The Owls are Not What They Seem: Film #156 & #157 – Twin Peaks (1990) & Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)

Yes, Twin Peaks counts. Even if I *didn’t* count TV movies (including pilots), which I do, I watched the European version, which has an ending and everything. (That’s right, the whole thing wrapped up in under two hours.)

Anyway, the greatness of the original Twin Peaks pilot film still proves true after all these years. The quirky characters and strange sense of humor never fail to entertain me. I particularly enjoyed watching the relationship between Dale Cooper and Harry Truman grow. With the exception of Bobby, James and Donna, not much of the supporting cast gets much chance to shine, but they all make ample use of their minimal airtime. Watching it again after all these years (I recently got the Gold DVD set), I realised how much I missed them all. The story is set up well, but in the European cut, it ends far too abruptly and is distinclty unsatisfying. It still works, but this was meant as a show launcher and it just can’t hold up as a standalone work.

Fire Walk with Me is a bit controversial because, rather than pick up the strands of the cliffhanger ending of the show, it instead showed the events leading up to the death of Laura Palmer. Much of the humor that carried the series (as well as most of the supporting cast) is missing here. The opening sequence with Chris Isaak and Kiefer Sutherland is pretty much a hoot, though. Isaak’s Special Agent Chester Desmond couldn’t be more different than Dale Cooper, yet they clearly work in the same league. And I was always tickled to see the “Sam” (Sutherland) that Dale warns Diane not to go to.

As a separate musing on the nature of Laura Palmer’s descent into darkness, Fire works. As an ending chapter to one of television’s most enigmatic series, it is sorely lacking. The music’s nice, though.

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