Top 5 Most Unsettling Moments from the Twin Peaks Universe

Spoiler alert for the entire Twin Peaks Universe up until episode 8 of the 3rd season.

1. Season 2 Episode 7: "Lonely Souls": Maddy's Death Scene

This happens to be the episode that was my introduction to Twin Peaks. I came upon this episode airing on Bravo during the summer of 2000. I had only heard about Twin Peaks from my parents after asking them about a parody scene from an episode of The Simpsons titled "Lisa's Sax" which has a segment about what life was like in 1990. It showed Homer drinking Crystal Pepsi and watching Twin Peaks, in which The Giant is dancing with a white horse under a stoplight hanging from a tree (sounds about right). I asked my parents what that was, and what they described to me gave me chills. It wasn't until a year or two later that I actually got to see it for myself.

The Norwegians bouncing balls in the lobby of the Great Northern while Phillip Gerard has a total meltdown is what kept me from changing the channel. I had no clue what was going on, but it was captivating. What I saw towards the end of the episode was truly chilling, and to this day fills my body with such an emotion that is hard to describe. It makes me want to cry but not out of sadness.

Below is the video clip of the scene. The episode has the white horse I was promised on The Simpsons, appearing to Sarah Palmer before she passes out. It also has The Giant, creepily repeating to Agent Cooper, "It is happening again." referring to Maddy being killed by Bob. In retrospect it's a crazy episode to begin Twin Peaks because it reveals who Laura's killing is. I wouldn't say it ruined it for me, though.

The sound editing is beyond compare for this episode. There's the sound of the needle at the end of the spinning record, and the way the screams of Maddy are slowed down and deepened to this roar that mimics Bob's deep laugh. The slow motion also creates dread like in a dream when you are running from someone and you feel like you can barely move. It was the most horrifying thing I had seen on TV. It's still up there on my list to this day.

2. Season 2 Episode 22 : "Beyond Life and Death" : The Sycamore Trees

The final two episodes of Twin Peaks were directed by David Lynch, as apposed to many of the previous episodes of season two. You can really tell. From the bank vault scene that creeps along in real time as the elderly banker shuffles, to Sarah Palmer giving a message to Agent Briggs in her demonic possessed voice, Lynch took over for a last hurrah.

The scene that really kept me from sleeping, was Agent Cooper's introduction to the Black Lodge (or Waiting Room depending on your view). Cooper has entered the red room from his dream. Then the room dims and the dreadful strobe light comes on. A singer begins to croon into an old style microphone. That singer is played by Jimmy Scott who has an unusual voice due to a condition that prevented his body to go through puberty, making his voice higher than one would expect.

At the time I saw this I was unsure of why his voice was high. I thought maybe it was actually an elderly woman dressed in a suit singing (why not?). Never the less the sound of his voice and the sorrow and foreboding in the song chilled me to the bone. Especially the line "I'll see you, and you'll see me." It's unsettling to me because it doesn't say "we'll meet" or give any other direct action of what they will do when they are together again. It leaves it ambiguous. It implies that these people will see each other and then they will both just know what's going to happen. They will just look at each other - maybe for a long and creepy amount of time, doing and saying nothing. It just makes me want to cry out of fear again.

3. Fire Walk With Me: Fat Trout Trailer Park Scene

Sometimes I feel silly with what scares me in Lynch's work. For instance, in Mulholland Drive I cannot watch the Winky's Diner scene without closing my eyes. I could go on about why that scares me to pieces, but that's for a different post all together. When I describe it to people it sounds so trivial being afraid to look at the gross homeless person behind the wall, and he/she doesn't even come around the corner fast. It's really the sound editing and the shock that something actually was there. So it shouldn't even be a shock to me in subsequent viewings since I know the outcome, but I still can't bare to see it.

Anyway, in similar fashion, in FWWM when Chester Desmond and Sam Stanley are talking with Carl Rodd, owner of the Fat Trout Trailer Park, you see the camera outside the trailer almost running toward the door. You hear that unsettling whooshing sucking sound. Then from inside the trailer you see a short, hunched over, filthy old woman with a water bottle/ice pack over her right eye. She peeks around the door frame. Chester Desmond acknowledges her, as if she's a typical person - and not a demon like I would think. Meanwhile Carl Rodd is staring at her blankly, and goes into a trance. After she leaves, backing out of the doorway and not answering Desmond's question, Carl goes on about how he's "already gone places" and doesn't want to go anywhere. No one even suggested that to him, but the presence of this woman seems to set him off. It has always upset me to see this. It's a perfect representation of the horror within the random and unknown.




