TV Review: Twin Peaks 1.4 “Rest in Pain” (dir by Tina Rathbone)

Posted on April 5, 2017 by Leonard Wilson

David Lynch loves Dreams.

Whether it’s the nightmare of losing a loved one in Lost Highway, the dreams of being more than what you are in Dune, or the waking nightmare waiting around the corner of a diner in Mulholland Drive, Lynch has always managed to have a dream sequence be a story driving medium. So, with Episode 3’s fantastic ending, we’re left with some major clues to the truth if they can be deciphered. Imagine living in an age before cell phones and Twitter. An episode like that comes on and the moment you arrive at your workplace (or school), the first conversation on everyone’s lips is “What the heck was that?!” While I don’t quite recall how big the impact was, Twin Peaks was a highly talked about show for its time. A cliffhanger like that was pretty daring, particularly for being only the third episode.

Episode Four, “Rest in Pain” opens at the lodge, with Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) waiting for Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle McLachlan) to make an appearance. She obviously has a crush on him, and he asks her to join him for breakfast. Though she’s unable to stay for long, Audrey explains that she was the one who left the “Jack with One Eye” note under Cooper’s door. Telling him that Jack’s is something like a brothel (“Men go there….women work there.”), they’re able to piece together that both Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) and Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine) worked for Audrey’s dad at the perfume counter of his store. Is there a connection between the two locales? Before they can elaborate any further, Sheriff Truman (Michael Ontkean) and Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) enter the dining hall, causing Audrey to excuse herself at Cooper’s suggestion.

Cooper welcomes his companions and gleefully orders a short stack of griddle cakes, which sounds really good. Now comes the question that has everyone leaning forward in their seats with anticipation. When asked who killed Laura Palmer, Cooper goes over the dream from the night before – of Mike and Bob with the “Fire…Walk With Me” tattoo, the backwards speaking midget (Michael Anderson, Carnivale) and his cousin who looks a lot like Laura. This red room dream sequence may be extra important to the Revival, as it takes 25 years into the future. The cousin mentions she’s filled with secrets and that sometimes, her arms bend back. Additionally, where she’s from, the birds sing a pretty song and there’s always music in the air. The woman whispers the name of Laura’s killer….but Cooper is unable to remember what she said to him.

Dammit, Cooper. You’re an FBI agent, how could you forget something as important as that?!

This, of course, is a good thing, because we really can’t have the mystery solved that quickly, can we?

The next scene is one of my favorites in this episode. It has Dr. Hayward and Al Rosenfeld (Miguel Ferrer) fighting over Laura Palmer’s body. Hayward needs to make preparations for the funeral, yet Rosenfeld is determined to perform an autopsy. It doesn’t help that Rosenfeld has a quip for everyone he runs into, clearly displaying his animosity for the small town life and it’s inhabitants. Ferrer was known for playing that guy you just wanted to pop in the mouth, particularly in his roles for Robocop and the really awful Deep Star Six. It wasn’t until TV’s Crossing Jordan that I saw Ferrer could be more of a good guy. It was a treat seeing him here on the show and in researching the Twin Peaks Revival, I found out he was part of the cast before his passing. Film fans will also make the connection to David Lynch’s Dune here, as Lynch worked with Miguel’s father, Jose in that film. The scene ends with Rosenfeld opening his mouth a little too much and getting socked for his troubles by Truman. Cooper intervenes, giving control of Laura’s body to Dr. Hayward but asking Rosenfeld to make his tests quick and with little damage. For a scene that deals with a dead body in the room, it has just enough comedy in it to lighten the mood without turning into something akin to the Naked Gun series.

Back at the Palmer home, Leland (Ray Wise, also in Robocop) is still grieving over Laura when he’s surprised by a visit from Laura’s cousin Maddy (Sheryl Lee). He can’t help but stare at her in disbelief, possibly because of how much of a resemblance she bears to his daughter. We can’t help staring because of the connection to the dream. Is this the “cousin” the midget was referring to? I liked Wise’s reaction of disbelief here. Either way, it was nice small scene.

If there’s one storyline in Twin Peaks that I could care less about, it’s Norma (Peggy Lipton) and Hank (Chris Mulkey, from Michael Crichton’s Runaway). Hank’s parole officer, Mr. Mooney stops by the Double R, and explains that her husband is being released soon and into her care. Having been a model prisoner, the early release brings him back into Norma’s life, who clearly doesn’t want to have him around. She could have moved on after his imprisonment, but her dating life wouldn’t work out with a homicidally jealous ex popping around the shop now and then. It helps to set the tone for Hank’s introduction to the shop, if nothing else.

Cooper and Truman visit the house of Leo Johnson, to ask him about Laura Palmer. He initially states that he doesn’t know her, and then confesses that the heard of her. After Cooper reads him his rap sheet, Leo states that he was on the road and called his wife Shelley (Madchen Amick) from Butte, Montana. Granted that she can support his alibi, that takes him off the suspect list. Damn, I kind of thought he could be the one up to that point, particularly with the football incident in the previous episode.

At Bobby Briggs’ (Dana Ashbrook) house, his father (Don Davis) has a conversation regarding the upcoming funeral, where he tells his son to not be afraid of it. Bobby has other plans for the funeral, which he barks about. “Afraid!! I’m gonna turn it upside down!!!” Truly, I’ve never seen anyone so excited about attending a funeral since Will Ferrell in Wedding Crashers. He could have yelled at his mother for some meatloaf and it would have fit perfectly here.

Cooper and Truman meet up with Rosenfeld, who gives them the breakdown of what he found on Laura. Cocaine was found in Laura’s diary, along with two different kinds of twine. Rosenfeld reveals that the twine used on Laura’s wrists were also the same used on Ronette, and it appears to have come from a railroad car. Laura was apparently tied in two places on her arm. When Rosenfeld demonstrates this, Cooper mutters a line from his dream..”Sometimes my arms bend back.” Again, an element from the Dream makes an appearance, which lends a great deal of credibility to Agent Cooper’s prowess. Most FBI agents would have relied on extreme forensics work and motives, but here we have an individual whose dreams are possibly taking him in the right direction so far. Rosenfeld mentions he also found industrial strength soap, suggesting that the killer washed his hands on site. Additional clues include what appeared to be bite or claw marks on her shoulder, and a chip of plastic taken from her stomach with the letter “J” on it. There’s that letter “J” again, for Jack’s, perhaps?

So where does this leave us? If the killer washed their hands, they were methodical. The chances they’d leave any other evidence behind other than what was found on the body doesn’t likely. That could also possibly rule out the still missing One Armed Man suspect Hawk is searching for. Additionally, Laura’s clues bring more questions than answers.

On the way out, Rosenfeld pulls Cooper aside and asks him to assist in having assault files brought up on Sheriff Truman. Cooper refuses, letting Rosenfeld know that during his time at Twin Peaks, all he’s seen has been peace and goodwill. Personally, I’m surprised Cooper didn’t hit Rosenfeld at that point, but the forensic scientist leaves empty-handed. Cooper makes a recording note to maybe buy some property in the town of Twin Peaks.

When I originally joined on this project, I started with the episode I was assigned, but it was the next scene that made me jump back to the beginning of the series and continue through it’s conclusion. We have Ed (Everett McGill, Dune), who returns home and receives a hug from his wife Nadine (Wendy Robie). At this point, I stared in shock and then started laughing. I wasn’t aware the two actors were even in this show together. I know the pair from Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs, so seeing them in this context (they were a sibling pair in the film) was just weird. I have to go back to that movie at some point to see the chemistry there again.

Anyway, Nadine gushes about her love for Ed, and how she used to watch him in high school with Norma. Ed’s eyes are a bit jaded here, as if his mind is more on Norma than on Nadine, but they’re both interrupted with the arrival of James. Ed informs him that they have to get ready for the funeral, but James tells them they can’t and leaves. It seems Laura’s passing has struck a nerve with everyone in town, but wouldn’t the person who carried half of his sweetheart’s necklace want to be at her funeral to pay his last respects? Unless of course, either the guilt of being with Donna gotten to him, or he has secrets of his own to hide.

