Blue Velvet

Now released with new extras and re-mastered surround sound, this is possibly the most influential American film of the 1980's. David Lynch's bizarre erotic mystery spawned a whole raft of imitations with its portrayal of the dark underside of American small-town life. Critics and audiences responded to Lynch's original and startling images of sex and violence and made the film a box-office smash. Blue Velvet is renowned for creating, in Dennis Hopper's Frank, one of the greatest screen villains of all time. DVD Extras: 35 min documentary 'Strange Desires' including interviews with David Lynch, Dennis Hooper and Dino De Laurentiis. Review by J.G. Ballard from BBC's Moving Pictures. Two essays by Mike Goodridge. Animated menus. Theatrical trailer. 16 page booklet. (Playable only on DVD players that support PAL.)

David Lynch peeks behind the picket fences of small-town America to reveal a corrupt shadow world of malevolence, sadism, and madness. From the opening shots Lynch turns the Technicolor picture postcard images of middle class homes and tree-lined lanes into a dreamy vision on the edge of nightmare. After his father collapses in a preternaturally eerie sequence, college boy Kyle MacLachlan returns home and stumbles across a severed human ear in a vacant lot. With the help of sweetly innocent high school girl (Laura Dern), he turns junior detective and uncovers a frightening yet darkly compelling world of voyeurism and sex. Drawn deeper into the brutal world of drug dealer and blackmailer Frank, played with raving mania by an obscenity-shouting Dennis Hopper in a career-reviving performance, he loses his innocence and his moral bearings when confronted with pure, unexplainable evil. Isabella Rossellini is terrifyingly desperate as Hopper's sexual slave who becomes MacLachlan's illicit lover, and Dean Stockwell purrs through his role as Hopper's oh-so-suave buddy. Lynch strips his surreally mundane sets to a ghostly austerity, which composer Angelo Badalamenti encourages with the smooth, spooky strains of a lush score. Blue Velvet is a disturbing film that delves into the darkest reaches of psycho-sexual brutality and simply isn't for everyone. But for a viewer who wants to see the cinematic world rocked off its foundations, David Lynch delivers a nightmarish masterpiece. --Sean Axmaker