Blue Velvet

BLUE VELVET (18)

D: David Lynch

DEG (Fred Caruso)

USA 🇺🇸 1986

120 mins

Thriller

W: David Lynch

DP: Frederick Elmes

Ed: Duwayne Dunham

Mus: Angelo Badalamenti

PD: Patricia Norris

Kyle MacLachlan (Jeffrey Beaumont), Isabella Rossellini (Dorothy Vallens), Dennis Hopper (Frank Booth), Laura Dern (Sandy Williams), Hope Lange (Mrs. Williams), George Dickerson (Detective Williams), Dean Stockwell (Ben)

David Lynch's surreal cult classic, introducing the movie-going public to his trademark that 'all is not well behind the picket fences of an idyllic community' with this nightmarish soap opera.

After visiting his father in hospital, Jeffrey Beaumont discovers a human ear in the field by his home. He notifies the police, but decides to do some detective work of his own, snooping on lounge-singing neighbour Dorothy Vallens, whose husband and child have been kidnapped by unsavoury gangster Frank Booth so he can demand sexual favours from her (which include raping her while asphyxiating himself with blue velvet from her robe). It's a seedy, unpleasant thriller of unpleasant people in an otherwise peaceful town. David Lynch's direction is intended to unsettle his audience and it does just that, punctuated by Dennis Hopper's menacing performance as Frank Booth, whose character is amongst the greatest cinema villains of all time. A man with absolutely no redeeming qualities and has a strange trademark of inhaling an unidentifed gas from a canister.

David Lynch must sure eat a feast of cheeses before he goes to bed.

8/10

Dennis Hopper & Isabella Rossellini in Blur Velvet