Back at The Great Northern, we find Audrey dressed for the funeral. She sneaks into one of the special cubbyholes and peeks in on an adjoining room. She finds Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tambyn, West Side Story) helping to put Johnny (Robert Bauer) in something more suitable for a funeral. She closes the peeking hole and we move along.

The next scene opens with the swaying of trees. We are all gathered for the funeral of Laura Palmer, and the best scene in the entire episode. The priest gives a small sermon, with everyone close to Laura surrounding her coffin, save for Dr. Jacoby. Cooper, his guard always up, takes notice of Bobby’s disgust at the sudden appearance of James at the funeral. We cut between the major players with the priest’s reflection on Laura, who he also loved in a way “reserved for the headstrong and bold”. Donna seems a little pained at the thought, while Audrey still can’t keep her eyes off of Cooper. They exchange the smallest of smiles before Johnny exclaims an Amen to the crowd. It’s here that Bobby steps up with an even louder “Amen”, ready to actually turn things upside down as he promised. He blames everyone present for Laura’s death, stating that they were all aware she was in trouble, but no one came to her aid. The entire town failed her in his mind, and this causes a brief fight between Bobby and James. The two have to be restrained by separate parties.

It’s here that something magically weird occurs, because it just wouldn’t be Twin Peaks without something strange. To even think about it makes me laugh, but in the context of the story, I suppose it makes sense. In the middle of the altercation, Leland is so overcome with grief that he throws his arms open and flings himself on top of Laura’s coffin, the result of which damages the hydraulics. The coffin goes down into the hole and rises again slowly, repeating the action. Sarah (Grace Zabriskie) admonishes Leland for his actions. “Don’t ruin this too!”. It takes something somber and totally spins it on its ear. I laugh every time I see it.

By the time you’re done feeling bad about Leland’s actions, we find ourselves at the Double R by night. Shelley is re-enacting the coffin sequence to some laughing patrons. We find Ed, Hawk (Michael Horse) and Truman waiting for Cooper to arrive. Ed is sure that Cooper’s not going to get what’s they’re planning, but Truman takes him up on the wager. After making his order – Huckleberry Pie and Ice Cream with Coffee – Cooper immediately catches the look between Norma and Ed. When he brings this to Ed’s attention, Ed can only sigh. Truman gives him the tab for the Pie and Ice Cream. Truman explains that they’ve been doing some detective work of their own, as some drugs have been smuggled into Twin Peaks. Truman also tells of a secret society that helps to protect Twin Peaks from darker forces for more than 20 years.

Cooper, Ed, Hawk and Truman head over to the Book House Boys, a quasi Dead Poets Society Club. Here they find Bernard Renault, the brother of Jacques Renault. Truman mentions that he was caught with cocaine and they ask him about his connections to his brother. While they’re questioning Bernard, Jacques is about to enter the Book House Boys club when he notices a flickering red light on the roof. This causes Jacques to run to the nearest pay phone (wow, pay phones), where he makes a call to Leo, asking him to get him out there. Leo agrees to meet him and leaves Shelley behind. The scene ends with Shelley removing her gun and hiding it behind a panel in a nearby dresser.

Josie Packard (Joan Chen) and Truman meet back at the lodge later that night. Truman releases that something’s up with her, but she’s not quite ready to share. After pressing the issue, Josie states that Catherine Martell (Piper Laurie, Carrie) and Ben Horne ( Richard Beymer, Free Grass) are out to hurt her. What she doesn’t realize is that Catherine is listing in on her conversation via the intercom system. Josie opens a vault to show Truman the two sets of ledgers that show their books are being cooked, but only one is there. We’re shown that Catherine has the other book under a desk panel in her room. Not much else is said about this, so we can only speculate that more of this will come to light in a later episode.

At the cemetery, we find Dr. Jacoby finally paying his respects. Cooper also makes an appearance. Dr. Jacoby describes the pain of losing Laura as she was the only person who made him feel anything, despite the time he spent listening to others’ issues. We come to find that even he is affected by the loss, and he hopes that she can forgive him for not making an appearance earlier that day.

Josie is fearful that what happened to Andrew may happen to her, and that Catherine and Ben are after the Mill. With the Mill and Josie gone, they’d have the land to do with as they please. Truman promises to protect her, and they have a passionate moment right there on the rug. In the back of my mind, I found myself thinking “Hey, stop that! Catherine can probably still hear all your moaning!”, but of course, they’re unaware of this.

The final scene of this episode brings us back to the Great Western, with Cooper asking Hawk about his belief in the Soul. Hawk mentions there are many souls. In particular, there is the Dream Soul that wanders the land of the dead and brings life to the mind and the body. On whether Laura may be one of these, Hawk assures him that “she’s in the ground”. They raise a toast to their name and drink. Leland, also present at the location, begs for anyone to dance with him while the music plays. To dance the way he did with Laura’s picture in his hands. Cooper offers to take him home, to which Leland concedes. This final part was a little weird to me. Leland’s dance compulsion seems a really quirky thing, but then again, it’s not every day one has to bury their daughter.

So, we have a few answers to the Dream sequence, but even more questions on top of that. We’ll have to see where it all goes.

Previous Entries in The TSL’s Look At Twin Peaks:

TV Review: Twin Peaks 1.3 “Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer” (dir by David Lynch)

Posted on April 4, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“She’s filled with secrets. Where we’re from, the birds sing a pretty song and there’s always music in the air.”

— The Man From Another Place (Michael Anderson) in Twin Peaks Episode 1.3, “Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer”

Oh my God, this is the episode with the dream!!!

Okay, a confession. Originally, this episode was not assigned to me. Originally, it was assigned to someone else. However, as soon as I realized that this was the episode that ended with the dream sequence, I begged and begged to be allowed to review it. I even cried a little.

Seriously, I love this episode.

Of course, when people talk about how “weird” Twin Peaks supposedly was, this is one of the episodes that they usually cite as evidence. They always mention that little man who speaks backwards and who dances in the room with the red curtains.

However, I think that labeling this episode — or, for that matter, anything else that David Lynch has directed — as merely being “weird” is a major misreading of Lynch’s signature style. When it comes to examining Lynch, it’s important to remember that, before he became a filmmaker, David Lynch was a painter. A David Lynch-directed film (or television episode) is essentially a moving painting. Often times, the plot is not to be found in the dialogue or what actually happens on screen. The plot is to be found in the mood that Lynch’s visuals create.

I once read an interview with Lynch where he talked about being fascinated by the fact that, if you removed bark from a tree, you could discover a very chaotic world happening underneath an otherwise genteel surface. All of his work has been about peeling back the outer layers of our world and seeing what lies underneath. When you think of this episode’s famous dream as just being another layer, one that is hidden until we close our eyes, shut off our assumptions, and go to sleep, you realize that there’s nothing strange about it.

It’s just Twin Peaks.

So, with all that in mind, let’s take a look at the third episode of Twin Peaks, “Zen, or the Skill to Catch A Killer.”

To say that we start with the opening credits probably sounds like the most obvious thing that I could possibly say conerning this episode but it’s still important to point out. The opening credits of Twin Peaks — the combination of the mill, the mountains, the road, and Angelo Badalamenti’s beautiful theme music — are absolutely brilliant. More than just letting you know what show you’re watching, the opening credits of Twin Peaks transport you into the world of this sordid little town.

