Blue Velvet
Amazon.co.uk Review
David Lynch peeks behind the picket fences of small-town America to reveal a corrupt shadow world of malevolence, sadism and madness. From the opening shots Lynch turns the Technicolor picture postcard images of middle-class homes and tree-lined lanes into a dreamy vision on the edge of nightmare. After his father collapses in a preternaturally eerie sequence, college boy Kyle MacLachlan returns home and stumbles across a severed human ear in a vacant lot. With the help of sweetly innocent high school girl (Laura Dern), he turns junior detective and uncovers a frightening yet darkly compelling world of voyeurism and sex. Drawn deeper into the brutal world of drug dealer and blackmailer Frank, played with raving mania by an obscenity-shouting Dennis Hopper in a career-reviving performance, he loses his innocence and his moral bearings when confronted with pure, unexplainable evil. Isabella Rossellini is terrifyingly desperate as Hopper’s sexual slave who becomes MacLachlan’s illicit lover, and Dean Stockwell purrs through his role as Hopper’s oh-so-suave buddy. Lynch strips his surreally mundane sets to a ghostly austerity, which composer Angelo Badalamenti encourages with the smooth, spooky strains of a lush score. Blue Velvet is a disturbing film that delves into the darkest reaches of psycho-sexual brutality and simply isn’t for everyone. But for a viewer who wants to see the cinematic world rocked off its foundations, David Lynch delivers a nightmarish masterpiece. –Sean Axmaker
I should start by saying that I’ve never paid much attention to talk of good and bad ‘prints’ of movies, and always regarded it as a bit of movie snobbery. Until now, I’ve never purchased a DVD that left me seriously unhappy with the quality of the image.
I’m afraid this DVD (by Prism Leisure Corporation) changed all that. Quite simply, it’s dreadful. Ok, it’s a budget DVD, but frankly, if someone offers you this DVD for *free* you should politely decline.
Blue Velvet is one of my favourite movies. I bought this DVD as an upgrade from my aging VHS version. But after 20 minutes of trying to watch the DVD, I ejected it and went back to my old VHS.
In this version, the colours are washed out and muddy; the contrast is terrible; the image is far from sharp. In the dark scenes (and there are a lot of them) you’ll frequently find yourself staring at a black screen. In short, watching this DVD is like seeing the movie on a seriously sick TV.
Really, you should give this a miss. Watch it on tape, or on the (much more expensive) special edition DVD (which I’ve now discovered is much much better and does the movie justice).
I can’t believe that I’m writing a 1-star review of Blue Velvet!!
For the movie, five stars, easily. But because of the quality of this DVD, I’m knocking off four of them (and would knock off all five if I could). The movie is stunning, powerful, harrowing. This DVD is just harrowing. Avoid it like the plague.
Rating: 1 / 5
I remember my parents watching Twin Peaks when I was little and we had the soundtrack, a haunting, melodious collection of music that had me spellbound when I first heard it. However it wasn’t till I was older and saw Blue Velvet that David Lynch began to take over my mind. . .
If you’ve never seen David Lynch this is a good place to start as it has a combination of his trademark obscurity (seen perhaps best in Eraserhead, Lost Highway and Twin Peaks FWWM) and a reasonably linear structure (though not as coherent as The Straight Story), so incorporating some of the finest techniques of his work. The plot is bizarre, complex and perverse leaving unanswered questions and disturbing imagery firmly impressioned on the mind. Blue Velvet creates a remarkably hokey smalltown American town and explores the sinister mechanics behind the seemingly placid facade. No one else can combine tacky diners, convenience stores, picket fences and tweeting robins with the sadomasochistic underworld quite like Lynch can.
Watch it and you’ll never forget it. Watch any more of his films and you’ll never think about cinema the same again!!
