Blue Velvet

»Are you a detective or a pervert?«, High School beauty Sandy asks the inquisitive Jeffrey. He came to the sleepy town of Lumberton to visit his sick father, found a severed ear – and finds himself up to the neck in some disturbing horror fairy tale, featuring the psychopath Frank (a legendary Dennis Hopper) and nightclub singer femme fatale Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini). It's about drugs and kidnapping, but also about perversion and innocence, about pain and power. The line between perverts and detectives is blurry indeed in Lynch's comeback movie after the DUNE disaster, that at the same time heralded his most creative cinematic phase. Once again evil dwells right between white picket fences and singing robins, and its forms are as bizarre as they are fascinating. BLUE VELVET, which earned lynch his third Oscar nomination, became a cult favourite of the 80s and another important figurehead for Lynch's trademark mixture of mysterious sex, abrupt violence and swinging Roy Orbison tunes.