And what’s happening in Twin Peaks? It’s the third day of the Laura Palmer investigation. The homecoming queen who tutored Johhny Horn (Robert Bauer), taught Josie (Joan Chen) how to speak English, and helped organize the local Meals on Wheels program is still dead and a shocked town is still struggling to come terms with it. It all goes back to what I said earlier about how this show is all about peeling back layers and revealing what lies underneath. Though each episode may end with Laura’s blandly pretty homecoming photo, the layers underneath are full of chaos and secrets.

The episode opens with an awkward dinner with the Horne family. It’s Ben (Richard Beymer), Audrey (Sherilyn Fenn), Johnny, and Ben’s wife. They’re all sitting in a dining room that, like every room in Ben’s hotel, is completely made out of wood. (Again, you have to remember what Lynch said about the world underneath the bark.) Nobody speaks. It’s as awkward as that montage in Citizen Kane, the one where the collapse of Charles and Emily’s marriage is shown over the course of several increasingly strained breakfasts. But then Ben’s brother, Jerry (David Patrick Kelly), shows up. Jerry has just returned from Paris and he’s brought bread!

Up until this point, Ben has been a stiff figure, one who was largely defined by his greed. But when Jerry shows up, Ben’s face lights up and, almost like an animal, he bites into the bread. Why shouldn’t Ben be happy? Jerry is as flamboyant and eccentric as Ben was measured and closed off. (It helps that Jerry is played by David Patrick Kelly, who is one of those actors who can go totally over the top without losing his credibility or his charm. Before playing Jerry, Kelly achieved pop culture immortality by chanting, “Warriors, come out to play!” in 1979’s The Warriors.) When Jerry gets depressed at the news that the Norwegian deal fell through and that Laura Palmer’s dead, Ben suggests that they go to everyone’s favorite Canadian brothel, One-Eyed Jacks.

While we watch Ben and Jerry (undoubtedly named for everyone’s favorite Vermont capitalists) flirt with the lingerie-clad prostitutes at One-Eyed Jacks, we’re struck by just how dorky both of them truly are. The Hornes may be one of the richest and most powerful families in town but, emotionally, Ben and Jerry are children, still trying to impress each other with their stunted masculinity. The general ickiness of One-Eyed Jacks is nicely contrasted with a genuinely sweet scene of James Hurley (James Marshall) and Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle), wondering if they should feel guilty for being chastely attracted to each other so soon after Laura’s death.

Back at the hotel, Dale (Kyle MacLachlan) gets a call from Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse), informing him that a one-armed man has been seen wandering around the hospital. There’s a knock at the door. When Dale answers it, he finds only a note. It reads: “Jack with One Eye.”

Meanwhile, the three least likable people on the show — Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook), Leo (Eric Da Re), and idiot Mike (Gary Hershberger) — get to have a scene of the very own. Bobby and Mike go out to the woods to pick up the drugs that they paid Leo for. Leo’s waiting for them, of course. He wants to know if Bobby knows who Shelley’s been cheating on him with. Since that person would be Bobby, Bobby is quick to say that he has no idea. It’s tempting to compare Bobby and Mike to Ben and Jerry. Whereas Ben and Jerry are rich and can pretty much indulge their vices without any fear of retribution, Bobby and Mike are still trying to reach that point. They still have to deal, on a face-to-face basis, with dangerous people like Leo. Again, I found myself looking that all trees, all the bark, and all the layers that surrounded Mike, Bobby, and Leo. Ben and Jerry may be rich but peel away and you’ll find Mike and Bobby. Mike and Bobby may be football stars but peel away and you’ll find Leo.

The next morning, life in Twin Peaks continues. Shelley (Madchen Amick), bruised from her latest beating, walks around the curiously unfinished home that she shares with Leo. When Bobby comes by and says that he’ll kill Leo if he ever hits Shelley again, they kiss and the camera zooms in on the bruise on Shelley’s jaw. When Ed Hurley (Everett McGill) gets yelled at for accidentally stepping on one of Nadine’s (Wendy Robie) drapes, he goes to the diner to see Norma (Peggy Lipton).

(Of all the minor characters in Twin Peaks, Nadine may seem like the most cartoonish but one should not be too quick to dismiss her. Her obsession with creating a silent drape runner may seem insane but actually, it’s an attempt to bring a little peace and order to an otherwise chaotic world. Nadine has become so obsessed with creating that peace that she doesn’t realize that she’s managed to alienate everyone around her. Her attempts to find perfection have only amounted in creating more chaos.)

It’s all a bit soapy and I don’t want to spend too much time on any of those subplots. Not in this review, anyway. What’s important is what Agent Cooper, Harry (Michael Ontkean), Hawk, Andy (Harry Goaz), and Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) are doing during all of this. If anyone had any doubt that Twin Peaks‘s version of the FBI is a bit different from the real world FBI, those doubts will be erased by the scene in which Cooper displays his investigative technique.

Out in the woods (and again, we’re reminded of the layers under the bark), Cooper has set up a blackboard. “By way of explaining what we’re about to do, I am first going to tell you a little bit about the country called Tibet…”

Cooper explains the sad history of Tibet and how Communist China forced the Dalia Lama into exile. “After having a dream three years ago,” Cooper woke up with much sympathy for the plight of the people Tibet and also with the knowledge of a new type of deductive technique.

That deductive skill comes down to throwing rocks at bottles while Sheriff Truman reads the name of every suspect whose name starts with a “J.” If Dale hits a bottle, Lucy is instructed to put a check mark next to that person’s name. Andy is sent down to stand near the bottle.

“I’m getting excited!” Andy shouts.

We all are, Andy.

Dale misses when Harry reads the names of James and Josie. But, when he says, “Lawrence Jacoby!,” the rock hits the bottle but does not break. “Make a note,” Dale says, regarding to the bottle not breaking, “that’s very important.”

The rest of the throws only lead to Andy getting bonked by a rock. At least, that is until the final throw. “Leo Johnson!” Harry says. Dale throws the rock. The bottle shatters.

As brilliant as MacLachlan is as Cooper, what really makes this scene work are the reactions of Harry, Hawk, Andy, and especially Lucy. Harry watches it all with a resigned but respectful skepticism. Hawk nods sagely as Cooper talks about the importance of being attuned with the spiritual world. Andy insists that it didn’t hurt when he got hit in the head by a rock. And Lucy gets totally and enthusiastically caught up in the minutiae of Cooper’s technique. When Harry says that “Jack with One Eye” is probably a reference to One-Eyed Jacks, Lucy very earnestly explains that she’s going to have to erase Jack With One Eye off of the list of suspects. By trying to apply logical rules to Cooper’s illogical technique, Lucy serves as a stand-in for the audience. The pure and sincere earnestness of Kimmy Robertson’s performance is one of the best things about his episode.

At the diner, the Hayward Family eats an after-church lunch when Audrey comes in and plays a song on the jukebox. Apparently, the jukebox only carries mood music written by Angelo Badalmenti. Donna and Audrey talk and the scene makes good use of the contrast between the two, Donna being the stereotypical good girl with secrets and Audrey being the artist who has been incorrectly typecast as a bad girl.

Back at the police station, Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer) shows up and I have to admit that I got a little bit choked up when I saw Ferrer looking so young and healthy. Albert is a forensic pathologist and he’s as abrasive as Dale is cheerful. If Dale immediately fell in love with small town life, Albert hates everything about it. Harry and Albert take an immediate dislike to each other, as well they should. But the thing with Albert is that it’s impossible to dislike him because he’s played by Miguel Ferrer. Ferrer could make even the most obnoxious of characters charming.

(Miguel Ferrer was the son of Jose Ferrer. I just recently watched the 1952 best picture nominee Moulin Rouge, which starred Jose as artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. If I hadn’t already known they were related, I would have guessed just from looking at Miguel in this episode. Miguel Ferrer died on January 7th of this year. He and his immense talent will certainly be missed.)

