Blue Velvet

David Lynch’s acclaimed breakthrough film, a coming of age story like no other, drags naïve college student and amateur sleuth Kyle MacLachlan down a deliciously unnerving rabbit hole of voyeurism, sadomasochism, suburban depravity and good old-fashioned weirdness, and in the process, changed America cinema forever. In Blue Velvet, squeaky-clean small town boy Jeffrey (MacLachlan) gets a crash course in the dark side of life when he stumbles upon a severed ear in a field near his home. Before his amateur investigation is over, he encounters kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, Laura Dern as a good girl with an adventurous streak, Isabella Rosellini as a tormented torch singer with a “thing” for blue velvet (both the song and the material) and Dennis Hopper as one of the scariest, freakiest villains in movie history. Equal parts campy comedy, scathing social critique and demented horror film, Blue Velvet is a true original, and perhaps the iconic director’s most enduringly influential masterpiece. Fully unleashing, for the very first time, his darkly offbeat aesthetic upon a narrative buoyed by glossy Hollywood production values, Lynch manages to meld Hitchcockian suspense, surrealist imagery and a Hardy Boys plot to create an unforgettable, one-of-a-kind Grimm’s fairy tale for adults. (Dir. by David Lynch, 1986, USA, 120 mins., Rated R)