I have several favorite websites, blogs, etc., but I don't check any of them regularly. As a result, I tend to binge-read several entries in a row. On occasion a posting will lead to thoughts I want to share but, because the post I'm responding to is sometimes weeks, if not months, old, my thoughts are no longer relevant to that site's comments section. "Professor Too-Late" is all about expressing those thoughts without posting them on someone else's site when everyone but me has moved on with their lives.
Professor Too-Late's delayed reaction to A. A. Dowd's pick for the film scene that scares him the most.
The back of Winkie's Diner
Although I agree with Dowd's choice of the Winkie's Diner scene in Mulholland Dr. as one of the scariest scenes in cinematic history, I would argue that a similar scene in David Lynch's earlier film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is even more terrifying. A lot of Lynch fans, and a lot of Twin Peaks fans, hate this movie, but one cannot argue with the effectiveness of certain scenes.
Once the film leaves behind its prologue elements, in which agents Desmond and Stanley investigate the murder of Teresa Banks, and agents Cooper, Cole, and Rosenfeld encounter the spectral Agent Jeffries, we find ourselves back (or, for the first time, really) in the small town of Twin Peaks. Laura Palmer is still alive and being tormented by the evil entity known as BOB. BOB has torn pages out of Laura's diary, so she gives her diary to her friend Harold. Later, Laura encounters Mrs. Chalfont and her grandson, who tells Laura that "the man behind the mask" (i.e., BOB) is in Laura's room, presumably looking for her diary.
As in the Winkie's Diner scene, the following takes place in broad daylight, in a seemingly normal, entirely nonthreatening environment. Laura enters her house and walks slowly up the stairs. The ceiling fan is on, which--as fans of Twin Peaks know--means BOB is present. Laura reaches her bedroom door and opens it slowly. As in the Winkie's Diner scene, we know exactly what's going to happen next, but it's still utterly terrifying to watch this scene as it unfolds at an agonizingly slow pace. I've watched this movie at least a dozen times, and yet every time the moment of revelation occurs it causes a visceral dread to run through my body.
Laura Palmer's room
So what makes this scene more effective than the Winkie's Diner scene? On a surface level, there are a few things. Laura is not only younger than the character of Patrick Fischler in Mulholland Dr., but she's also alone. Additionally, she's not in some public place but in her own home (not to mention in her own room in that home), a normally safe haven that isn't typically violated by others. And she's already been subjected to some bizarre occurrences beyond her control in the film so far. But more than these somewhat superficial reasons, the context of the scene is everything. We know BOB to be a physical manifestation of pure evil and, more importantly, we know that he is haunting Laura specifically. He has raped her on several occasions, and seems intent on destroying her completely. The scary man behind Winkie's Diner, on the other hand, has unknown motives. This is a bit terrifying in its own right, of course, but he is not otherwise a particularly active presence in the film.
When Laura sees BOB in her room, the implication is not just that she's seeing a frightening creature (as Patrick Fischler is in Mulholland Dr.), but a creature that is an active threat to her well-being. Furthermore, after Laura has fled the house, she is confronted with the horrible revelation that BOB is her father.
Taken together, these elements add up to an even more terrifying scene than the Winkie's Diner scene in Mulholland Dr. (despite the abject terror I feel when watching that scene, too). In conclusion, all the Fire Walk with Me haters are wrong. It's a great movie. So there.
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