Night falls in Twin Peaks. Catherine (Piper Laurie) and Pete (Jack Nance) bicker. Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) deals with his grief by picking up Laura’s picture and dancing with it while Pennsylvania 6-5000 plays on a record player. “We have to dance for Laura!” Leland yells. (This scene is even more disturbing if you’ve seen Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.)

And, back in his hotel room, Dale Cooper is having the dream.

(It’s interesting to note that, when Dale goes to bed, he wears the type of pajamas that you would normally expect to see a suburban dad in a 1950s sitcom wear. For all of his zen, Cooper truly is a symbol of what we think of as being a more innocent time.)

In his dream, a much older, gray-haired Dale Cooper sits in a room with red curtain. (The old age makeup that was put on MacLachlan for the dream sequence immediately made me think of Keir Dullea watching himself age, at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, before being reborn as a new being.) A little man — credited as being The Man From Another Place (Michael Anderson) — stands in a corner with his back to Dale and shakes in a way that almost seems obscene. Somewhere, perhaps behind the curtains, a distorted voice chants, “Laura! Laura!”

There are a succession of quick cuts. Mrs. Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) runs down the dark staircase in her house. The character who will eventually be known as Killer BOB (Frank Silva) stares menacingly at the viewer.

The one-armed man, who has wandered through the previous two episodes, appears and recites a poem: “Through the darkness of futures past/ The magician longs to see/ One chants out between two worlds/ Fire Walk With Me.” The one-armed man says that “we lived among the people. I think you say convenience store. We lived above it.” The man says that he was touched by the “devilish one.” He has a tattoo on his left shoulder but when the man saw the face of God, he chopped his arm off. “My name is Mike … his name is BOB.”

(Intentionally or not, we are reminded of another Mike and Bob who live in Twin Peaks. Could the Mike and BOB of Cooper’s dream but just layers of what lies underneath the two drug-dealing star football players? Is Cooper dreaming or is he just looking under the bark?)

BOB appears, sitting in what appears to be a boiler room, bringing to mind another film about a dream killer, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. BOB, never one for subtlety, announces, “I’ll catch you with my death bag! You may think I’ve gone insane, but I promise, I will kill again!”

The older Cooper is back in the room with red curtains. The Man From Another Place continues to shake in the corner, his jerky movements almost mimicking masturbation. Meanwhile, Laura Palmer, in a black dress, sits across from Cooper and smiles.

What follows is one of the best scenes in David Lynch’s legendary career. When The Man From Another Place finally turns around and starts to talk to Cooper, his voice has been dubbed backwards. The same is true of Laura when she speaks. We only know what they say because of the subtitles. It’s a very disconcerting effect, one that leaves us feeling as if the world is spinning in the wrong direction and might come off its axis at any moment.

The Man and Laura say a lot to Cooper. Some of what they say we know to be true. When The Man says that Laura is full of secrets, we know that he speaks the truth. When he says that Laura is not Laura but is instead his cousin (“but doesn’t she look like Laura Palmer,” he says) we may be confused but lovers of film noir will immediately think of Otto Preminger’s Laura, in which a detective thinks he’s falling in love with a dead woman until it’s revealed that the woman who was killed was not actually Laura but instead a look alike. (It has been suggested that Laura Palmer was specifically named after the title character in Preminger’s film.) When Laura says that, “Sometimes I feel like her but my arms bend back…,” it’s an obvious reference to the torture she endured in that railway car.

But there are other lines that only make sense if you’re willing to accept that they’re meant to be random. Why does the Man tells Cooper, “The gum you like is going to come back in style?” It could be an acknowledgement that the chivalrous and optimistic Cooper is a man out of time. Or it could just be something that the Man said to make conversation.

And why does the Man From Another Place dance at the end of the dream? That question gets asked more than any other and the answer is deceptively simple. If you know anything about the aesthetic of David Lynch, you know that the Man From Another Place dances just because he does. Things happen and, Lynch suggests, there often is no specific reason.

While the Man dances, Laura kisses Cooper. As I rewatched this scene, I particularly noticed that creepy way that the previously chaste Cooper smiled as Laura kissed him. It’s hard not to compare his smile to the somewhat goofy grin that decorated the face of Ben Horne when he visited One-Eyed Jacks at the start of this episode. Again, another layer has been peeled away and we’ve seen what lurks underneath.

Laura whispers in Cooper’s ear as the episode ends. What she says will have to wait for our next review. What’s important, for now, is that Cooper awakes, calls Harry, and announces, “I know who killed Laura Palmer!”

Previous Entries in The TSL’s Look At Twin Peaks:

TV Review: Twin Peaks 1.2 “Traces to Nowhere” (directed by Duwayne Dunham)

Posted on April 3, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Traces to Nowhere is an episode defined by two accidents.

The first is Pete Martell serving Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Sheriff Truman (Michael Ontkean) fish-tainted coffee while Cooper and Truman are asking Josie (Joan Chen) about Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) tutoring her in English. Pete runs into the room, saying, “Fellas, don’t drink that coffee! A fish fell into the percolator!” Hours later, sitting at the Double R Diner, Cooper says that he still has “the taste of that fish-flavored coffee in my mouth.”

The other accident was Killer Bob, who makes his first appearance when Mrs. Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) has a vision of him in the corner of a room. Bob and his sudden appearances would become one of the best known things about Twin Peaks but, ironically, he wasn’t even a part of the show’s original conception. Bob was played by Frank Silva, a prop master and set decorator who was working on the pilot episode of Twin Peaks when David Lynch accidentally caught his reflection on camera. Lynch was so taken by the accidental image that he created the role of Killer Bob specifically for Silva. Silva made a strong and undeniable impression as the growling Bob but, unfortunately, it would be his only role as an actor. Silva died of AIDS in 1996, four years after appearing in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

Frank Silva as Killer Bob

Traces to Nowhere was the first regular episode of the series, following the pilot. Probably in order to reassure nervous television executive and viewers who were on the fence about whether or not Twin Peaks was for them, this episode is more quirky than actively strange. A lot of time is devoted to the show’s more soapy plot threads, like the affairs between Ben Horne (Richard Beymer) and Catherine Martell (Piper Laurie) and Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle) and James Hurley (James Marshall) and the abusive marriage of Leo (Eric Da Re) and Shelley (Madchen Amick).

There are a lot of first in Traces to Nowhere. This is the episode where Audrey first talks to Cooper, Cooper first says that the Great Northern serves a “damn fine cup of coffee,” where Cooper first has a slice of cheery pie, and where Cooper first talks about Albert Rosenfield. This episodes also features the first mention of the Bookhouse Boys and, most importantly for fans of the series, the first appearance of Catherine Coulson as everyone’s favorite Log Lady. When the Log Lady first shows up and tells Cooper to ask her log who killed Laura Palmer, the character seems like just a throw away joke. But fans of the show know how important the Log Lady will become.

Catherine Coulson, was passed away in 2015, was the ex-wife of Jack Nance, who played Pete Martell. Coulson and Nance both worked with David Lynch on his first film, Eraserhead. It is said that during the shooting of Eraserhead, Lynch looked over at Coulson and said that he had just suddenly had a vision of her holding a log. (Nance and Coulson were not the only Eraserhead alumni to later appear on Twin Peaks. Charlotte Stewart, who played the weak mother of Bobby Briggs on Twin Peaks, earlier played Mary X, Nance’s strange girlfriend in Erasherhead.)

Up next: Zen, or the Skill To Catch a Killer!

Previous Entries in The TSL’s Look At Twin Peaks:

TV Review: Twin Peaks 1.1 “The Pilot” (dir by David Lynch)

Posted on April 2, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(In anticipation of the upcoming revival on Showtime, we’re rewatching and reviewing every single episode of the original Twin Peaks all through April! Enjoy!)

“She’s dead, wrapped in plastic.”

— Pete Martell (Jack Nance) in Twin Peaks 1.1 “The Pilot”

When I was thinking about how I was going to open this review of the pilot episode for David Lynch’s iconic (and soon to be revived television series), Twin Peaks, I thought that I would start with this simple statement:

Twin Peaks opens with tears.