A close runner-up in that segment would be when Chester Desmond returns to the trailer park to inspect the Chalfont trailer. It's crazy creepy how the lights are on in the trailer, some of the curtains are drawn so we could see someone in there if we wanted to, but no one answers the door. I kept waiting for someone to pop their head in the window when he wasn't looking. It doesn't happen but the tension is so strong. Lynch does a great job of making empty rooms sinister and charged with dread.

4. Season 3 Episode 2: "The stars turn and a time presents itself": Bill Hastings's Cell Mate

The new season has not disappointed. It may not be in the same style as the original series but I am ok with that, as I thought a lot of Twin Peaks (especially season 2) was hokey anyway. This season is Lynch full throttle, and I need him to do whatever he wants.

The first thing that truly made me go "Oh hell no" happened in episode 2 titled "The stars turn and a time presents itself." In the jail where Bill Hastings is being held after he's charged with murder, the camera pans right to view the other cell. As Bill is crying, lamenting his situation, it is brought to our attention that he is not alone. In the other cell is a man dressed in black and painted black, sitting sideways and a little tilted, his face looking up. His eyes are very wide and the white of his eyes is jarring compared to his black body. He is so still, frozen, petrified. What is he doing? He fades away - which is never fun to see. Jimmy Scott faded away at the end of his song, and The Giant faded away when he was done telling Cooper "It's happening again." So obviously it's terrible.

I'm gonna delete this image from my computer as soon as I post this.

Then we see a second later, his head fly away like a poorly rendered ghost. That shot sort of cuts the tension of seeing this gravely disturbing figure. It's one of the first scenes that reminds us this is a Lynch production so things are gonna get weird. Until then the scene that played out was more of the soap opera Lynch, filled with intentionally bad acting (just Phyllis Hastings, not Bill. Mathew Lillard was very good). Then we get that seemingly unwarranted, otherworldly visage.

5. Season 3 Episode 8: "Gotta Light": All of it, but mostly Evil Cooper's helpful woodsmen

Episode 8 blew everyone's minds. The atomic bomb scene was breathtaking. It was an obvious homage to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey between the sound track and the visuals. This moment was so monumental because it made me suspend my disbelief for a moment, and I was in awe, thinking that I bared witness to the inside of an atomic bomb blast. Of course no one can really know what that looks like, and this was just an artistic representation, but it was so well done that it sucked me in and moved me.

What really terrified me though, was the introduction to my worst nightmare from Episode 2, times eight. The man painted black, which viewers began referring to as "the woodsman" became "the woodsmen" as several of them creep out of the woods when Evil Cooper is shot by Ray. They amble about, and spread Cooper's own blood from the wound all over his face. The sounds and music are creepy. Ray has been rendered helpless and slow-mo - just like Maddy when she encounters Bob.

Then during the atomic bomb sequence we see them milling about in sped up motion (both slow motion and fast motion are scary, trust me). They're inside and outside the convenience store which seems to be in New Mexico (we see the same one later when the teens are walking in 1956 also in NM). If this is the Black Lodge I'm unsure about how it ties into what Phillip Jeffries said in FWWM, since he implies that the convenience store/Black Lodge was in Seattle, WA. I don't know the answer to this, but we are dealing with some time travel and other dimensions, so... All I know is that movements and appearance of these woodsmen is the worst thing I've seen in a while.

When the Woodsmen come down from the sky and one of them goes around town asking for "a light" and crushing heads, it's still not as scary as when they sit way too still, move too slow, or move too fast. When their movements and motions are odd, their intentions are ambiguous and therefore terrifying.

 
There's ten more episodes of season 3, so I might have to make another list later!

