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Blue Velvet Play Trailer

Blue Velvet (1986)

tomatometer

92

Average Rating: 8.6/10
Reviews Counted: 38
Fresh: 35 | Rotten: 3

If audiences walk away from this subversive, surreal shocker not fully understanding the story, they might also walk away with a deeper perception of the potential of film storytelling.

No Score Yet...

Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 4
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 2

If audiences walk away from this subversive, surreal shocker not fully understanding the story, they might also walk away with a deeper perception of the potential of film storytelling.

audience

87

liked it
Average Rating: 4/5
User Ratings: 72,364

My Rating

Movie Info

Director David Lynch crafted this hallucinogenic mystery-thriller that probes beneath the cheerful surface of suburban America to discover sadomasochistic violence, corruption, drug abuse, crime and perversion. Kyle Maclachlan stars as Jeffrey Beaumont, a square-jawed young man who returns to his picture-perfect small town when his father suffers a stroke. Walking through a field near his home, Jeff discovers a severed human ear, which he immediately brings to the police. Their disinterest

R,

Mystery & Suspense, Drama

David Lynch

Feb 4, 1999

MGM

Watch It Now

Cast

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Blue Velvet Trailer & Photos

Critic Reviews for Blue Velvet

All Critics (46) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (45) | Rotten (3) | DVD (43)

It made me feel pity for the actors who worked in it and anger at the director for taking liberties with them.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | Comments (59)
Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Not quite like any other thriller or erotic mystery you've ever seen.

January 1, 2000
John Hartl
Film.com
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The movie doesn't progress or deepen, it just gets weirder, and to no good end.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Washington Post | Comments (6)
Paul Attanasio
Washington Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

One which David Lynch fans will want to watch over and over in HD, and which non-fans ought to see at least once.

December 29, 2011 Full Review Source: Movie Metropolis
James Plath
Movie Metropolis

Works brilliantly as an allegory of American repression and willful illusion of order, Lumberton's forced-smile '50s sensibility unable to keep down the anarchic, raging id that is humanity's primal drive. [Blu-ray]

November 15, 2011 Full Review Source: Groucho Reviews
Peter Canavese
Groucho Reviews

For as diverse as Lynch's filmography is, Blue Velvet is quite possibly his masterwork. There's a strange mix of comfort and beauty with terror and awfulness.

November 13, 2011 Full Review Source: 7M Pictures
Kevin Carr
7M Pictures

The Blue-ray 25th anniversary of David Lynch's 1986 small-town mystery drama reaffirms its status as his most fully realized picture--his personal masterpiece and a highlight of the New American Cinema.

November 10, 2011 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | Comment (1)
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com

shocking, perverse, funny, unsettling, scathing, biting, and twisted, but undeniably original

November 10, 2011 Full Review Source: Q Network Film Desk
James Kendrick
Q Network Film Desk

A terrific, finely-tuned presentation of a landmark American movie, complete with flaming nipples, minus cackling audience members.

November 7, 2011 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine
Jaime N. Christley
Slant Magazine

One of the most subversive films of the 1980s, delving into the corrupt underside of the then-idealized faux innocence of the 1950s with an almost alarming ferocity.

July 1, 2010 Full Review Source: Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
Ken Hanke
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

Surreal, graphic shocker of small-town sin.

June 17, 2009 Full Review Source: Common Sense Media
Charles Cassady
Common Sense Media

In 1986 David Lynch broke the language of cinema wide open in the same way that Jackson Pollock did with the art world in the early '40s.

May 11, 2009 Full Review Source: ColeSmithey.com | Comments (6)
Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com

a beautiful film about sickness, a funny film about degeneracy

June 16, 2006 Full Review Source: Cinemania
Dan Jardine
Cinemania Source: Cinemania

In this impressive work, released after the flop of Dune, David Lynch addresses issues of order and disorder, normal and abnormal sexuality, good and evil, while telling a classic American coming-of-age story.

