11. BLUE VELVET

11. BLUE VELVET
(1986)
Directed by David Lynch

As far as monsters go, I'd rather fend off a posse of flesh eating zombies than go on a joy ride with Frank Booth. I caught this on cable television when I was still in high school after a long night of imbibing in various spirits with my delinquent friends and I had absolutely no idea what I was in for. The folks were asleep and I camped out on the couch. I was lucky enough to catch the movie right at the beginning and the Bobby Vinton song drew me in. The next thing I knew there was an ear crawling with ants and psychopath Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper in his greatest role) sucking down nitrus oxide and doing scissor tricks. I was horrified and changed for life. I think this baby had the same revelatory effect on a lot of folks. Lynch has an uncanny ability to create images of haunting beauty before suddenly shifting the focus into some new unpredictable darkness. A brief illustration of this occurs when the tormented nightclub singer Dorothy (played by Isabella Rossellini) is singing the title song bathed in lush blue light in front of a jazz combo backed by Argento red drapes. The melody is wistful but soothing and then the song fails and morphs into a dark and ominous orchestration (composed by long time Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti) that accompanies footage of our two main characters driving along in the night. Trouble and violence are never far away. Danger is lurking nearby. Heineken? Fuck that shit...