The Grim Sleeper : Gripping South LA for a Reign of 25 years

We can be thankful that Lonnie Franklin is in prison for murder. On May 5, 2016 a jury found the so called "Grim Sleeper" guilty of the murders of ten women over the course of 14 years. This was relevant news to me since I was captivated by the HBO documentary Tales of the Grim Sleeper nearly a year before this conviction. At the outset of the film, directed by Nick Broomfield in 2014, we are made aware that the Grim Sleeper had been captured in 2010 and was awaiting the conclusion of his trial. The evidence was damning and he had little to prove innocence in court. But for over two decades Lonnie Franklin seemingly lived without fear of being caught for coldblooded serial murder.


Lonnie didn't hide, he just lived in a world where someone like him can rule the streets.    

At the start of the film, Broomfield enters Lonnie Franklin's South Los Angeles, CA neighborhood, and is treated with hostility by his former neighbors. They are in the mindset that Lonnie is innocent, that he was of good character, and it was all simply unbelievable. Maybe he was framed. Maybe it was lazy detective work. After spending more time in this neighborhood, and interviewing women - who did not have positive interactions with Lonnie - these same friends started requesting private interviews.

Still from Tales of the Grim Sleeper with one of Lonnie Franklin's friends and Nick Broomfield.

In these interviews friends would confess that they thought Lonnie was strange. He was kinky with women, he had his vices. He took photographs of women in precarious or violent positions. Lonnie had a gun. He wore it in his front pocket and showed it to people. It was the same gun the police would later identify as the murder weapon for seven out of the ten of his victims.

All of this was revealed and heavily padded with excuses and sheepish apologies. "I'm not proud of it." they would say. Lonnie's friends were well aware of his perversions, and they relished in it at the time. They swapped dirty photos, they shrugged and laughed when they saw hand cuffs in his car, and harbored the knowledge that Lonnie had a special van for putting women in bondage. But he was just "into women."

180 photos of women were found in Lonnie's house. Of the ten bodies found, all of the victims photos were in his collection.

When Lonnie asked some of these men to clean this van - on a fairly regular basis - no one thought twice when the rug had a dark substance in it. Then they convinced themselves it was oil, but looking back on it, it came up too easy to be oil. They can't quite picture it now. It could have been blood.

Later in the film other friends resurface to tell their tales, and they become more cavalier. Some of them are former crack addicts who admit they helped destroy evidence or even found women for him (who would most likely be his murder victims). These men did it for the crack he was supplying. It didn't matter that the car was filled with bloody clothes and God knows what else, these men needed to burn it to a crisp and get paid. It didn't matter that the woman they picked up was being tortured by Lonnie right in front of them, they needed to get high.

Forget about going to the cops. In this neighborhood the distrust for the police and the police's own disdain for this community helped facilitate a man like Lonnie. This was the perfect place to be a serial murderer. Women were being killed, and the cops weren't taking the time to investigate. These were crack addicts and prostitutes, or women who might fit the profile if you glance at the color of her skin and the street sign her body was found near.

The Grim Sleeper's ten identified victims

There are many survivors who were sexually assaulted and tortured. Women who tell the tale do not often have a section of the story where they report the crime to the police. At the time they were hooking and or high, and extremely vulnerable to arrest for their own crimes. All they could do was escape from his clutches, run for safety and learn their lesson never to sleep with him again. Lonnie knew this. That's why he got away with it for so long.

Near the end of the film, some of Lonnie's friends are laughing about him as they did at the very beginning. No longer are they hushed and concerned, ruminating over how someone they knew was very likely a serial murderer. Now they are quite sure he did it, and they gleefully approach Broomfield to share their anecdotes. All of their personal evidence has been compiled and outed among themselves.

Instead of laughing about how Lonnie would always be in his front yard chatting with the neighbors - truly painting an suburban ideal - they were laughing about how much Lonnie hated crackheads. They chuckled about how it was his first wife's fault that he hated crackheads, because she was one herself. They smiled about how he would openly tell them he was "cleaning up" the neighborhood. They all knew what it meant, and they were cool with it.

Lonnie was finally captured because his son Christopher was arrested. Lonnie had been arrested many times before for various crimes, but a new policy enforced by the LAPD to collect DNA from all arrested persons was only in existence since 2004. Lonnie narrowly escaped it after being convicted of a felony in 2003.