December 22, 2005 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com
View all critic reviews (46)

Audience Reviews for Blue Velvet

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Lynchian thrill at its best, this is just one of director David Lynch's heralded magnum opuses. The film has the same overall tone of creepiness, insidious intent, and villainy, on an under your skin level, as many of his other films. Described as a film about the deep recesses of sadomasochism and crime that crawls beneath sugar sweet suburbia, I find it to be much more than that. That description makes it seem that suburbia is placed in the forefront, and all the intermingling characters are outsiders in the world that villain Frank builds around victim Dorothy, when in reality no one in this film is anywhere near normal. College student Jeffery (McLachlan) is based in prep but veers more toward strange voyeur throughout most of the film. He is the main representation of normal in the film, and yet he time and again does strange, daringly stupid things in his quest to help Dorothy. Dorothy is played by Isabella Rossellini in yet another turn as an obsessed, anachronistic character. She plays the victimized mother so well and especially comes off as vulnerable and wronged against Dennis Hopper's Frank. Hopper has always been able to play the misinformed, violent, beyond cruel character so well, and here he is at his peak. Not only does he affront motherhood, family, and the supposedly suburban way of life, but he is also unaffected by death and sexual coercion. I have never seen a grosser, more ambivalent villain in film history, and there is no one else to play this character than the incomparable Hopper. The tension that is built up through this thrilling neo-noir is palpable, only broken when Jeffery goes back into the normalcy that he thought always preceded him, but now is tainted by his knowledge of Frank and the town's seedy underbelly. Besides being bizarre plot wise, and through these dense characters, Lynch also lets the town hang overhead as its own sick and dispassionate witness to everything that happens, not stressing how false its ideals are, but constructs it to mirror two different worlds balanced by naiveté. These kinds of films, strange and non-inclusive, usually generate a lot of negativity, but when you watch it, it is gothic and has a feeling of otherness that cannot be replicated. Lynch's vibe in these films make him the great director that he is, and there is no better example as violence as a mechanism for creepy than this peerless film.
September 27, 2010
FrizzDrop
Spencer S.

Super Reviewer

Blue Velvet is highly overrated film from David Lynch which ultimately still stands as one of his best known and most appreciated work to date.
In my opinion it is far from his best and lacks the playful and experimental greatness of his best works like Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire.
Typically dreamy small town setting is pure Lynch with familiar touches of surreal horror lurking beneath the ordinary family life, but this time Lynch's more conventional approach feels honestly boring and messy.
Most of the acting is completely out of place. Isabella Rosselini sleepwalks through her role and it is hard imagine that it was the intention here. Kyle MacLachlan can be seen as a character which more than echoes of his later role as Dale Cooper in Lynch's Twin Peaks. Dennis Hopper's performance is the thing here which annoys me the most. It is a performance so over the top that within the very first minute, since his appearance in film, watching his rolling his eyes and screaming becomes simply frustrating. He is spitting out his lines like a hound from hell, but all that manic yelling make his character and performance just more annoying than brooding, which it in the first place was clearly supposed to be.
There are occasional flashes of that trademark atmosphere of Lynch's but overall Blue Velvet is one of the weakest films in his filmography. A film that is bordeline offensive and quite honestly feels like an dirty voyeurist itself.
May 9, 2009
emilkakko
Emil Kakko

Super Reviewer

Blue Velvet Quotes

View All
    1. Jeffrey Beaumont: [as Frank fondles Dorothy in front of him] Leave her alone!
    – Submitted by David E (5 months ago)
    1. Frank Booth: Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst! Blue! Ribbon!
    – Submitted by Casey B (5 months ago)
    1. Frank Booth: No I want you to fuck it.
    – Submitted by Jack M (5 months ago)
    1. Frank Booth: Shut Up! It's Daddy, S***head.
    – Submitted by Alex K (5 months ago)
    1. Frank Booth: F*** You, F***ing F***!
    – Submitted by Alex K (5 months ago)
    1. Frank Booth: You're like me.
    – Submitted by Daniel m (8 months ago)

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