Twin Peaks - Pilot Episode [IMPORT]

Category: DVD

Buy New: $49.99


New (1) Used (5) from $44.95

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars 74 reviews
Sales Rank: 51603

Languages: Chinese (Subtitled), English (Original Language)
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.5 x 0.5

UPC: 766483142964
EAN: 0766483142964
ASIN: B00005V54S

Theatrical Release Date: April 15, 1991
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Twin Peaks - Pilot Episode [IMPORT]

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5 out of 5 stars Twin Peaks -- scale them!    October 4, 2004
E. A Solinas (MD USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

David Lynch has gained a reputation for his weird and wonderful filmmaking style, like in "Mulholland Drive." And while the release of "Twin Peaks -- Pilot Episode" is out of sync with the first season release, this eerie and entrancing story will reel you in. It's cult TV at its absolute best.

The body of a beautiful young woman, Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), washes up on a shore, wrapped in plastic. Apparently everyone in the town of Twin Peaks adored her, so her death is a blow. FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) takes a look at Laura's body -- and learns that she was murdered by someone he has tracked before.

He investigates Laura's diary, and finds that she may have been killed by someone she called "J." That hardly narrows it down, since the strange Twin Peaks is full of quirky people with that initial. And as Cooper investigates further, he finds himself in a town of dark secrets and strange occurrances -- and still the mystery of who killed Laura.

Due to some bizarre legal wrangles, the Twin Peaks pilot wasn't released with the first season of the show -- which is like releasing "Return of the Jedi" and "Empire Strikes Back" separately from "A New Hope." Additionally, a pasted-on ending which reveals who murdered Laura is included. Despite these flaws, the pilot in itself is a magnificent piece of work, quirky and dark and twisted.

Drugs, murder, ghosts, precognition, dancing dwarves, supernatural possession and murder all crop up in the TV series, and this pilot set it all up -- it's not the best of the series, but it serves as a good set-up. And Lynch's handling of the solidly ordinary Northwest America is turned into a bizarre thing. Under the banality and the boringness is a dark undercurrent, making the town all the more eerie. But it's also so FUNNY at times -- Cooper and the quirky Twin-Peak-ites provide a sort of deadpan comedy to the proceedings.

It's also not just a murder mystery, but a study of the strange, layered characters. Kyle MacLachlan does an exceptional job as Cooper -- he's obviously a bit of a nutjob and neatnik, but a cheerful and likable one. He's backed by a cast of quirky, odd characters, including Lara Flynn Boyle, Ray Wise, Piper Laurie and Michael Ontkean.

Before the "X-Files" made the surreal a hit, before "Carnivale" took surrealism and ran with it, there was the magnificently weird "Twin Peaks." While the tacked-on ending is a bit of a letdown, especially with several episodes after it, it's a magnificent creation and to be checked out.


4 out of 5 stars Misunderstood    July 23, 2004
Marcus Bailey (Darnestown, MD)
17 out of 20 found this review helpful

I was going to skip writing a review to this disc. I was one of the very first to get it in the States and even then there were so many reviews that said what I was going to say that I decided to skip it. However, reading some of the negative reviews I think that many people do not understand the situation with this release. Yes, it has problems and you should go in with your eyes open. But it's not as bad as some make it out to be.

First of all, the negatives. As other reviewers have already mentioned, the sound seems to be sped up. I suspect that it is actually just a pitch change, as the action still looks normal and the voices still synch. The video has some slight artifacts, and the special features are really pretty nonexistant.

In any other DVD, this would make me tear my hair out (or, at least, return the disc). But the negatives are far outweighed by the positives. In order to explain why, let me give a brief history.

When the pilot for Twin Peaks was made, the money was provided by Warner Bros. Since it was not known at the time whether a network would buy the series, WB insisted that Lynch/Frost produce an ending for the pilot. That way, if the series wasn't picked up, they could get their money back by selling the pilot as a stand-alone movie. The ending produced really didn't wrap anything up, but the footage was designed to be salvaged later as Cooper's dream in episode 2. The pilot, with the surreal ending, was shown briefly in some theaters in Europe before ABC greenlit the series, thus it is sometimes called the "European version".

Fast forward to the end of the series. When the decision was made to release the series on video, Propaganda films realized that it couldn't get rights to the pilot. WB refused to give the rights up because they hadn't made all the money that they could. They released the pilot on their own (separate from the series episodes and never mentioning that it was a series in the first place) on both VHS and LaserDisc. Problem is that they released the version with their "special unaired footage". In other words, the artificial ending that was produced under duress and that keeps the "European version" from meshing with the rest of the series. This version was NOT the way it was intended to be seen, despite what some reviewers have claimed.

Until now, that has been the only version ever available on any sort of video. The pilot was broadcast in its intended form three times by ABC (its initial airing, and then twice over the summer to increase viewership for season 2) and several times by Bravo (as part of their "TV Too Good For TV" nights). Other than that, no one in the US has seen the correct version of the pilot until this DVD became available.

So, the positives? Simply, they are the fact that we now have a version of the pilot that we can play before watching the rest of the series without having to go into a fifteen minute explanation of why the ending doesn't fit with the beginning of the next episode. We can see Sarah Palmer's correct vision (the one referenced later in the series). We can, just for a moment, go back to the first time we saw the show and remember gathering with friends awaiting the next revelations from Lynch & co. without having to do some fancy editing work or pull out our ancient, fading tapes from 1990.

