Twin Peaks Series 1 Pilot – Northwest Passage

And so it begins, my journey into Twin Peaks! At this point in time I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to tackle this – I don’t intend to do a full play-by-play episode breakdown, more just talking about my thoughts as we go, and making any predictions based on what I’ve seen. These posts will not be spoiler free, but I’ll only be covering spoilers up to the episode I’m discussing, as I won’t have seen anything beyond it! As such, please refrain from any future spoilers in your comments, thanks!

So full disclosure, I have seen this episode once before, however I wasn’t really paying attention to it and literally all I remembered was that a girl was found dead. As for what I know about future episodes (based mainly on interactions with the French Toast Sunday crew who are mostly massive Twin Peaks fans, even having been to a special Twin Peaks-themed event when they visited London 10 years ago), I was aware of Kyle MacLachlan showing up as a detective of some kind and having an affinity for pie and coffee, and that there would be a lady carrying a log, for reasons that I assume will never be explained (I believe Lindsay from FTS dressed up as this so-called Log Lady for a party one year). I was thrilled to meet said Log Lady in the first episode, and I look forward to future bizarre interactions with her.

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Blue Velvet

Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) returns from university to his smalltown home of Lumberton to look after the family hardware store when his father is hospitalised from a heart attack. After visiting the hospital, Jeffrey discovers a severed human ear in the woods, and begins investigating into its origin, leading him to team up with policeman’s daughter Sandy (Laura Dern) and lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) who seems connected in some way. Also connected is local gas-huffing psychopath crime lord Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) and his crew of cronies, but how deep is Jeffrey going to delve into the seedy world beneath the perfect veneer of suburbia?

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Blind Spot: The Elephant Man

Whilst attending a carnival, well-to-do surgeon Mr. Treves (Anthony Hopkins) sees John Merrick (John Hurt), a 21-year-old man born with such severe physical disfigurements that he is displayed as “The Elephant Man”. After Merrick receives another in a series of beatings from his “owner” Bytes (Freddie Jones), Treves takes Merrick into the hospital and cares for the man, slowly uncovering the person behind the appearance.
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Mulholland Drive

In L.A., a woman survives a late night car crash but loses her memory and can’t even remember who she is. Meanwhile, a plucky young hopeful arrives in town with dreams of being a star, and a director must deal with the demands of his powerful producers, who will stop at nothing to force him to hire their chosen leading lady. All three storylines will converge and attempt to merge into one another, at which point they turn into a completely different film that makes no sense. Trying to work out what is going on will result in crying, throwing things at the screen, substance abuse and, eventually, giving up and wondering just what the big deal was about.2001_mulholland_dr Continue reading

Eraserhead

I think this is David Lynch’s idea of a romantic comedy. Shot in stark black and white and sounding like it was filmed underwater or near a busy factory, we follow the bizarrely coiffed Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) through the trials and tribulations of an average young man – meeting his girlfriends parents for dinner, encountering a beautiful woman living in the same apartment building, watching a woman with hideously deformed cheeks dancing deliriously on stage, you know, the usual.

Coming across like a 90-minute montage of nightmares I would not advise watching this before bed. Henry and his partner’s baby has the appearance of a mechanised cow foetus (possibly because undenied rumours suggest this was what was used), the aforementioned dinner sequence involves a tiny roast chicken still moving, bubbling and bleeding on the plate, and a scene where Henry cuts open the deformed baby has it becoming a bile volcano, one of the most horrific images I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure what happened to Lynch growing up, but I damn well hope it doesn’t happen to me.
Choose life 2/10