Hello Johnny, how are you today?

Twin Peaks

3.10: Laura is the one.

(SPOILERS) I’ve a theory that all it takes to tip a solid episode of Twin Peaks (in any season) into a great one are three or four slices of sublime strangeness. The rest can hum along amiably, in contrast to that electricity the Log Lady has something to say about, but it’s those scenes that define the overall shape and energy. Laura is the one has a good three or four, and maybe the funniest sustained Lynchian visual gag so far.

That comes in the form of the Mitchum brothers, or to be more precise Robert Knepper’s Rodney. He’s aided and abetted by Candie (Amy Shiels), part airhead, part fruit bat, attempting to swat a fly while Rodney examines casino surveillance logs. And like most of the director’s comic gold, this goes on and on and on, and you absolutely know it will end with Rodney getting clobbered. I wasn’t expecting it to be with the TV remote, though.

I’m not certain Candie’s mental state, sustained though it is, is going to be about anything other than her being in Lynch world, but the Mitchum boys gradually getting more and more frustrated with her while trying not lose it (“If you fire her, she’s got no place to go” asserts Bradley of one of his trio of, ahem, employees, as she spends five minutes on the casino floor talking about nothing to Anthony Sinclair instead of bringing him to see them).

Bradley Mitchum: That’s our Mr Jackpot, Rodney. Turns out our Mr Jones is actually Mr Jones.

I like that we’re getting to see their thick-as-thieves thinking too; “Brad, remind me to call off that hit on Ike” suggests Rodney as they watch news of the Spike’s apprehension. On first sight, this duo were simply intimidating, but now, with the Candie-inspired weirdness percolating their milieu, I want more of their surprisingly warped world. Their place in the scheme of things, meanwhile, is taking perfectly logical shape, as they’re (seemingly – Bradley does comment of Anthony “I could throw a car farther than I trust that rat fuck”) duped into believing Dougie ensured they didn’t get a $30m insurance pay out and has a vendetta against them, when really it’s Anthony in cahoots with rival casino guy Warrick (in turn in with Evil Coop).

Other weirdness, of a decidedly more psychotic kind, revolves around the Horne family. Richard, now established as most definitely Audrey’s daughter, is on a vituperative roll, bashing poor Miriam’s head in during an off camera one-shot on her trailer (last we saw, she was still breathing, though), and breaking into granny’s house and stealing her money.

It’s another of those queasily hilarious scenes, because of what’s going on at the edges. Johnny, tied to a chair with oven gloves on his hands and sporting a hard hat, so he can’t hurt himself any more, while a headless teddy on the table repeatedly queries “Hello Johnny, how are you today?” It’s a mesmerising scene. That said, at about the point where Richard’s screaming “Cunt!” at his gran, I was admittedly given pause to wonder if the restrictions of mainstream TV don’t promote a creativity all their own, and Lynch’s licence to do anything may not always be the best of all possible worlds. Which may just be the Mary Whitehouse in me.

Completing the Horne-swoggling this episode, we discover Ben is no longer with Sylvia and one good phone call (or bad phone call) persuades him an affair with Beverly may actually be a good idea. And Jerry’s still in the woods, still bereft of a phone signal.

Richard is definitely stacking up a whole world of pain for himself, as is snot-nosed spousal abuser Steven Burnett, but the character closest to being meted any kind of justice is nominally on the other side of the law. We knew Chad was a bad ’un, and now we know he’s an even worse ‘un, in cahoots with Richard Horne and believing he can hoodwink Lucy on the basis that she’s a bubble brain. So it’s pleasing to see she has duly noted Chad lifting Miriam’s grassing letter (the postie’s no slouch, either).

Nor can you can’t pull the wool over Albert and Gordon Cole’s eyes, since they have Diane’s number even if they don’t know who has hers (as for a photo of Evil Coop at the scene of the penthouse murders just happening to show up now – I still think it’s a bit too neat if he’s calling the shots there too, as I was hoping for some other individual or element to be involved). And isn’t it lovely to see romance blossoming between Albert and Constance?

Janey-E: Dougie, do you find me attractive?

Which is also the case, in a significantly more one-sided sense, with Janey-E and Dougie-Coop. Carnality abounds at any rate, with Janey-E turning Coop into the rumpo kid. It’s another funny scene as, having marvelled over her husband’s newly taut body, and been completely ignored in favour of chocolate cake, she rides Coop, his arms flailing like a puppet on a string and looking duly cheery afterwards. Can you see Coop suddenly getting his marbles back at this point? Me neither. As for Janey-E becoming smitten with a mentally-challenged, non-responsive husband. Well, maybe she’s starting on the crazy pills. Or just very, very shallow.

Dr Jacobi: They’re too busy fucking! Fucking us at the grocery store! Fucking us at the bank! At the gas pump!

Other vignettes: another marvellously splenetic rant from Jacobi, this time about big pharma (as Nadine looks on from the premises of cutely-named Run Silent, Run Drapes), Harry Dean Stanton playing the guitar, Gordon’s vision of a giant Laura at the door, reminding me of nothing so much as The Goodies’ Kitten Kong (and his drawing of a, well, a reindeer anteater – a reineater? – being attacked by an elastic arm), and one of the Log Lady’s ever-cryptic calls to Hawk, warning of the glow that is dying and how the Truman brothers are among the good ones, and how he should “Watch and listen to the dream of time and space. It all comes out now, flowing like a river. Hawk, Laura is the one”. I was struck that Gordon is effectively filling in for the kind of experience absent-in-mind Coop ought to be having; is this the first example of the season improvising to cover for that state of affairs?