Then I rewatched the pilot on Netflix and I discovered that I was actually very incorrect. Though I always think of the tears whenever I think of Twin Peaks, the pilot does not open with them. Instead, it opens in a very David Lynch-like fashion — with signs of normalcy while Angelo Badalmenti’s ominous theme music provides hints that all is not as safe as it seems.

Really, it’s silly to try to talk about the pilot of Twin Peaks without including the opening credits because, in their deceptively simple way, they really do provide a road map of what’s to follow:

The opening credits, with their mix of shrouded atmosphere, man-made machinery and seemingly placid nature, are about as Lynchian as you can get.

Then again, the town of Twin Peaks is about as Lynchian as you can get. Located only a few miles from the Canadian border in Washington State and surrounded by beautiful mountains and glorious wilderness, Twin Peaks is a town that seems strangely out of time. Twin Peaks takes place in 1990s but, at times, the town seems to be stuck in the 50s. Not the real 50s, of course. Instead, it’s the 1950s of television, movies, and the popular imagination. It’s a town where soulful loner James Hurley (James Marshall) wears a leather jacket and drives a motorcycle while teenage vixen Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) dresses like Natalie Wood in Rebel Without A Cause and waits until she’s safely at her locker to slip on a pair of red high heels. Audrey’s father, ruthless Ben Horne (Richard Beymer), makes plans to sell the town to the Norwegians while, at the local diner, wise Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton) wearily watches over her customers. It’s a world that could only exist in a dream and what a dream it is.

So no, the pilot of Twin Peaks does not open with tears. Instead, it opens with Pete Martell (played by Jack Nance, the star of Lynch’s Eraserhead) going out to fish. He tries to get a kiss from his wife, Catherine (Piper Laurie), but is coolly — but not cruelly — rebuffed. One gets the feeling that this is a ritual that they go through every morning. It’s only after Pete has stepped outside that he sees the girl on the shore, naked and wrapped in plastic.

That girl, of course, is Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). The high school homecoming queen. The girl who did volunteer work. The girlfriend of football player Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook). The daughter of Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), Ben Horne’s lawyer. The best friend of Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle) and the occasional rival of Audrey Horne. The secret girlfriend of James Hurley.

It’s after Laura is discovered that the tears begin and those tears dominate the first 30 minutes of this 90-minute pilot. Deputy Andy (Harry Goaz) is the first to cry. Laura’s mother (Grace Zabriskie) cries when she gets the news. Leland cries. Donna cries. At the high school, a girl runs by a window, screaming. The school principal announces that Laura has been found dead and breaks down into tears. Only a few people don’t cry. Ben doesn’t cry, knowing that a murder could ruin his business deal. Bobby doesn’t cry, even when he’s arrested under suspicion of having committed murder. (He was the last person known to have been with Laura.) Audrey doesn’t cry and instead, appears to faintly smile at the chaos around her.

And Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean) doesn’t cry. However, that’s to be expected. Harry is the rock on which Twin Peaks is built, both as a show and town. He’s the least quirky character in the series. He is law and order. He’s got a murder to solve and making things even more urgent is that a classmate of Laura’s, Ronette Pulaski, is also missing.

The first 37 minutes of the pilot do a perfect job of establishing both the town and it’s inhabitants. Everyone has a secret. Everyone has a motive. Along with those that I’ve already mentioned, we also meet waitress Shelly (Madchen Amick), who is married to an abusive trucker named Leo (Eric Da Re) and who is having an affair with Bobby. We meet Bobby’s best friend and fellow football player, a real idiot named Mike (Gary Hershberger). We meet Donna’s father, Doc Hayward (Warren Frost). We meet the police dispatcher, the sweetly off-center Lucy (Kimmy Robertson). We meet Deputy Hawk Hill (Michael Horse) who is as stoic as Andy is emotional. We meet James’s uncle, Ed Hurley (Everett McGill) and Ed’s one-eyed, drapery-obsessed wife, Nadine (Wendy Robie). We meet Josie Packard (Joan Chen), who inherited the mill from her late husband and who is secretly Harry’s lover.

And, after Ronette is discovered wandering, zombie-like on a bridge, we meet FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan). More than anything else, Cooper is who people think of whenever they think of Twin Peaks. MacLalchlan plays the quirky FBI agent with just the right combination of earnestness and eccentricity. Speaking into his ever-present tape recorder and praising everything from the trees to the pie to the coffee, Cooper quickly establishes himself as the perfect man to figure out what’s going on in Twin Peaks.

David Lynch once famously described his previous collaboration with MacLachlan, Blue Velvet, as being the “Hardy Boys Go To Hell,” and the same can be said of Twin Peaks. If the first 37 minutes of the pilot were dominated by sadness and secrets, the final 60 are dominated by Dale Cooper’s enthusiasm and cheerful positivity. The town may be strange but Dale loves the trees. Dale may be investigating horrible and brutal crimes but at least he’s found a good slice of pie and damn fine cup of coffee.

“You know why I’m whittling?” Dale asks Harry at one point. “Because that’s what you do in a town where a yellow light means slow down instead of speed up.” Dale smiles after he says it. It doesn’t take him long to fall in love with Twin Peaks.

Throughout the rest of the pilot, we get more hints of a world that’s threatening to spin off of its axis. Dale and Harry run into Dr. Lawrence Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn, who co-starred with Richard Beymer in West Side Story), who was Laura’s psychiatrist and appears to be in need of some therapy himself. When they look at Laura’s body in the morgue, the lights flicker on and off. When Dale finds a scrap of newspaper — featuring the letter “R” — underneath Laura’s fingernail, he grins as if he’s just made it through his first Communion. When Harry and Dale go to the local bank, a moose’s head just happens to be lying on the table in the conference room. It fell, they’re told. Despite all the strangeness, they go about their business. They’ve got a murder to solve.

“Mr. Cooper,” Harry says, at one point, “you didn’t know Laura Palmer.” But, as quickly becomes obvious, no one knew Laura Palmer. No one, for instance, knew that she was doing cocaine. And Bobby didn’t know that she was seeing James, or at least he doesn’t until he watches a video that Donna, James, and Laura shot inn the mountains over looking the town. Laura, who we’ve previously just seen as a dead body, is so happily alive in that video that it’s a bit jarring to see her. You half expect her to come out of the TV, like the girl in The Ring. The video ends with her smiling, as if she’s daring both Cooper and the show’s viewers to try to figure out who she actually was. Only later is it revealed that, in a plot twist reminiscent of Dario Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet, James’s motorcycle is reflected in Laura’s eye.

Life goes on in Twin Peaks. Audrey, the character to whom I most relate whenever I watch this show, sits in her father’s hotel and penetrates a styrofoam cup of coffee with a pencil. “What would happen if I pulled this out?” she asks before doing just that. Audrey walks into the hotel’s conference room and tells the Norwegians that she’s feeling sad because her best friend was just brutally murdered, destroying her father’s business deal. (“The Norwegians are leaving! The Norwegians are leaving!” a hotel concierge vainly yells.)

(Perhaps not coincidentally, Norway was also the home of Henrik Ibsen, whose theatrical melodramas often dealt with many of the same themes — greed, infidelity, the corruption that comes with progress — that are present in Twin Peaks. An Enemy of the People could have just just as easily taken place in the American Northwest.)

Meanwhile, the local police come across the abandoned railroad car where Laura was murdered and Ronnette raped. Andy calls the sheriff’s office, in tears. “Tell Harry I didn’t cry,” he begs Lucy, “but it’s so horrible!” It’s a moment of very real humanity in the middle of this odd and disturbing mystery. When Andy begs Lucy not to reveal his very human reaction, it’s more than just shame on his part. It’s an indication that perhaps the only way to solve this mystery is to sacrifice one’s emotions.

