Rent Blue Velvet (1986)

A poor transfer and no subtitles - Blue Velvet review by WS

I can understand why even fans of David Lynch's work rarely seem to rate it as on of their favourites. There's a good amount of weirdness, and it's quite clever in the way that it takes staples of popular culture such as film noir, and '70s cop shows and melds them into something strange and unsettling. But some of the acting was wooden (or maybe this was intentional?) and it doesn't quite transport you into a believable alternative reality (or surreality) like, say Mulholland Drive or Lost Highway.

I would happily grant it 3 or even 4 stars were it not for the poor transfer. I noticed throughout how fuzzy the picture was. At first I thought it might be just my eyes! but when it got to the end credits they were too blurry to read. So the fault must lie in the process of transferring the film to digital.

Mystery Thriller & 80s Masterpiece - Blue Velvet review by GI

This is one of the key films of the 1980s. A very dark mystery thriller from director David Lynch and if you're unfamiliar with Lynch's films this is a good one as an introduction to them and you can see the roots of Lynch's later Twin Peaks series here. Here Lynch uncovers the dark underbelly of small-town America with his opening images of a picture postcard world that is corrupted by the strange and evil that lies out of sight. Blue Velvet is a film that once seen is not forgotten, it's essentially a mystery that unravels gradually but it's infused with a grotesque characters, sexual violence and a pervading sense of unease. Set in the 1980s it has a 1950s classic film noir vibe but it goes in some very dark and shocking directions. Kyle MacLachlan plays college student Jeffrey, who returns to his hometown after his father has a seizure to help at the family's hardware store. One afternoon he happens to find a severed human ear and takes it to a police detective who lives nearby. Intrigued by his find Jeffrey begins his own investigation, aided by Sandy (Laura Dean), which leads him to a nightclub singer, Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini), and to the psychopathic Frank, a real monster of a villain, played with gusto by Dennis Hopper. The film has a nightmarish visual style and manages to be a mainstream film with avant-garde and arthouse influences. There's themes here of loss of innocence that are key to Lynch's preoccupation with the darkness that pervades American suburbia. This is a modern masterpiece and one that shows how Hollywood occasionally takes risks.