If you’ve been missing out on your true crime fix, and Netflix’s recent Unsolved Mysteries series just isn’t cutting it for you (you need the gory satisfaction of a solved ending!) then this news is a great, albeit morbid way to start your week. A new documentary is in the works, inspired by the real life murder which inspired David Lynch’s cult classic TV show, Twin Peaks.
Inspired by a non-fiction book of the same name, Blonde, Beautiful And Dead: The Murder That Inspired Twin Peaks sounds set to be pretty self-explanatory, but nonetheless juicy. The show (and book) throws it back all the way to the summer of 1908, investigating the murder of Hazel Drew. Hazel’s untimely end caused quite the scandal in the small community of Sand Lake, New York, and author Mark Frost explores the crimes ramifications, setting out to “investigate the secrets, corruption, and gender politics one small town community tried to keep buried”.
Hazel’s murder inspired the fictional death of Laura Palmer in Lynch’s show, and the show’s co-creator Mark Frost even pens a foreword for the upcoming book, set to be released in Winter 2021 and written by David Bushman and Mark Givens.
“The first true crime story that captivated me as a kid, the Hazel Drew murder draws you into a nexus of power, money and sexual politics that feels utterly contemporary,” Frost said in a statement to MovieMaker. “This haunting tale also provided the nightmare fuel for a fictional tragedy that, decades later, asked the question: Who killed Laura Palmer?”
Watch the full trailer for the documentary here.