And, as Andy said, it is horrible. When Dale and Harry walk through that railway car, we are reminded that, as quirky at the show may be, a very disturbing crime is still at heart of it. Among other things, they find a half-heart necklace (the other half is with James) and, written in blood in the debris, a message: “Fire Walk With Me.” As disturbing as this is in the pilot (and this scene really is Lynch at his best), it’s even more disturbing if you know who will ultimately be revealed to have been Laura’s murderer. But that information will have to wait for a later review.

It easy to believe that arrogant Bobby Briggs killed Laura but Cooper only has to talk to him for a few minutes to realize that he didn’t do it. Bobby may be a jerk and a drug dealer. And Cooper is surely correct when he says that Bobby never loved Laura. But Bobby is a bully, not a murderer. When Bobby is released, he and Mike go looking for James. As unlikable as Bobby is, Mike — with his blonde hair and all-American looks — is somehow even worse. At least Bobby is open about being an bad guy. Mike hides his darker instincts behind a carefully cultivated facade of blandness. Looking at Mike in his red letterman jacket, you really do want someone to claw his eyes out.

Mike and Bobby look for James at the Roadhouse, one of the most important locations in Twin Peaks. It’s a place where illicit lovers (like Norma and Ed) meet and where Julee Cruise sings haunting songs. Bobby and Mike may not find James but they do find a fight with Ed. This leads to Bobby and Mike spending the night in jail, which, ironically, is where they eventually find James. James has been arrested as a suspect in the death of Laura Palmer. In their cell, Bobby and Mike start to bark like wild dogs.

And so, a pilot that started with the humanity of tears ends with animalistic howls of anger, hate, and jealousy.

And so, Twin Peaks begins.

If I haven’t already made it clear, I am huge fan of the pilot for Twin Peaks. Say what you will about where the series eventually went, the pilot was and remains an absolutely brilliant dream of dark and disturbing things. Having rewatched the pilot, I am definitely looking forward to rewatching the rest of the series for this site and I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of our reviews!

Previous Entries in The TSL’s Look At Twin Peaks:

Twin Peaks: In the Beginning by Jedadiah Leland

Insomnia File No. 14: Promise (dir by Glenn Jordan)

Posted on May 24, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were awake at midnight last night and if you were watching TCM, you would have seen a 1986 film called Promise.

Promise stars James Garner as Bob Beuhler, who is one of those deceptively confident men who seems to have his entire life together. He’s made a nice little life for himself, buying and selling houses and he lives in a small town where everyone appears to know and respect him. If Promise were made today, Bob is the type of person who could probably have his own A&E reality show.

But then Bob’s mother dies and we learn of a promise that Bob made forty years ago. It turns out that Bob has a younger brother, named D.J. (James Woods). D.J. suffers from schizophrenia and he’s spent all of his life living with his mother. It quickly becomes apparent that the main driving force behind Bob’s success has been the need to prove that he’s nothing like D.J. When he doesn’t take his medication, D.J. is unpredictable and suffers from violent mood swings. Bob loves his brother but he’s also scared of him.

However, Bob made a promise and he’s going to try to honor it.

It turns out to be even more difficult than he expected. Sometimes, D.J. is calm and sweetly shy. Other times, he becomes violent. The rest of the town starts to gossip about Bob’s “crazy” brother. After one fight, Bob discovers that D.J. has become catatonic. When Bob calls an ambulance, everyone in the neighborhood lines up on Bob’s lawn to watch as D.J. is taken away.

Even though D.J. is eventually released from the hospital and returns home, Bob still is unsure of whether or not he can properly care for his brother. When they go on a trip to a cabin that they often visited as children, Bob is surprised to see how “normal” D.J. is acting. But how long will it last?

When I looked up Promise on the imdb, I was not surprised to discover that it was originally made for television. The fact that nobody in the film ever curses was a dead giveaway and the script occasionally threatens to turn into a PSA. But, with all that in mind, Promise is still a wonderfully effective and rather heartbreaking little movie. James Woods has the more showy role and does a great job with it’s the far more low-key James Garner who keeps the film grounded. Watching a film like Promise, you see that Garner was really a great actor.

Promise is a sad film but it’s definitely one worth watching.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #76: Children of a Lesser God (dir by Randa Haines)

Posted on May 16, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, we all know that The Hurt Locker was the first best picture winner to have been directed by a woman. And we also all know that, when Kathryn Bigelow won her Oscar for that film, she was the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director.

But do you know the title of the first film to be both be directed by a woman and to be nominated for best picture? Well, you probably do now because I’m assuming that you’ve read the title of this post and you’ve seen the picture of the film’s poster above. But, let’s just pretend that you don’t so I can triumphantly say, “The 1986 film Children of a Lesser God was the first nominee for best picture to be directed by a woman!”

And the name of that director was Randa Haines. Never heard of her? You’re probably not alone in that. After making her feature debut with Children of a Lesser God, Haines only directed three more theatrical films. Instead, she’s spent most of her career in television and, if not for the nudity and the language, Children of a Lesser God could probably pass for a well-made Lifetime movie. That’s not necessarily a criticism because I happen to like well-made Lifetime movies. But still, it’s not surprising that Children of a Lesser God was the only 1986 best picture nominee not to receive a nomination for best director.

(For the record, Platoon won best picture and Oliver Stone won best director. Nominated in Haines’s place was David Lynch for Blue Velvet.)

As for the film itself, it’s a well-acted and well-made film. It’s not exactly great in the way that we ideally expect a best picture nominee to be. It’s directed a bit too much like a television movie and the film ends on a happy note that doesn’t exactly feel earned. (If any film would have benefitted from a bittersweet conclusion, it would have been Children of a Lesser God.) Still, at the same time, you can tell why the film was nominated. It deals with a social issue (in this case, the way that the deaf are marginalized by mainstream society) and it’s a romance between … well, I was going to say mature adults but actually, William Hurt was 15 years older than Marlee Matlin when they played lovers in this film, which adds a perhaps unintentional layer of ambiguity to their relationship. Children of a Lesser God was also the first film to feature a deaf performer in a lead role and, when Marlee Matlin won the Oscar for Best Actress, she became both the youngest and, to date, the only deaf actress to win.

Ultimately, Children of a Lesser God is more interesting from a historical point of view than a cinematic one. But the value of history should never be underestimated! It’s a worthy-enough film and Matlin’s angry performance holds up well. (As for William Hurt, how you respond to his performance will depend largely on how much tolerance you have for his voice. Whenever Matlin communicates through sign language, Hurt repeats aloud whatever it is that she’s said. As a result, the film is basically 2 hours straight of William Hurt talking and, on occasion, it’s a bit too theatrical and distracting. If the film were made today, the filmmakers would probably just use subtitles.) Finally, and perhaps most importantly, even if it didn’t lead to bigger things for Randa Haines, Children of a Lesser God did open the door for others to follow.

Lisa Watches an Oscar Nominee: The Hustler (dir by Robert Rossen)

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For my final Oscar-nominated film of the night, I watched the 1961 film The Hustler.

Filmed in harsh black-and-white and featuring characters who live on the fringes of conventional society, The Hustler is one of those films that’s so unremittingly bleak that it would probably be so depressing as to be unwatchable if not for the talented cast. Paul Newman plays “Fast Eddie” Felson, a pool hustler who is talented but cocky, a guy who has the talent of a winner and the self-centered, self-pitying personality of a loser. When we first meet Eddie, he and his manager, Charlie (Myron McCormick) have traveled all the way from Oakland to New York, all so Eddie can challenge and hopefully beat the legendary pool player Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason). Eddie does get his chance to challenge Minnesota (or perhaps I should call him Mr. Fats?) and comes close to winning. However, in the end, Eddie is too arrogant and impulsive and he ends up losing to Mr. Fats.