His son's DNA was a partial match to the DNA found on all of the bodies. Christopher could only be a relative of the Grime Sleeper. Besides, he was too young to have murdered the women who were killed in the 1980s. Lonnie Franklin's DNA was a perfect match.

Lonnie was sloppy. His DNA was all over the victims. The most vulnerable members of the community were too afraid to come forward. It was clear that the police didn't take it seriously anyway. Survivors that did come forward to the police went through the rigmarole of reporting, only to be filed away despite the multitude of evidence (descriptions of his appearance, the bright orange Pinto everyone knew he drove, bullets from the gun he consistently used, rape kits with his DNA). The key word here is consistent because Lonnie barely tried to hide, but it took 25 years for him to be stopped.

It's terrifying to think of the unreported crimes that occur in neighborhoods like this all of the country. Imagine a place the cops won't touch, the victims are doubly powerless, and a person like the Grim Sleeper will meet you in the middle. 
 

Beyond Clueless: Crash Course In The Teen Movie Genre

Beyond Clueless is an excursion through the archetypes of teen films from the 90s through the early aughts, breaking it down into satisfying lumps of teen pudding. Directed by Charlie Lyne and released in 2014, Beyond Clueless uses the footage from the likes of Ten Things I Hate About You, She's All That, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and ten other Freddie Prince Jr. movies (jk). It features the comedies, horrors, dramas, and romance movies we all know and love, all under the umbrella of teen film. Dividing the experience into five chapters, or stages of development, Beyond Clueless pairs similar scenes and imagery from the selected films in order to express a collective cultural experience.

Jennifer Love Hewitt in Can't Hardly Wait (1998)

It's quite uncanny how formulated these movies appear to be, once set side by side. Of course the existence of a formula shouldn't be too much of a surprise considering the release of 2001's Not Another Teen Movie, which gets the tropes spot on. Beyond Clueless makes the comparisons so fluidly, it's scary. It's not just the themes, it's the mis en scene. It's like watching one image strobe in front of you, only to realize they were slightly different images to begin with. That's exactly the point trying to be conveyed about high school itself.

Rachel True, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, and Robin Tunny in The Craft (1996)

Fairuza Balk narrates, kicking off the film with her 1996 hit The Craft, explaining succinctly how high school cliques function. The Craft is the perfect starting example of teenage behavior, in the way that it uses the metaphor of a coven and magical powers to represent the strength of teen girl camaraderie and antagonism. Beyond Clueless breaks down the collective teen experience, while analysing how these movies - burned into our brains from youth - mirror our experiences, or convey fantasies of perfection based on desires and expectations.

A strong comparison can be made to Simon Pummell's 2003 found footage film, Bodysong. They both exclusively use unoriginal footage, and break the films up into stages of life. Both have pretty great "sex" scenes. The only difference is Beyond Clueless's narration. Bodysong doesn't feature a single word, as it is scored by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. (Side note: you might recognize one of the pieces from Bodysong in the film There Will Be Blood). I digress.
 
What really puts all of these teen films on the same level for analysis and comparison is the sound track. Created by the band Summer Camp, any trace of the pop music from the original films is washed away. No Fatboy Slim to be reminisced over, no Britney Spears - at least not her music. We get a short clip of her in Crossroads, dancing to the sounds of Summer Camp. This removes the implication of time period. While clothing can be a good indicator (and boy is this filled with some late 90s gems), music is much more telling since we can reference the exact date the song was released. Summer Camp's "21st-century alt.pop" style sounds comfortable amongst the 90s and early 2000s film clips. Their sound is more of an homage to 80s pop and 90s alternative, with a certain amount of darkness that heightens the impending doom. Summer Camp is like a cross between The Go! Team and Sleigh Bells. With lyrics that skew toward teen angst, it was a treat to hear lines from The Virgin Suicides in their lyrics (a film which also makes an appearance).

Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett in The Virgin Suicides (1999)

In the opening shots, you might see snippets of movies you loved and cherished. I saw a shot of Laura Palmer from Fire Walk With Me, and got really excited. But there is only one other clip, with Donna Hayward laying down and talking about something dreamy. Some films are only given those seconds, while others are directly referenced and dissected. Beyond Clueless is a psychological, pop-cultural, anthropological dream.