And Moby, at the Bang Bang Club, supporting Rebekah Del Rio in a song that sounds like it would have fitted right in 25 years ago, appropriate as the Mobe-ster lifted the Laura Palmer’s Theme for his first big hit (Go). Of the two pop artists getting billing in fantasy shows this week (the other being Ed Sheerhan dressed as a soldier), this is by far the more elegant and unassuming one. From the man who used to play nob-touch, no less.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

The X-Files 8.7: Via Negativa I wasn’t as down on the last couple of seasons of The X-Files as most seemed to be. For me, the mythology arc walked off a cliff somewhere around the first movie, with only the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile after that. So the fact that the show was tripping over itself with super soldiers and Mulder’s abduction/his and Scully’s baby (although we all now know it wasn’t, sheesh ), anything to stretch itself beyond breaking point in the vain hope viewers would carry on dangling, didn’t really make much odds. Of course, it finally snapped with the wretched main arc when the show returned, although the writing was truly on the wall with Season 9 finale The Truth . For the most part, though, I found 8 and 9 more watchable than, say 5 or 7. They came up with their fair share of engaging standalones, one of which I remembered to be Via Negativa .

Schnell, you stinkers! Come on, raus!

Private’s Progress (1956) (SPOILERS) Truth be told, there’s good reason sequel I’m Alright Jack reaps the raves – it is, after all, razor sharp and entirely focussed in its satire – but Private’s Progress is no slouch either. In some respects, it makes for an easy bedfellow with such wartime larks as Norman Wisdom’s The Square Peg (one of the slapstick funny man’s better vehicles). But it’s also, typically of the Boulting Brothers’ unsentimental disposition, utterly remorseless in rebuffing any notions of romantic wartime heroism, nobility and fighting the good fight. Everyone in the British Army is entirely cynical, or terrified, or an idiot.

Isn’t it true, it’s easier to be a holy man on the top of a mountain?

The Razor’s Edge (1984) (SPOILERS) I’d hadn’t so much a hankering as an idle interest in finally getting round to seeing Bill Murray’s passion project. Partly because it seemed like such an odd fit. And partly because passion isn’t something you tend to associate with any Murray movie project, involving as it usually does laidback deadpan. Murray, at nigh-on peak fame – only cemented by the movie he agreed to make to make this movie – embarks on a serious-acting-chops dramatic project, an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s story of one man’s journey of spiritual self-discovery. It should at least be interesting, shouldn’t it? A real curio? Alas, not. The Razor’s Edge is desperately turgid.

It’s not as if she were a… maniac, a raving thing.

Psycho (1960) (SPOILERS) One of cinema’s most feted and most studied texts, and for good reason. Even if the worthier and more literate psycho movie of that year is Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom . One effectively ended a prolific director’s career and the other made its maker more in demand than ever, even if he too would discover he had peaked with his populist fear flick. Pretty much all the criticism and praise of Psycho is entirely valid. It remains a marvellously effective low-budget shocker, one peppered with superb performances and masterful staging. It’s also fairly rudimentary in tone, character and psychology. But those negative elements remain irrelevant to its overall power.

You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) (SPOILERS) Hitherto, I was most familiar with Jeremiah Johnson in the form of a popular animated gif of beardy Robert Redford smiling and nodding in slow zoom close up (a moment that is every bit as cheesy in the film as it is in the gif). For whatever reason, I hadn’t mustered the enthusiasm to check out the 1970s’ The Revenant until now (well, beard-wise, at any rate). It’s easy to distinguish the different personalities at work in the movie. The John Milius one – the (mythic) man against the mythic landscape; the likeably accentuated, semi-poetic dialogue – versus the more naturalistic approach favoured by director Sydney Pollack and star Redford. The fusion of the two makes for a very watchable, if undeniably languorous picture. It was evidently an influence on Dances with Wolves in some respects, although that Best Picture Oscar winner is at greater pains to summon a more sensitive portrayal of Native Americans (and thus, perversely, at times a more patr

My Doggett would have called that crazy.

The X-Files 9.4: 4-D I get the impression no one much liked Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), but I felt, for all the sub-Counsellor Troi, empath twiddling that dogged her characterisation, she was a mostly positive addition to the series’ last two years (of its main run). Undoubtedly, pairing her with Doggett, in anticipation of Gillian Anderson exiting just as David Duchovny had – you rewatch these seasons and you wonder where her head was at in hanging on – made for aggressively facile gender-swapped conflict positions on any given assignment. And generally, I’d have been more interested in seeing how two individuals sympathetic to the cause – her and Mulder – might have got on. Nevertheless, in an episode like 4-D you get her character, and Doggett’s, at probably their best mutual showing.

You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

I tell you, it saw me! The hanged man’s asphyx saw me!

The Asphyx (1972) (SPOILERS) There was such a welter of British horror from the mid 60s to mid 70s, even leaving aside the Hammers and Amicuses, that it’s easy to lose track of them in the shuffle. This one, the sole directorial effort of Peter Newbrook (a cameraman for David Lean, then a cinematographer), has a strong premise and a decent cast, but it stumbles somewhat when it comes to taking that premise any place interesting. On the plus side, it largely eschews the grue. On the minus, directing clearly wasn’t Newbrook’s forte, and even aided by industry stalwart cinematographer Freddie Young (also a go-to for Lean), The Aspyhx is stylistically rather flat.

I don't like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me.

North by Northwest (1959) (SPOILERS) North by Northwest gets a lot of attention as a progenitor of the Bond formula, but that’s giving it far too little credit. Really, it’s the first modern blockbuster, paving the way for hundreds of slipshod, loosely plotted action movies built around set pieces rather than expertly devised narratives. That it delivers, and delivers so effortlessly, is a testament to Hitchcock, to writer Ernest Lehmann, and to a cast who make the entire implausible exercise such a delight.

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