“LET’S ROCK!” (or “!KCOR S’TEL”)

By Raymond Benson

“Diane, I’m holding in my hand a box of chocolate bunnies.”

If you haven’t heard of Twin Peaks by now, well, you must have been trapped in the Red Room for the last 35 years. In tribute to the recent passing of filmmaker and artiste David Lynch, we are taking a look at the brand new release of one of the cornerstones of Lynch’s legacy: Twin Peaks.

Twin Peaks Z – A was a limited edition Blu-ray box set originally released in 2019 that contained everything available in the Twin Peaks franchise. It had 21 disks and an elaborate cube-shaped packaging with little “goodies” enclosed. That edition is now out of print, rare, and sells for big bucks in the second hand market.

Thankfully, CBS/Paramount made the decision to re-release the box set, only without the lavish packaging, which was cute and clever but ultimately a gimmick. What really counts are the disks, and now there are 22 disks: a new one has been added with 4K UHD presentations of the Pilot and Season Three’s Episode 8, the latter being one of Lynch’s most extraordinary creations.

At an affordable price, now you can own everything there is to Twin Peaks in one purchase.

Home Video releases of Twin Peaks over the years have usually been problematic. In the 1990s, the VHS releases were often flawed because the Pilot episode was owned by a different company and couldn’t be included in the packages with the regular Season One (and later Season Two) episodes. Instead, available separately, was the “International Pilot,” which was the original 90-minute pilot (two hours when commercials were inserted) but with a tacked on fifteen-minute non-canonical “ending” that included footage from what would be Season One, Episode Three (or Episode Two, if you’re not counting the Pilot as Episode One… and that’s another issue*). This International Pilot was released in some cinemas overseas in 1989-1990 as a stand-alone movie prior to the television broadcast of the series in the States.

(* Officially, the Pilot is just “the Pilot” and the first hour-episode is Episode 1, but really in terms of television, the Pilot would be Episode 1, the next Episode 2, and so on. Confusing, just like some of Twin Peaks!)

When DVDs came about, we finally got the real TV Pilot and the International Pilot released in a box set (“Definitive Gold Edition”) in 2007 with all of Seasons One and Two. It wasn’t until the Blu-ray release of 2014 (“The Complete Mystery”) that we got all of that plus the 1992 feature film prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, plus the legendary The Missing Pieces, which was 90-minutes of deleted footage from FWWM that Lynch himself edited into a separate feature film!

After the 2017 “Season Three” appeared on Showtime (also known as Twin Peaks: The Return and Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series) and released in its own Blu-ray box set… we got a box set with just the Pilot and Seasons One through Three (without Fire Walk With Me). Then, in 2019 came Twin Peaks Z – A, which had everything, as mentioned above. (And to muddy the waters even more, The Criterion Collection issued a Blu-ray of Fire Walk With Me and The Missing Pieces by themselves!)

Thus, the new repackaging of this wonderful set includes: The Pilot, International Pilot, Season One, Season Two, Fire Walk With Me, The Missing Pieces, Season Three, and hours and hours of Supplements. Easily over 50 hours’ worth of material.

Twin Peaks, created by Lynch and Mark Frost, began as a quirky murder mystery set in a small northwestern town near Seattle and close to the Canadian border. Popular high school cheerleader Laura Palmer’s body is found (“wrapped in plastic”) on a riverbank. Because of the murder’s similarities to a previous case, the FBI is called in. Enter Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan, in the role he was born to play). Cooper, with the aid of Twin Peaks Sheriff Harry Truman (Michael Ontkean), investigates the case and uncovers a world and other-world of mysteries upon mysteries, eccentric characters, and Lynchian surrealism that was startling content on American network television in 1990-1991. After Laura’s murder is solved, the series continued to explore the supernatural and alternate universes, establishing a Twin Peaks lore that spawned fan sites, conventions, books, and podcasts.