Defeated and humiliated, Eddie is hiding his meager possessions in a storage locker at the local bus station when he first meets Sarah Packard (Piper Laurie). Sarah is an alcoholic and an aspiring writer. She claims to be a part-time student but we never actually see her in class. She walks with a pronounced limp and she has a habit of declaring the world to be “perverted, twisted, and crippled.” Soon, she and Eddie are living together, two lost souls who support and destroy each other at the same time. When Sarah attempts to write a short story about Eddie, Eddie responds by destroying the page and ordering her to never write about him again. Charlie views Sarah as a destructive influence and decides that he doesn’t want to have anything else to do with Eddie.

However, Eddie soon finds a new manager. Bert Gordon (a demonic George C. Scott) is a gambler who says that if Eddie sticks with him, Eddie will not only get rich but he’ll defeat Minnesota Fats as well. At first, Eddie wants nothing to do with Bert but, when his own attempts at hustling lead to him getting his thumbs broken, Eddie has a change of heart. Under Bert’s guidance, Eddie find success but he does so at the expense of what little decency that he had to begin with…

Eddie is an interesting character, one who most viewers will probably have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, he’s a jerk. He’s an arrogant, cocky jerk who thinks that he’s the best and who either uses or allows himself to be used by almost everyone that he meets. Though he definitely ends up being exploited by Bert, Eddie knew what he was getting into when he made his deal with the devil. Though he loves Sarah and she loves him, Eddie still treats her poorly. There are just so many reasons to dislike Eddie Felson.

Except, of course, Eddie Felson is played by Paul Newman.

Seriously, it is possible to dislike a character played by Paul Newman? As an actor, Newman was so charismatic and projected an innate goodness that came through even when he was playing a character who didn’t always do nice things. As written, the character of Eddie spends the majority of the movie acting like a louse. But, as played by Newman, Eddie becomes a wounded anti-hero, the bad boy that every girl dreams of somehow redeeming.

Ultimately, there are many reasons to see The Hustler. Gleason and Laurie both give good performances. George C. Scott, meanwhile, is like a force of nature. Just listen to him as he shouts, “You owe me money!” Director Robert Rossen finds an odd beauty in some of the sleaziest parts of New York City. But, in the end, the main reason to see The Hustler is for Paul Newman’s amazing performance in the title role. It’s a great performance that elevates the entire film.

I have to admit that I don’t know much about pool. During my first college semester, I lived in a dorm that had a pool table in the front lobby. There was always a large group of people gathered around that table, playing pool and generally looking like a bunch of hipster douchebags. Sitting in the lobby meant having to listen to a constant soundtrack of balls clacking against each other, followed by people saying, “Such-and-such in the corner pocket” or whatever the Hell it is people say when they’re playing pool. (To be honest, though I could hear the voices, I rarely listened to what they were actually saying.) I don’t know if the people playing pool in the lobby were any good. But, after seeing The Hustler, I can say that Eddie Felson would have beaten all of them.

Back to School #52: The Faculty (dir by Robert Rodriguez)

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Have you ever wanted to see Jon Stewart get stabbed in the eye with a hypodermic needle?

If you answered yes, then 1998’s The Faculty might be the film for you!

The Faculty takes a look at what happens when a new alien species happens to turn up outside of a painfully normal high school in Ohio. By painfully normal, I mean that Herrington High School is just as messed up as you would expect a suburban high school to be. The teachers are all underpaid and resentful of their principal (Bebe Neuwrith). Prof. Furlong (Jon Stewart) is the overqualified science teacher who will perhaps be a little too excited about the chance to examine a new alien species. Coach Willis (Robert Patrick) is the emotionally shut off coach of the school’s losing football team. Mrs. Olson (Piper Laurie) is the drama teacher who struggles to promote creativity in a school that’s more interested in blind conformity. Miss Burke (Famke Janssen) is the teacher who cares too much. And, finally, there’s Nurse Harper (Salma Hayek), who looks a lot like Salma Hayek.

And, as typical as the teachers may be, the students are even more so. We get to know a few and they all neatly fit into the expected stereotypes. Casey (Elijah Wood) is the nerdy outcast who is regularly picked on by … well, by everyone. Deliliah (Jordana Brewster) is the status-obsessed head cheerleader who has just broken up with her boyfriend, Stan (Shawn Hatosy), because he quit the football team. Zeke (Josh Hartnett) is the school rebel, the kid who is repeating his senior year and who sells synthetic drugs out of the trunk of his car. Stokes (Clea DuVall) is an intentional outcast who pretends to be a lesbian and has a crush on Stan. And finally, there’s Marybeth (Laura Harris), a new transfer student who speaks with a Southern accent.

These students would seem to have nothing in common but they’re going to have to work together because the entire faculty of Herrington High has been taken over by aliens! Fortunately, the aliens are vulnerable to Zeke’s drugs, which is something that is learned after Jon Stewart takes a hypodermic to the eye…

When one looks over the top Texas filmmakers (director like Terrence Malick, Richard Linklater, Mike Judge, and David Gorden Green), Robert Rodriguez often comes across as being both the most likable and the least interesting. Like his frequent collaborator Quentin Tarantino, Rodriguez fills his movies with references and homages to other films but, unlike Tarantino, there rarely seems to be much going on behind all of those references. However, Rodriguez’s referential style works well in The Faculty because, along with acting as an homage to both Invasion of the Body Snatchers and John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Faculty also manages to tap into a universal truth.

Teachers are weird!

Or, at least, they seem weird when you’re a student. Now that I’m out of high school, I can look back and see that my teachers were actually pretty normal. They were people who did their jobs and, as much as I like to think that I was everyone’s all-time favorite, I’m sure that there have been other brilliant, asthmatic, redheaded, aspiring ballerinas who have sat in their class. My teachers spent a lot of time talking about things that I may not have been interested in but that wasn’t because they were obsessed with talking to me about algebra or chemistry or anything like that. They were just doing their job, just like everyone else does.

But, seriously, when you’re a student, it’s easy to believe that your teachers have been possessed by an alien life form.

Probably the best thing about The Faculty is the fact that the aliens cause the teachers to act in ways that are the exact opposite of their usual personalities. For most of the teachers, this means that they turn into homicidal lunatics. But, in the case of Coach Willis, this actually leads to him not only becoming a happy, well-adjusted human being but it also turns him into a good coach. Suddenly, Willis is getting emotional about the games, his team loves him, and he even gets a win!

Go Coach Willis!

As for the film itself, it’s not bad at all.

Lisa’s rating: 7 out of 10.

Halloween Horrors 2013 : “Carrie” (1976)

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Over at my “main” site — http://trashfilmguru.wordpress.com , for those who don’t know, don’t care, either, or both — I’ve been doing what every other goddamn movie blog in the universe does in the month of October: namely, review a bunch of random horror flicks. But come on — you didn’t think I was just gonna sit back and let Lisa Marie, Arleigh, Leonard Wilson, and everybody else have all the fun here on TTSL, did you?

Nah. I just had to muscle in and opine on a few macabre movie delights on these digital “pages” before the month was out, as well. And I might as well start with the one everybody’s talking about right now, Carrie, the 1976 classic directed, in his inimitable style, by Brain DePalma, based on the runaway best-seller by Stephen King, and starring Sissy Spacek as quite likely the most hapless horror heroine in history.

This film is significant for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that it was the first King “property” to be adapted for the big screen, thus announcing the arrival of a major new player on the scene who would go on, of course, to have a veritable industry of celluloid “translations” of his work sprout up over the ensuing decades, some of which were clearly — oh, wait, people these days are talking about a different Carrie altogether? One that just came out last week?

Well, I saw that one, too, but fuck it — I feel like reviewing this one first.

