With all things Twin Peaks coming back in style, the Criterion Collection announced yesterday that it will be giving David Lynch’s feature-length series prequel Fire Walk With Me a deluxe reissue this coming October. Rather anti-climactically, it did so not with an elaborate visual code involving different colors of thread and scrunched-up facial expressions, but with a regular old reveal of the box art in the Criterion newsletter. (You can see that art below.)
Fan site Welcome To Twin Peaks has details on the Criterion release, which will present the film in a 4k digital transfer supervised by Lynch himself and with two different soundtrack options—a DTS-HD Master Audio track and the original 2.0 surround track—from which viewers can choose. The release will also include the 90 minutes of deleted scenes and alternate takes known as “The Missing Pieces,” which were previously released as part of the Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery Blu-ray boxed set. It’ll also include interviews with Lynch, Ray Wise, and Grace Zabriskie, along with two interviews, one brand new and one previously released, with star Sheryl Lee, who acts her fucking heart out as doomed homecoming queen Laura Palmer in the film.
Fire Walk With Me received a notoriously negative reception upon its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 1992, where Lynch, co-writer Robert Engels, and composer Angelo Badalamenti were met with boos and hisses at a press conference. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, “It’s not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be,” in his scathing review, and Quentin Tarantino quipped, “After I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me at Cannes, David Lynch had disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different.”
Since then, Fire Walk With Me has been the subject of critical re-appraisals dubbing it an unsung masterpiece, and Lynch got a standing ovation after a screening of the two-hour premiere of Twin Peaks: The Return at this year’s Cannes. The redemption will be complete on October 17, when the special edition of Fire Walk With Me is released on DVD and Blu-ray through Criterion. In the meantime, you can pre-order it here.