Twin Cheeks

Twin Cheeks is a hilarious low-budget send-up of David Lynch’s hit TV series, Twin Peaks. Well almost. As we learn in the supplements, the film's director, Kelly Hughes, had never seen the show Twin Peaks until after making the film, but was also inspired by Fire Walk With Me. In a queer gender bent version of Twin Peaks, we see the death of the homecoming king after cruising for anonymous gay sex in the woods. While this happens, there’s a split screen of the murder taking place and his mother talking about how good of a boy he was ETC. The story is told in a very cool DIY way where there’s a mix of both voiceover narration as well as narrative interstitials that float across the screen to a fun effect only when they don’t blend into the background. There are a bunch of fun characters that feel like they’re out of a particularly filthy John Waters movie.

There’s the mother named Mangina of another dead child, played by Ernest Rhodes in drag, who begins to lure pizza delivery men into her pad to drug and make them hustle for her. There’s the sad prom queen and the wood woman—log lady, get it?—who stumbles upon the dead body, both played by Tom Bliss in drag and giving hilarious performances. Most of the film’s actual moving plot revolves around the brother of the homecoming king seeking revenge on his killer by going undercover as one of the aforementioned pizza men to try to get access to the killer Mangina. Then, most of the rest of the film splits between him hooking up with random men and the homecoming queen reading the secret diary of the homecoming king and diving further into madness at the revelation of his dual life.

I really love coming across these weirdo no-budget queer DIY SOV films where the director and cast obviously are having the best time making the movie. The amateur charm really adds to the whole experience. Even though half the time you can’t see the subtitles as they fly across the screen because they’re the same color as a character’s shirt. The subtitles, while a great artistic touch, make the movie really hard to follow because that’s where a lot of the plot points are presented; it’s still so fun and charming despite not being able to follow what's going on. It’s really a great time to just be immersed in this terrible world being presented to you in a more experimental way rather than a straight-ahead narrative. This film, however, is not for everyone. I would recommend it to people who are into the really early John Waters or extremely weird and wild DIY SOV classics. 

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray 
Twin Cheeks takes a crack at Blu-ray thanks to VHShitfest and OCN Distribution. This single Blu-ray disc is housed in a clear case with a reversible cover featuring your choice of two different cover arts. The disc loads to a standard main menu with basic navigation options. If you were fast enough while they were available on Vinegar Syndrome's website, you could score a rather cheeky slipcover. 

The visuals in this release are pretty ok for a shot-on-video release; folks who would be into this sort of release know what they’re getting into, and we aren’t expecting IMAX-quality visuals. That being said, the film is presented in 1080P, but it doesn’t help the video noise seen throughout the film, and as mentioned above, some scenes depend on the subtitles being seen to follow what's going on; however, Hughes' shots of the Pacific Northwest are gorgeous despite the low-fi quality. This all adds to the punk rock aesthetic of the film itself and comes off rather charming. In the case of this release, the low-fi quality is a great aesthetic and shouldn’t make someone shy away from this release.

The audio is the same as the video, pretty bad at times, despite being presented in DTS HD-MA 2.0; it doesn’t make up for the fact that the audio was recorded on video, and at times, the mix is pretty rough. Some portions are too muffled to hear, and sometimes so loud that it spikes the mike. Despite its shortcomings, again, its amateur nature really makes it a great watch. The song Please Don’t Hate Me " that plays over and over again is honestly so campy and great, I love it.

This release from VHShitfest is chock full of extra features, including an audio commentary where Director Kelly Hughes goes over his process of making Twin Cheeks, and there’s an interview with him as well, which covers much of the same topics. There's a behind-the-scenes interview with the cast that’s very fun to watch; it covers how they all got involved in the picture. There’s also a long interview with Tom Bliss, the star of the picture and how he got into the film and how he later got a career in Hollywood. The feature-length film and all of the shorts were filmed in his later career, mostly during and after COVID, it seems. They all are charming to watch, but lack the grimy DIY quality of Twin Cheeks; they all are of the same quality, just with better cameras available on the market today. I wish his other movie, which I saw on Letterboxd, Le Cage Aux Zombies, were on this release. I feel like including his other 90’s movie would have been great.

• Audio commentary with director Kelly Hughes
• Interview with Kelly Hughes (42:57)
• Wrapped in DNA (7:50)
• Bliss Does Hollywood (29:19)
• Music Videos:
• Please Don’t Hate Me (2:59)
• We’re Nothing (3:54)
• Short Films:
• Baby Baby (8:20)
• Roxanne (3:33)
• The Witch Will Kill You (4:30)
• Bonus Feature Film: It’s Not the House, It’s My Mother (65:43)

This is a great release of a really fun, grimy, amateurish, and ultimately Campy experience. Twin Cheeks, while copying only surface images from the source material, really shines in its weird and campy scenes, which are randomly held together by the thinnest thread possible. The AV is not the best, but it really adds to the camp experience of the whole film. The supplements are vast as usual with VHShitfest releases. This film is certainly not for everyone, but I know fans of Twin Peaks, John Waters, underground queer cinema, and SOV fanatics will absolutely adore this picture, and for them, this comes Recommended.