Blue Velvet on DVD

David Lynch's Blue Velvet is a strange, atmospheric mystery set in Small Town USA.

Kyle KacLachlan, fresh from the flawed Lynch version of Dune, stars as an amateur sleuth who gets in over his head. His discovery of a severed human ear sets him off on a trail that threatens to turn his sleepy little logging town into a nightmarish den of evil and depravity.

Aiding him, or at least egging him on, in his odyssey is soon-to-be-girlfriend Laura Dern, who looks like a character right out of a 1950's high school prom flick. McLaughlan soon finds himself face to face with an evil whacko (deliciously played by Dennis Hopper), and he's drawn into a brutal world of drug dealing and blackmailing.

Isabella Rossellini is a local girl in trouble; she's a singer in a local club, but she's also a mother whose husband and child appear to have been grabbed by Hopper and his henchmen - and she's forced into rough sexual acts with Hopper as she attempts to ensure the continued health of her family.

Or is she really being forced?

Lynch has crafted a strange, yet compelling, movie that's beautifully shot and lit, and features outstanding performances. Hopper chews the scenery, but rather than his over the top performance being excessive he's actually perfectly scary and chilling. Rossellini turns in a haunting, yet haunted performance as the sex slave cum illicit lover, and Dern is appropriately fresh and innocent. MacLachlan does a good job, too, as he's dragged deeper and deeper into places he really shouldn't be going.

Blue Velvet may not be a particularly mainstream movie, but it's certainly a work of art and it's well worth seeing. It isn't for everyone, especially the squeamish, but it definitely deserves its place in cinema history.

And the DVD is very well done, too. The picture, which is anamorphic widescreen (16x9 TV compatible), is crisp, bright and colorful, and this high resolution helps make the movie look and feel even creepier. MGM says the new original transfer was supervised by director Lynch, and if that's true his presence wasn't wasted.

Audio is Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and it's pretty good. There isn't a lot of surround, and sometimes there's distortion from the center channel (particularly when some of the characters shout or scream), but overall it's fine.

This MGM Special Edition DVD also comes with a full slate of extras, including a 70 minute documentary on the film, featuring new cast and crew interviews and with some fascinating insights into the film and its director's unique vision.

There's also Siskel and Ebert's original review of the film (with Ebert's smarmy and elitist liberal slant well in evidence), a photo gallery that tries to reconstruct an original, longer cut of the film (but a cut for which much of the extra film footage was lost). The package also lists a "collectible booklet," but this is nothing more than a liner note essay (Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course).

Other extras include the trailer, and an interview with David Lynch.

Blue Velvet, from MGM Home Video
121 min. anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1), 16x9 TV compatible, Dolby Digital 5.1
Starring Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern
Produced by Fred Caruso
Written and Directed by David Lynch

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