8. Special Agent Phillip Jeffries - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
In Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, the even more cultish feature length prequel to the cult hit television series Twin Peaks, nightmare imagery takes the place of traditional narrative. Taking place before Laura Palmers death, the film follows her last days alongside Special Agent Dale Coopers assignment to find missing agents whod been sent to investigate other murdered girls. Agent Phillip Jeffries (Bowie) vanished two years ago, and yet suddenly reappears in the Philadelphia FBI branch office. CCTV feeds begin to haemorrage ghostly images, as he desperately tries to tell his former colleagues what hes seen and experienced. Only he cant: Jeffries is trapped in the nightmare logic of the Black Lodge, and the narrative hes trying to describe is utterly alien to them. As he speaks, ghostly images of the Red Room and its demonic inhabitants appear to us. Agent Jeffries has been away too long... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nSqDMqCJQw Staggering, incoherent and lost in another plane of existence, Bowies casting is pretty much pitch perfect in a scene that features the films director David Lynch as the hard-of-hearing FBI regional chief, who glimpses more of the supernatural underbelly of the world than hes letting on. When Agent Jeffries disappears in mid-sentence, it becomes apparent that hes not returned at all: hes only been haunting them for a little while. Bowie's part was larger in the first edit, but fell to the cutting room floor... however, those deleted scenes (which are fantastic) are available on the Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery set, released on blu-ray in 2014.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