Don't listen to the complainers. If you want to watch this amazing series, you MUST start with this disc.

My review = 4 stars (5 stars for content, -1 for technical glitches)


2 out of 5 stars 2 stars for the DVD - pilot gets 5    July 21, 2004
B. Erickson (Overland Park, KS United States)
7 out of 11 found this review helpful

So I wrote a critical review of this DVD in which I complained about the poor sound and picture quality, and the fact that the pilot was not included in the DVD box set of the First Season as would seem logical. Then some guy submitted a review in which he kindly explained that this was due to a licensing issue between WB and Propaganda, etc, the usual nonsense - see "grailwolf" - and defended this version of the pilot as being the one which meshes with the rest of the series, unlike the "European Version" which was made as a feature film, with a weird tacked-on ending that was supposed to "wrap things up" in case the series didn't get picked up. (He's probably also the one who voted my complaining review "unhelpful"...lol.)

Well, fine. Yeah, I guess this is the best we can do right now. It's still a shame that due to retarded issues like these we can't have it all in a single package, but whatever. The real tragedy is that you can't get the Second Season on DVD at all right now, again probably because people are concerned about making money. So, I'm still complaining about the fact that I have to look at "Sex in the City" boxed sets every time I go to the store, but "Twin Peaks" is criminally neglected - I guess that shows you where the popular taste lies, God help us all.

Anyway. Why did this show fascinate so many people in the first place? Well, watch this pilot! David Lynch has taken all the typical elements of this sort of Stephen King-descended small town mystery story and applied his usual disjointed, surrealistic sensibility. The result is that you have a broad cast of highly stylized characters who all behave like they're missing a few screws, and who are ALL "full of secrets." The acting is in that sort of "corny-but-intentionally-so" film noir vein. The dialogue, the sets, everything is designed to make you feel like you're in another world whose rules you don't quite know, a world where anything could happen - and DOES happen. It's hilarious the way the characters explain away things like the strobing fluorescent lights on Laura Palmer's corpse in the hospital, or the deer head on the table at the post office - "It fell down" - which are obviously only there for atmosphere, and add to the dreamlike quality. The high school kids are all weirdly 1950's acting, in spite of whatever bizarre secrets they might have - from Audrey Horne's spacey pinup girl to Bobby Briggs' West Side Story gang member on crystal meth (what is the deal with his histrionics?) to Laura Palmer's baby-voiced corrupted youth. So much is introduced in this pilot that it's not surprising that you could chew on it for a couple seasons. If people eventually got a little frustrated with the crazy plot twists, it's probably because this really should've been a miniseries rather than a typical TV show - you just couldn't go on season after season without solving Laura's murder, regardless of how many other subplots you had going. But there is definitely way too much juice in the pilot for it all to be condenced to a feature film - as the "European Version" illustrates.

So OK, go ahead and buy this. In spite of the technical problems, it's gonna have to make due. Let's hope eventually the whole series finds it place on a well-produced DVD set as it TOTALLY should.


4 out of 5 stars Great pilot episode so-so sound, no extras worth noting    June 30, 2004
Wayne Klein (My Little Blue Window, USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Without the pilot episode of "Twin Peaks" the boxed set is useless. Sure for those of us who have videotaped copies or laserdisc copies of the pilot, there's recourse but the chillig pilot episode needs to be seen to appreciate the rest of the series. I imagine that the second season would have seen release and the boxed set would have sold better if the pilot had been included.

The picture quality varies a bit in quality. Overall, it's not bad but it doesn't compare to that of the high definition transfer that's a highlight of the boxed set. The sound is pretty bad but you can listen to it. I really didn't notice that the pitch of the voices was all that different but it's probably due to the fact that overseas video is in a different format (PAL) than the U.S. (NTSC). The differences in the two formats would certainly explain that issue.. That would explain the incorrect pitch and the fact that it's a bit too fast to some folks. Color is an issue in some scenes as the picture does appear too yellow in others but overall the picture quality is good but far from great.

Someone commented earlier that this is an edited version of the pilot. No, actually it's the entire pilot run a slightly higher speed. The original pilot ran roughly 90 minutes (two television episodes average about 43 minutes a piece and that pilot was essentially two episodes back-to-back).

Unfortunately there's no extras to speak of except some really bad preview trailers and some information on the cast. Reportedly Paramount resumes control of the "Twin Peaks" license in 2005 so my guess is we'll see the pilot repacked with the first season (and available separately hopefully) along with the second season of the show.

5 stars for the pilot which created a mixture of an oblique mystery and an inversion of the traditional sopa opera and 2 stars for the transfer.


3 out of 5 stars Well, at least it's a DVD...    June 16, 2004
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

It's true the video and sound leave a lot to be desired, sorry to say. Mine seemed to have a slight sickly yellowish overcast that had me grabbing the TV remote and playing with picture settings most of the time but I wasn't able to get the color to look the way it should. But with VHS on its way out I wanted to have a DVD copy since it was available. Nothing exciting in extras here either. Keep you chin up though, the First Season set is fantastic and will make your heart sing.