From Blue Velvet to Inland Empire: The 10 Best David Lynch Moments

    David Lynch makes some of the most fun films out there. Lynch's films are fun in a different way than most of the 'mainstream' movies that come out. Sure, everyone likes Will Ferrell, his movies are funny and you can be sure to have a good time watching one, but they don't really ask anything of you. Well, other than to laugh at childish shit. I don't mean any ill will on Will Ferrell, I like his movies they are just throw aways that I enjoy watching once or twice and then I'm done with it. David Lynch's films are different (not that anyone would argue they were similar...) in the sense that there are so many layers of crazy in them that it takes several viewings to even make the most basic sense of the main plot point. What's more is that there are all of the little bits of side story that all film makers put in to enrich a film. If you look at Twin Peaks alone there are hundreds of tangents in the series that are still keeping people guessing after nearly twenty years.

    I recently watched Inland Empire after about two years of putting it off. I first got this film back in 2006 but never got around to watching it, I always wanted to but a three and a half hour long movie is a pretty daunting task. After watching it though I wanted to go back and watch some of my favorite Twin Peaks episodes and some of the other Lynch movies like Mulholland Drive. Finally I decide I'd come up with a list of my 10 best David Lynch moments. I should say in advance that I never saw the Elephant Man and I've never finished Eraserhead. It seems like every time I try to tackle either one of these I decide to watch another David Lynch film instead. Anyways, here is my list:

10. Grandmother

    The Grandmother was one of David Lynch's early short films from the seventies. There is a collection of David Lynch's Short Films [1] floating around that are worth watching if you like the work he's done like Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive. These aren't really all that great, there isn't much by the way of story or budget, but it shows what can be done with a concept and talent. The best of the lot would be the Grandmother. This short film is about a boy who plants a seed on a bed in the attic and waters it until it sprouts a grand mother... In the clip you can see where he actually pulls this old lady out of the plant. To say it's weird would be an understatement. The entire film is about twenty minutes long, it's intercut with nonsensical animations and a lot of black... just black... it's a dark film. Seeing the early work of Lynch like this makes you wonder, how in the hell anyone in the Hollywood establishment took him seriously and gave him a chance. Thankfully, someone [2] did.

9. The Hurry-Up Twins

    For some reason ABC decided to have David Lynch create a comedy series after Twin Peaks ended. There were a few funny moments in Twin Peaks but you'd never mistake it for a comedy show. Most of the jokes weren't really even that funny, they were just out of place; which is what made them funny. So how well do you think a David Lynch sitcom would do? Well, horribly, which is probably why you've never heard of "On the Air" which was on ABC briefly in 1992. The show centered around a network television station in the late fifties that was launching a new variety show. That's about all you need to know... It wasn't very good. It was way too weird to be any good. There were a few funny parts such as the Hurry-Up Twins, which were a set of black siamese twins that worked on the show and whenever they were in a shot they would be accompanied by a voice over that would simply say, "The Hurry-Up Twins." The clip on the right is from the end of the final episode, which had a trippy beatnik theme...

8. Room 47

    There is plenty of crazy shit in Inland Empire. In fact, there is about two and a half hours worth of crazy shit in that movie and only thirty minutes worth of "traditional" story telling. The climax of the movie is embedded at the right. Don't worry if you haven't seen the whole movie, the clip still won't make any sense. It'll only seem slightly less weird... Inland Empire is about an actress who gets caught up in her new role and lines between her real life and her character get blurred to the point where she can no longer tell when she is acting. There are clear similarities between this movie and Mulholland Drive, though Inland Empire takes the real life/dream mechanic much further. The scene I've embedded is from the end of the movie when Laura Dern finally confronts "the phantom." After shooting this guy a few times his face morphs into some crazy lynchesque shit... Afterwards Laura Dern enters apartment 47, where a family of giant rabbit humanoids lives. Said giant rabbits also seem to be part of a sitcom in the movie, but it's never really explained.

7. I had a dream about this place

    This next clip won't seem all that creepy to anyone who hasn't seen Mulholland Drive. On it's own there isn't a whole lot of context but it's still a great scene. The actors are great and the mood is excellent but when you put it all together with the main story of the movie it's infinitely more crazy. You see, these two guys only ever appear at this point in the movie. The characters themselves are irrelevant, the only purpose they serve is to tell you that it's all a dream. The dream in Mulholland Drive is basically the whole first half of the movie in which we are told that Naomi Watts is living out a Hollywood fantasy in which she becomes a starlet and helps Laura Harring remember her past. In reality it turns out that Laura Harring is the star and Hollywood is an evil place where dark powers control everything which eventually leads to the realization that Naomi Watts had killed herself. Mulholland Drive, like all Lynch films is confusing the first time through but the pay off for figuring out what exactly is going on is what makes it all worth while.

6. It is not my custom to go where I am not wanted

    This scene is from Lost Highway. The movie itself isn't all that great compared to Lynch's other films, but it's still worth watching. In this scene the main character is confronted by Robert Blake at a party. Blake is creepy enough even without being in a David Lynch film, but here he is extra creepy. Blake is made to look a little like a vampire, with his hair slicked back and parted, dark clothes and pale make-up. Blake approaches Bill Pullman and insists that they've met before, at Pullman's house actually. Pullman doesn't remember and doesn't believe that they know each other. It's here that shit gets extra creepy as Blake says, "as a matter of fact, I'm there right now..." At this point in the movie the audience knows that someone is watching Pullman and is leaving videos for him at his house. Pullman starts to get angry and Blake pulls out an old school cell phone and tells Pullman to give him a call, at Pullman's house. Sure enough when Pullman calls his house Robert Blake is there to answer the phone. The ensuing conversation is just weird... The rest of the movie gets weirder as Pullman's wife is murdered and then Pullman gets transformed into a twenty year old mechanic who has ties to the mob.