Rating: 5 / 5
In many ways, the opening sequence of Blue Velvet captures perfectly the ironic, slightly sinister but also darkly amusing take on americana which is prevailent in much of Lynch’s work. His perspective is undoubtedly a fascinating one, both terrifying and strangely magnetic. As the father collapses to the sounds of fifties pop, its dreamy often delicious melody lulls the viewer, evoking a mood that continues throughout a film where one experiences an almost halluogenic view of the underbelly of an everyday american town. It could be argued that it is Hopper’s portrayal of psychotic madman Frank Booth that captures centre stage, and he is without doubt a truly memorable cinematic creation. However, it was the naivety of Kyle MacLaclan’s youthful character, combined with Rossellini’s interpretation of a tortured but beautiful sexual paradox, both predator and victim which I found most interesting. Their relationship, and the violation of MacLachlan’s innocence that it initiates is both startling and frighteningly magnetic. The claustrophobic world of Blue Velvet is somehow liberating, Lynch casts aside the viewer’s expectations and perceptions, they are shed much like MacLachlans fragile innocence, his percieved corruption a watershed for the viewer.
There have been some gripes about the technical virtues of the DVD itself, however I had no problems whatsoever. The picture quality was great as was the sound. If you’re some kind of DVD anorak [no offence intended] you might find some obscure detail to take issue with; but as far as I could see, the film was in no way impaired.
The film is quite simply brilliant, although its conclusion is perhaps a little too neat. On the whole however, it is a great production and well worth your money. An american film by an american director which could almost be labelled a work of art. You can’t proclaim that too often.
Rating: 5 / 5
Not meaning to contradict other reviewers, but I thought I’d lend my opinion about the controversy surrounding this DVD release. Basically, I put off buying this for so long simply because of many of the reviews on here complaining about the picture and quality on the region 2 version. The other day however, I DID buy it and was pleasantly surprised.
I own the 4Front video release and this DVD just trashes it in terms of picture quality and sound… in the video you can’t see what’s going on half the time because it’s too dark, the colour is over-saturated and the sound is too low.
Sure, it hasn’t been remastered or anything, much like the Castle release of ‘Dune’ but it IS a good transfer. MUCH better than the video, which really spoilt my enjoyment of the film.
On to the film itself. ‘Blue Velvet’ is probably David Lynch’s defining moment and masterpiece. Where as ‘Eraserhead’ and ‘Twin Peaks’ are strong cult films [and TV series], ‘Blue Velvet’ was a heavy blip on the timeline of American cinema. Certainly without it such films as ‘American Beauty’ wouldn’t have come about, although that’s not to say that this film is anything like that… Lynch’s vision of the darkness beneath suburban USA and the human psyche is much darker and explicit.
It all starts with the discovery of a severed human ear in a field and spirals downward from there into a psychosexual thriller involving some of the best characterization I’ve ever seen, especially by Denis Hopper who is FANTASTIC as the evil Frank Booth. Simply put, this is a film you will NOT forget and will haunt your thoughts long afterwards. It’s dark, it’s elaborate, it’s Lynch.
Rating: 5 / 5
David Lynch’s dark masterpiece “Blue Velvet” surely qualifies as one of the greatest films of the 80’s; possibly Lynch’s best. Its themes of lust, murder, kidnap, mystery and voyeurism are interwoven with suberb imagery and terrific performances. Dennis Hopper’s portrayal of the deviant Frank Booth must rank as one of the greatest screen villians of all time; He practically bursts off the screen and steals every scene he’s in. “Blue Velvet” is so successful because it’s one of those rare films that seems to exist all in a world of its own, and as a result it is a film to watch again and again. All of which counts for nothing if you purchase the Region 2 DVD edition of the film. The picture and sound quality are possibly the worst examples you’ll ever have to endure. To compound this fact, the initial Disc was only available in full-screen. The film was shot in the 2.35:1 format, which means you are losing almost 50% of the picture if you can’t watch it in widescreen. The newer version of the british disc claims it’s in widescreen, but its only a 16:9 presentation, which is essentially a fake widescreen version with black bars stuck over the top and bottom of the screen. The extras on the initial disc are pathetic; a rather dull portrait gallery is all we get. The picture is so bad that it looks like a scrim has been placed over your t.v. screen. The region 1 version is framed correctly at 2.35:1, and has a Dolby Pro-logic soundtrack, but I haven’t been able to watch this version. In short, if your player is multi-region,check that disc out. The storage capacity of DVD is such that we could have had a stunning widescreen presentation loaded with extras, but instead we end up with a version 10 times worse than outdated old VHS. “Blue Velvet” Is a film worthy of 5 stars; the disc gets 1 star simply for existing. Avoid.
Rating: 1 / 5