Other recurring roles were played by the likes of (in no particular order) Lara Flynn Boyle, Dana Ashbrook, James Marshall, Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Grace Zabriskie, Richard Beymer, Piper Laurie, Joan Chen, Jack Nance, Warren Frost, Madchen Amick, Peggy Lipton, Everett McGill, Eric Da Re, Kimmy Robertson, Michael Horse, Harry Goaz, Russ Tamblyn, Kenneth Welsh, David Patrick Kelly, Catherine Coulson, Heather Graham, Ian Buchanan, Michael Parks, Michael Anderson, Al Strobel, Carel Struycken, David Duchovny, Miguel Ferrer, David Lynch himself, and many others.

Season One was a huge hit and became a cultural phenomenon. Season Two began well but the network (ABC) forced Lynch and Frost to solve Laura Palmer’s murder shortly into the season (they had wanted to never solve it). After the revelation of the killer, the audience dwindled. ABC moved the show to Saturday, the one night young audiences wouldn’t watch it. The Gulf War pre-empted many episodes, and it became a challenge to keep up with the season. Lynch went off to do other projects and Season Two faltered in its subplots (however, there was still quite a bit of excellent material, especially with Cooper’s exploration of the Black Lodge/White Lodge puzzle). The season ended with a cliffhanger of Cooper trapped in the other-dimension’s Red Room, while his evil doppelganger escaped to roam free on earth. Then… boom. Canceled.

Lynch then made a prequel feature film with several of the television cast focusing on the week leading up to Laura’s murder; hence Laura (Sheryl Lee) is the protagonist. New cast members included Chris Isaak, Kiefer Sutherland, Harry Dean Stanton, and David Bowie (!). The studio, unfortunately, forced him to cut at least 90-minutes from his lengthy picture and thus it lost many of the television show’s quirky characters and humor. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, at the time, was a box office disaster and critically slammed. One issue was that the film never resolved the cliffhanger of Season Two. That was pretty much the nail in the coffin for Twin Peaks.

However, over the years, re-evaluation of Fire Walk With Me has occurred. It is now considered one of Lynch’s more personal and important works. With the release in 2014 of The Missing Pieces, which brought more context to the movie, interest in Twin Peaks rekindled. Lynch and Frost decided to have another go and do Season Three, which aired in 2017. New cast members to Season Three include Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Robert Forster, Jim Belushi, Matthew Lillard, Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and bunches more. The story takes place 25 years after the end of Season Two, with Cooper attempting to get out of the Red Room, and his doppelganger wreaking havoc and mayhem on Earth. Locations expand beyond the town of Twin Peaks as far as New York City, Las Vegas, and South Dakota. The story then becomes something of a retelling of the Orpheus myth with Cooper finding a way to change the past—but with tragic results.

Did it resolve all the mysteries? Did it end satisfactorily? Hell, no! It’s Lynch! Season Three gave us even more mysteries to ponder and debate what it all means. But that’s what makes Twin Peaks so compelling and fun.

The video and audio quality of the Blu-ray disks are all beautiful. Superb. Twin Peaks never looked and sounded so good.

Supplements include everything that has been presented before in previous box sets, which includes hours of behind the scenes material of Lynch working on Season Three; a lengthy conversation between MacLachlan, Lee, and author/journalist Kristine McKenna, who co-wrote with Lynch his autobiography, Room to Dream; a conversation with Kimmy Robertson and Harry Goaz; and the especially welcome stand-alone full-length Roadhouse performances of all the musical artists that appeared in Season Three.

Twin Peaks was a mind-blowing, controversial, groundbreaking entertainment phenomenon that went from television to cinema and back to television… and while many talented artists, writers, producers, and directors all contributed to the television series (and feature film)—especially Mark Frost—this franchise will always and forever be associated with the late, great David Lynch. Cinema Retro can’t recommend this box set highly enough.

(At the moment it appears as if Amazon is sold out and can be obtained only by third party dealers or Barnes and Noble. We expect Amazon to restock, as it is a brand new release.)

Click here to see buying options available on Amazon.