Blue Velvet ***** (1986, Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern, Dean Stockwell, George Dickerson) – Classic Movie Review 338

‘It’s a sunny, woodsy day in Lumberton, so get those chainsaws out. This is the mighty W.O.O.D., the musical voice of Lumberton. At the sound of the falling tree, it’s 9:30. There’s a whole lotta wood waitin’ out there, so let’s get goin’.’ –  radio announcer.

Writer-director David Lynch’s exhilaratingly shocking 1986 film noir crime mystery thriller Blue Velvet is still his masterwork so far. Starting with the gruesome discovery of a severed human ear, it takes us on an ultra-disturbing, increasingly terrifying trip to small-town America’s hellish underworld. Blue Velvet carves out its unique niche simply by going further than anyone thought they’d want to go at the time, and doing it in the utmost style and with the greatest of intelligence.

Kyle MacLachlan (earlier Lynch’s Paul Atreides in Dune and later Lynch’s Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks) stars as Jeffrey Beaumont, a callow young man who returns to his home town and discovers the ear in a field. Frustrated at the police’s lack of zeal or results, he and the equally naïve Sandy (Laura Dern), daughter of Police Detective Williams (George Dickerson), start to carry out their own investigation.

Bad mistake! The trail leads Jeffrey to the apartment of the beautiful and mysterious Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who is, unfortunately for everyone, involved with the uber-violent and perversely evil mobster Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper).

Now Jeffrey finds himself investigating the cinema’s craziest, sickest gang of mobsters, Frank, Ben, Raymond and Paul (played by Hopper, Dean Stockwell, Brad Dourif and Jack Nance). And that’s pretty obviously going to put his life at risk sooner or later.

All the actors score memorable hit turns here that are pretty much their career best performances. MacLachlan is perfect, his eager-beaver charm putting you on his side and in his place from the get-go. Hopper is extraordinary, stealing all his scenes, but then so is Stockwell, doing the same with much less to do. How scary they both are! Thanks to Hopper, Frank Booth is one of the great screen monsters.

The appealing, lanky young Dern is ideal as the languid, innocent young heroine who connives with the hero and gradually falls for him, despite her constant claims of having a boyfriend. Sandy is hopelessly out her depth, but she too is excited by the chase and gradually the truth is dawning: ‘I can’t figure out if you’re a detective or a pervert,’ she says to Jeffrey, who replies: ‘Well, that’s for me to know and you to find out.’

And Isabella Rossellini is heartrending as the abused gangster’s moll and chanteuse trapped in a ghastly sado-masochist relationship with Hopper’s Frank Booth: ‘He put his disease in me.’ She really makes this character credible. It’s believable that she is trapped by a monster, falls for the kindly Jeffrey, that she sings (Blue Velvet of course) in a small-town night club. In very difficult circumstances, she is mesmerising.

On the side of ‘normality’, Priscilla Pointer and Frances Bay score characterfully as Jeffrey’s mother Mrs Beaumont and Aunt Barbara.

Blue Velvet is not here to ingratiate or be loved. It’s here to be sucked up emotionally and viscerally as a thriller – and be appreciated as a showy work of art. It doesn’t really seek to make friends or influence people. Lynch probably thinks he can leave that to Disney. But it does make friends or influence people anyway.

Frederick Elmes’s cinematography is an eye-opener and Angelo Badalamenti’s plaintive score is just right, while Patricia Norris’s timeless Americana production design is perfect. Music plays a crucial role in the movie. The production worried about paying the high cost for the rights of the original recording of Bobby Vinton’s hit song Blue Velvet (written by Lee Morris and Bernie Wayne), but wisely eventually coughed up. Roy Orbison’s In Dreams plays a key role too, memorably and scarily mimed to by Dean Stockwell, and also Ketty Lester’s Love Letters is nicely used.

You can expect seriously adult themes, nudity, abuse of women, considerable violence and extremely strong language with Hopper saying the F word throughout (‘Let’s fuck! I’ll fuck anything that moves!’ ‘Don’t you fucking look at me!’). So this film is clearly not for the easily shocked. But it does provide a captivating, mesmerising thrill ride for the once trendy, now alas very old Lynch mob of the mid-eighties.

Originally running at nearly four hours, it was cut to two hours for release. The missing footage was put in storage and is apparently lost. It’s extremely taut and coherent under the circumstances, thanks to some brilliant film editing by Duwayne Dunham.

Blue Velvet is filmed in Wilmington and Lumberton, North Carolina.

The prosthetic ear is on permanent display at Movie Madness (Video Store) in Portland, Oregon.

Dean Stockwell (born March 5, 1936) enjoyed a prolific career spanning more than 70 years. He died of natural causes at his home in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, on November 7, 2021, aged 85.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 338

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