Essential Horror Movies. Since Jeffrey has not pored over this movie as much as I have, I figured he’d bring a fresh perspective to it and save me a lot of typing. I also figured that if he hates the movie, which is one of my favorites, I’d finally have a concrete excuse to murder him, which is something I’ve been plotting for a good decade or so.

So I now hand you faithful Psychobabble readers over to Jeffrey Dinsmore. Take it, Jeffrey:

Jeffrey:

“Twin Peaks”, the TV series, debuted a week before my 15th birthday. At that age, Blue Velvet had already knocked A Clockwork Orange out of the top spot on my all-time favorite movies list, a position it retains to this day. Yes, my parents should be in jail, and at least half of them already are. But that’s a discussion topic for another time.

Point being, when I heard David Lynch was doing a TV series, it was as exciting to me as some dumb sporto thing would have been to a normal 14 year-old boy. I was hooked from episode one: the gorgeous visuals, the otherworldly dialogue, the absurd humor, the terror, the mystery: everything I loved about Lynch’s movies had been distilled into one magnificent package for the small screen. And better yet, it was going to be there every single week!

During the initial run of “Twin Peaks”, I only missed a single episode, due to an eighth grade school band “concert” in which I was one of eight “drummers” smashing the same cacophonous rhythm on a snare (I'm pretty sure everyone involved probably would have been better off if I’d just stayed home and watched “TP”). I read and loved The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. And when the movie was released, I was one of approximately seventeen people in the state of Michigan who rushed out to see it.

I had not revisited the film until Mr. Psychobabble asked me to lend some street cred to this cash grab he calls a website. Let me start by acknowledging that, although I consider myself a fan, I am not the expert on “Twin Peaks” that our beloved host is. I have seen the entire series through maybe twice, the first season maybe a couple more times than that. I haven’t watched any of it in about three years, and when I rewatched the film, I was hoping to approach it as a stand-alone film without letting my knowledge of the series intrude upon my analysis.

Sadly, I set myself up for an impossible task. Fire Walk With Me simply doesn’t work as a self-contained film. It wasn’t made for the fans, although true fans will certainly find a lot to enjoy about it. It wasn’t made to convert any new fans to the “Twin Peaks” franchise (although it probably did its part to repel a few). This movie was made for one reason and one reason only: because David Lynch wanted to spend more time in the world of Twin Peaks.

In fact, from the very first moment of the film, Lynch does everything he can to poke fun at the fair-weather fans and critics who initially embraced and then quickly turned against his groundbreaking, if occasionally meandering series. The opening credits play over fuzzed-out TV static. When the credits are over, we pull out of the static to reveal a TV … which is immediately smashed with an ax. Although I realize it can be a fool’s errand to assign specific intention to Lynch’s films, I can’t help but see this sequence as a great, big, glorious "fuck you" to anyone who came to the theater expecting to have all their “Twin Peaks” questions answered. The picture seems fuzzy? How does it look after I smash the TV?

A few minutes later, Lynch further mocks the need for answers that fueled the series backlash. Agent Chet Desmond (Chris Isaak) is called in by Lynch’s character Gordon Cole to investigate the murder of one Teresa Banks. In a hilarious sequence, Cole introduces Desmond to his “mother’s sister’s girl,” Lil, who does a bizarre chicken-legged dance. In the following scene, Desmond describes the symbolic meaning of every aspect of Lil’s dance and appearance, from her “sour face” to her hand movements to her clothing. Desmond becomes the pre-Internet “Twin Peaks” fan boy who parses every frame of his videotape to find the answers to mysteries that Lynch always intended to remain unsolved.

The remainder of the film opening is both entirely memorable and totally incomprehensible. Harry Dean Stanton shows up as the owner of a trailer park where Banks used to live; soon after that, Desmond finds a mysterious ring and disappears. Kyle McLachlan’s Agent Cooper makes a brief appearance in a strange sequence featuring David Bowie. Aside from two recurring characters, the entire opening forty minutes of the film have so little to do with the TV show that it seems as if Lynch is doing everything in his power to push the audience out of the theater. Mystery is piled upon mystery, until we flash forward one year later to (finally!) spend some time with America’s sweetheart, Laura Palmer.