Let’s backtrack to that “horror’s most hapless heroine” claim for a minute, shall we? It might sound like a bold claim, but I swear it’s true — think about it for a minute : poor Carrie White starts the movie by having her first period in the shower at school, she thinks she’s dying because her religious whack-job of a mom is too chickenshit to tell her about menstruation, she gets teased mercilessly by all the girls who witness her uncomfortable (to say the least) entry into womanhood, she has no friends to speak of, she’s stuck with a bunch of telekinetic powers that she doesn’t understand or know how to effectively control, she’s the butt of every cruel joke her classmates play, she has to listen to her idiot mother blather nonsense 24/7, she gets invited to the prom as by the most popular kid in school strictly as an act of misguided charity, and then, just when she’s granted one moment of respite from the nonstop parade of tragedy that comprises her existence when she’s crowned world’s most unlikely prom queen, she gets a bucket full of pig blood dumped all over her, freaks out and kills everybody with her “mind powers,” and goes home from the best/worst night of her life to find that mommie dearest has decided to kill her in Jesus’ name.

Talk about a gal who just can’t catch a break.

Sure, it all seems a bit over the top — okay, it all is a bit over the top — but DePalma pulls out all the stops to draw you into this sordid little world of revival tent-reject parents (Piper Laurie), evil high school bitches (Nancy Allen), pussy-whipped wannabe-tough guys (John Travolta), well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual teachers (Betty Buckley), semi-guilt-ridden classmates (Amy Irving), jocks with out of control white-guy ‘fros (William Katt), and grounds the whole heady mixture in a turn-for-the-ages performance by Spacek that really makes you feel for the poor kid even — maybe especially — when she finally snaps. His always-stylish-and-inventive use of sound, split screen, and slow-burn tension keep you pretty well fixated on the proceedings throughout, and all in all you’ve just gotta say this still holds up as a pretty impressive cinematic achievement.

Of course, King hit on a fairly inventive little gimmick from the outset here — plenty of horror stories, fairy tales, fables, and probably even nursery rhymes are little more than thinly-disguised metaphors for the onset of puberty and the scary transition from childhood into the ‘adult” world, but here he just dispensed with the pretense and doubled-down by ripping the mask off and piling the real, actual, non-metaphorical point on top of the , as we say in modern parlance, “genre trappings,” and as a result ended up penning a scary story for the ages.

Classic visuals — you know, like the one reproduced directly above — hammer the point home in memorable fashion, to be sure, and what Carrie lacks in subtlety it definitely makes up for in sheer, shock-ya-senseless power. Audiences went wild for this flick back in ’76, and while that might not be saying much because they also went apeshit for every cheesy “patriotic” bicentennial gimmick, knick-knack, gee-gaw, and useless item of “home decor” that came out that year, in this case they were absolutely right — this is a nifty little barnburner of a movie that has aged as well as any wine you care to mention.

Carrie is aviailable on DVD and Blu-Ray from MGM, and it’s also currently playing on Netflix’s instant streaming queue, where it can be found under no less than three category headers — “horror,” “Halloween favorites,” and “cult movies.” So go check it out already — or check it out again already, as the case may be — and we’ll talk about that other movie with the same title next time around.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Hesher (dir. by Spencer Susser)

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’ve been told that guys don’t seem to appreciate being called “adorable” by girls. They consider it a back-handed compliment and seriously, how insecure can you be? Okay, I understand that most guys want to us to think that they’re dangerous and I’ll admit right now that all that stuff you’ve heard about girls liking bad boys — well, it’s true. But adorable is no longer just a back-handed compliment. Why? Because Joseph Gordon-Levitt has made adorable sexy.

I first really noticed Joseph Gordon-Levitt when I saw him as the lead in 2007’s overlooked crime thriller The Lookout but he truly won my heart when I first saw him dancing to You Make My Dreams in (500) Days of Summer. And then came Inception. Some people will tell you that film was about Leonardo DiCaprio entering other people’s dreams to find himself. Nope, sorry, not true. As far as I’m concerned, Inception was a movie about Joseph Gordon-Levitt getting all dressed up and floating through the halls of that dream hotel and beating up every single person who tried to get in his way. What did all three of these roles have in common? Nothing except for the utterly adorable hotness of Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

It was this adorable hotness that led me to see Gordon-Levitt’s latest film, Hesher. Despite the fact that the film is massively (perhaps fatally) flawed, this is also the film that proves that, as an actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt can be something more than just an adorable fantasy boyfriend.

Directed by Spencer Sussman and co-written by Animal Kingdom director David Michod, Hesher opens with 12 year-old T.J. (Devin Brochu) struggling to come to terms with the tragic death of his mother and his family’s subsequent collapse. T.J. and his father (a bear-like Rainn Wilson) have moved in with their grandmother (a perfectly poignant performance from Piper Laurie) who is showing the beginning signs of senility. T.J. spends his days obsessing on the remains of the family car (which was totaled in the accident that killed his mother), trying to avoid local bullies, and dealing with a hopeless crush that he’s developed on a cashier (Natalie Portman) at the local grocery store.

When T.J. first meets Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Hesher is squatting in an abandoned construction site. T.J. accidentally leads a security guard to Hesher’s temporary home. Hesher responds by lighting a molotov cocktail and blowing the place up while T.J. runs away. Suddenly, T.J. starts to see Hesher wandering around the hallways of his school. Walking home from school, T.J. sees Hesher following behind him in what can only be described as a “rape van.” And then, just as suddenly, Hesher has moved in to T.J.;s house and made himself into a part of the family. Hesher quickly becomes a mentor of sorts to T.J. though his lessons primarily consist of doing things like blowing up a bully’s car and then running off, leaving T.J. to deal with the consequences.

Hesher is hardly a role that you’d expect to find Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing. With long, unwashed hair and an extended middle finger tattooed across his back, Hesher isn’t so much an outsider as he’s just a sociopath, the type of guy who you try not to make eye contact out of fear that he’ll respond by shooting you first. How scary a guy is Hesher? He’s so scary that just saying his name causes the film’s soundtrack to explode with a burst of heavy metal. That’s how scary he is. The Joseph Gordon-Levitt that we all know and love (or at least the one that I know and love) is pretty much impossible to find and yet, Gordon-Levitt still gives a great performance here. Without ignoring any of Hesher’s rough edges or trying to reveal any sort of inner decency, both the film and Gordon-Levitt make Hesher into a frustratingly attractive character. This is probably the best performance of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s career so far.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn’t really live up to Gordon-Levitt’s performance. It starts out well and, for quite some time, we’re encouraged to believe that Hesher might just be a product of T.J.’s imagination, a projection of his own anger and depression. That’s an interesting idea and would have made for a far more effective film. Unfortunately, Hesher then suddenly moves in wit T.J. and suddenly, he’s interacting with Wilson and befriending Piper Laurie and, worst of all, he starts to reveal a little bit about his past. In other words, he goes from being a symbol of unrestrained ID to just being another white trash rapist. Once the film makes it clear that Hesher is an actual character then suddenly, you realize that the filmmakers haven’t given you any credible reason why both Wilson and Laurie (not to mention the cops who start to regularly drop by the house as Hesher blows stuff up around the neighborhood) would so easily accept the idea of living with him. Finally, the movie concludes with a sequence at a funeral that just feels so simultaneously wrong, heavy-handed, and maudlin that, at first, I was convinced that it had to be some sort of satirical comment on the clichéd nature of the scene. But no, the rest of the film makes clear that we’re supposed to take this sequence seriously. It’s such a wrong-headed move that it cheapens everything that came before it. The movie ends with a lot of loud music and the credits are decorated with obscene graffiti but it doesn’t make any difference. The film has already revealed that, at heart, it’s hardly rebellious enough to be worthy of a character like Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Hesher.

In the end, Hesher fails as a movie but its partially redeemed for revealing that there’s more to Joseph Gordon-Levitt than just adorable cuteness.