Blue Velvet (1986) |
Blue Velvet (1986), Director David Lynch's bizarre cult film, a look at sex, violence, crime and power under the peaceful exterior of small-town Americana in North Carolina.
The brilliant opening of the movie highlights the patriotic red, white, and blue colors in roses, a picket fence, and clear skies, and then, scenes of the ideal American dream suddenly explode. The camera moves from above ground into the grass, and finds a swarm of hungry, ugly black bugs, a metaphor for the evil beneath the idyllic surface of picture-perfect life. Famous narrated line: "It's a sunny, woodsy day in Lumberton, so get your chain saws out."
A young college student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) attempts to investigate the underlying mystery surrounding a severed ear (covered with insects) that he discovers in a field, and ends up confronting a variety of kinky and repellent characters including: a masochistic, nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rosselini) who sings "Blue Velvet" at the Slow Club, and the most memorable evil, gas-inhaling, drug-dealing sadist, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) - maybe the meanest, vilest villain in film history.
While investigating with his girlfriend Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), she questions their entry into Dorothy's apartment, but Jeffrey replies: "No one will suspect us because no one would think two people like us would be crazy enough to do something like this."
There are two memorable and shocking scenes:
(1) Jeffrey hides in the closet of Dorothy's apartment and watches her undress, but is caught and forced at knife point to have sex with her. But then he is put back into the closet when Frank arrives, and he watches her being tormented as Frank's sexual slave, because he has kidnapped her husband and son. They have sado-masochistic, kinky sex, calling each other "Mommy" and "Daddy."
(2) The second terrifying scene: Jeffrey and Dorothy are taken to Frank's headquarters, where Frank threatens Jeffrey with a knife, kisses him with lipstick smeared on his face, and beats him up.
In the conclusion, Jeffrey puts a bullet between Frank's eyes.
On a bright sunny day, Sandy and Jeffrey have lunch together, welcoming the return of the robins. She says to him, in the last line: "It's a strange world, isn't it?"