5. The Black Lodge

    This scene from the finale of the Twin Peaks series is definitely the craziest moment of the series. The final fifteen minutes of the show is a walk through the Black Lodge, the show's metaphysical netherworld where loads of crazy shit goes down. The Black Lodge was my favorite setting in Twin Peaks, probably because it was never really explained. We only see a couple of glimpses of it in the whole series and yet it's the most recognizable image of the show next to Laura Palmer's photo. As crazy as this sequence in the Black Lodge is, it seems to make strange sense if you followed the rest of the series. Early in the first season of Twin Peaks we see a vision of the future in Cooper's dream where he meets Laura Palmer and the Arm. Keep in mind that Laura Palmer died before the series even started, and here she is 25 years after the series ends, and she's talking all backwards... It seems fitting that the Black Lodge bookends the series, though it would have been nice to get some more information about what exactly it is. Some things are left best alone though, perhaps this is one of them.

    As a series finale for Twin Peaks this episode wraps up the two main story archs of the show. We see Dale Cooper confront Bob and Windom Earle in the Black Lodge. We are shown the Bob was ultimately in control of Leland Palmer and responsible for Laura Palmer's death as only he (Bob) has the right to take souls into the Black Lodge. Leland and Windom are Bob's prisoners in the Black Lodge while Cooper is allowed to return to the real world, presumably under the influence of Bob which the clip doesn't show.

    The iconic Black Lodge scenes are so creepy because they are filmed in reverse, which is to say that the actors speak backwards and do everything in reverse. The segments are then aired in reverse which makes them appear to have taken place as you would expect. This is why everyone talks and moves strangely... almost as if this was taking place in a dream. Very strange.

4. Betty's Got a Gun

    This is another clip from Mulholland Drive. This time it's the final scene where we see Naomi Watts finally give in to her craziness and shoot herself in the mouth like so much Full Metal Jacket. Watts' character is at the end of her rope after failing as an actress, failing as a lesbian, and failing at hiring a hitman. In this scene Watts stares at the key which reminds her of the killer she hired to take out her former lover, meanwhile her landlord has come by to collect. Watts is haunted, literally, by the demons of her past which are represented by the elderly midwestern couple that chase her down the hallway to her room where she pulls out the revolver and shoots herself in the mouth. A great ending to a fantastic movie. Plenty of lynchian craziness throughout.

3. A candy colored clown they call the sandman

    This has to be the grand daddy of all creepy Lynch scenes. This clip is from Blue Velvet and stars Dennis Hopper as a bat-shit crazy thug who huffs ether and kidnaps Kyle MacLachlan. MacLachlan was caught fooling around with Isabella Rossellini who is in a "relationship" with Hopper, sort of... The audience expects Hopper to take MacLachlan out and rough him up a bit or even try to kill him, but what actually happens is much crazier. Hopper and his crew go to a swinger party at a guy named Ben's house. The coolest part of the scene at Ben's is that there isn't much dialogue, the scene is mostly about Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" which doesn't seem all that weird. But then here comes Blue Velvet which takes this classic love song and makes it super freakin' creepy. Ben, played by Dean Stockwell, lip-syncs the song as Dennis Hopper watches from inches away in some sort of trance. The scene ends when Hopper gets so pissed that he breaks out his Orbison induced trance. On top of all of this, it turns out that Isabella Rossellini's kid is being held here against her will... yeah, it's pretty crazy.

2. She's my mother's sister's girl

    This scene is nearly my favorite David Lynch moment of all time. Not because it has Lynch himself in it, but that doesn't hurt... This scene is the Fire Walk With Me movie. In this scene Special Agent Chester Desmond (Chris Isaak) meets Gordon Cole (Lynch) and Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland) at an airport in Washington state. Also at the airport is Lil, Gordon Cole's mother's sister's daughter (his cousin?). Lil's only contribution to the entire movie is to step forward and walk in a circle while repeatedly making a fist and blinking her eyes. Chet Desmond explains that she had a sour look on her face because the locals won't be friendly, the blinking eyes meant that the authorities would get in the way. The clinching of the fist meant the local cops would be belligerent. Her red tailored dress meant that drugs were involved, while her walking in place would mean that there would be a lot of leg work. All of this could have been delivered quickly in a couple lines of dialogue but that wouldn't have been nearly as much fun, or weird.

1. It is happening again

    This has to be David Lynch's finest work. The brutal death of Maddy in the middle of the second season of Twin Peaks came pretty unexpectedly. It wasn't entirely a shock that Leland was Bob by this point in the series but seeing him literally beat Maddy to death was pretty messed up. The first time I saw this episode I was certain that Dale Cooper was going to kick in the door to the Palmer house and put an end to Leland's manhandling of his niece. But no... he just keeps punching her in the face. Maddy doesn't just get knocked out and go down quietly, she's conscious for the whole thing. The embedded clip on the right starts out at the roadhouse where all of the principal cast members are treated to a live performance of their show's theme. Cooper and his date, the log lady, arrive just in time for the giant to deliver the breaking news that, "it is happening again." Cooper doesn't seem to understand the meaning of this as he doesn't bother to leave the bar to stop Leland. If Cooper had stopped Bob/Leland it probably would have seemed cliché.

So there you have it, my top ten Lynch moments. Have an objection? suggest? Leave a comment below.