Blue Velvet

From Tv Tropes

Sandy: I can't tell if you're a detective or a pervert. Jeffery: Well that's for me to know and you to find out.

Blue Velvet (1986) is a mystery/noir film written and directed by David Lynch, which essentially served as a comeback film for the director after the critical and box office failure of 1984's Dune. Starring Lynch regulars Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, and Isabella Rossellini, and Dennis Hopper. The title Blue Velvet is taken from the 1963 Bobby Vinton song of the same name. The film, although barely breaking even commercially, shone in comparison to Dune and was highly acclaimed by critics, reviving Lynch's career and earning him his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Besides salvaging Lynch's career, the film is notable for launching Isabella Rossellini's acting career, having previously been known mainly as a fashion model, cosmetics spokeswoman and Ingrid Bergman's daughter.

The film tells the story of a college student Jeffrey Beaumont, who has returned home to his hometown of Lumberton, North Carolina after his father had a crippling stroke to help run the family business. A couple of days after arriving back into town, Jeffrey discovers a severed human ear in a grass field behind a neighborhood, which leads to Jeffrey deciding to play amateur detective with help from Sandy Williams, a high school student and daughter of Lieutenant John Williams, a detective in the town.

The investigation leads Jeffrey towards his town's dark, seedy underbelly as he discovers that the ear belongs to the husband of a roadhouse singer named Dorothy, a Broken Bird whose child has been kidnapped by the local crime boss (and complete psychopath) Frank Booth, in order to turn her into his virtual sex slave. Jeffrey finds himself drawn into Dorothy's nightmare as the film explores voyeuristic sex and drug-fueled crime as Jeffrey tries to save Dorothy from her living hell. Blue Velvet remains a leading example of the neo-noir genre, widely regarded as one of Lynch's greatest, most seminal works and has become a cult classic.

[edit] This movie contains examples of

• Adults Are Useless: Played straight for most of the film.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Frank is either a symbolic representation of evil, the Devil incarnate, or simply a psychopathic criminal. According to Dennis Hopper, the actor who played him, Frank is one of "The greatest male romantic leads of all time."
  • Jeffrey's character is also open to interpretation. Sandy jokingly asks if he's "a detective or some kind of pervert" when he first suggests spying on Dorothy. However, after we see how Jeffrey reacts to the situations he finds himself in, we can start taking Sandy's question into serious consideration. Does Jeffrey genuinely want to do his share of good in the world, or is he becoming obsessed with the thrill this mystery gives him?
• Amateur Sleuth: Jeffrey.
• Animal Motifs: The film is full of these, but they're mostly about bugs. In the beginning, there is a colony of beetle-like bugs crawling around just under the surface of the lawn that Jeffrey's father was keeping in pristine condition. The bugs are meant to represent the dark secrets lying just under the surface of the town itself. One of the shady characters is even named "Yellow Jacket." Throughout the film, Sandy references her dream about robins bringing light and love with them to eradicate darkness. Then, at the end of the film, a robin appears on the windowsill, holding one of the bugs from under the lawn in its beak, signifying the aforementioned arrival of light to end the darkness.
• Anything That Moves: Frank Booth, by his own estimation, in so many words.
• Arc Words: "It's a strange world."
• Ax Crazy: Booth again.
• Betty And Veronica: There's a sharp contrast between the sweet, wholesome and mentally sound Sandy and the mysterious, sexy, and mentally unhinged Dorothy, who represent the small town idyll and its hidden dark underbelly, respectively.
• Berserk Button: Doing just about any minor thing that Frank deems out-of-turn.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Frank could have saved himself a lot of trouble by killing Jeffrey instead of leaving off at a No Holds Barred Beatdown.
  • Though, to be fair, the guy isn't at a Bond Villain movie and is totally bonkers and believes his own crap.
• Break The Cutie: Jeffrey gets his fair share of this. Poor Dorothy is already very broken when we first meet her and gets worse.
• Camp Gay: Ben the pimp is played this way by Dean Stockwell.
• Chewing The Scenery: Dennis Hopper. Nom nom nom.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Frank Booth, full stop.
• Cluster F Bomb: Frank Booth is the only character in the whole movie to use the F word (except for Ben, and he only says it once when echoing a toast made by Frank), but he makes up for it by using it a lot. Like at least once per sentence.
• Crapsaccharine World: white picket fences and all.
• Depraved Bisexual: Frank puts on lipstick and kisses Jeffrey, before beating him half to death.
  • The script also strongly implies that he raped Jeffrey after beating him. Here's the actual excerpt from the screenplay:

    JEFFREY'S P.O.V. of rocks on the ground.He slowly picks up and looks around. The car is gone. He is swollen, bloody, and covered with lipstick. His pants have been pulled down and "FUCK YOU" has been written with lipstick on his legs. He struggles to his feet and pulls his pants up. He fastens his belt and begins limping up the dirt road highway. (If that ain't implied rape, what is?).

  • "Let's fuck! I'll fuck anything that moves!"
• Dirty Cop: T.R. Gordon, who's working with Frank and Ben.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Dorothy and Jeffrey.
• Emerging From The Shadows: Dorothy does this, in the background of a medium shot where Jeffrey is arguing with a minor character about something else - and then they start to realize that there's a bruised, bloody, naked woman staggering towards them, and even then it takes them a moment to realize that something terrible is happening. Perhaps the most low-key emergence from the shadows in the history of cinema.
  • Sandy's first appearance is also an emergence from the shadow of a tree.
• Establishing Character Moment: If you think Booth is a nice guy after his first scene, you need to share whatever it is you're smoking
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Maybe a little too much, as Frank's nitrous oxide-induced foreplay suggests.
• Evil Is Hammy: In an absolute nightmarish way.
• Evilly Affable: Ben, while he is one sauve fucker, he watches Frank punch Jeffrey in the face and force him to make a toast. Ben politely thanks Jeffrey for the toast, expresses concern for Jeffrey's face, and then punches him in the stomach and asks him if that's better
• Template:Fanservice: Dorothy's cruel treatment at the hands of Frank qualifies as this. An iconic scene has her nude amid the shrubbery after Frank beat her half to death, stripped her nude, and threw her out of a moving vehicle.
• Femme Fatale.
• Foe Yay: Of highly disturbing and not very sexy variety.
• G Rated Drug: While resembling nitrous oxide, the drug Booth inhales is never explicitly named, nor is the substance he traffics with Ben.
• Hair Trigger Temper: Really. There are other characters in this movie besides Booth. You have to trust me on this.
• Ho Yay: Booth - purveyor of depraved, squicky ho yay.
• Hormone Addled Teenager: There are a few of them.
• Large Ham: GET READY TO FUCK YOU FUCKER'S FUCKER !!!
• Mean Character Nice Actor: Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth. Really, he's actually funny, friendlier and nicer than his monstruos character. See the DVD extra and you'll know.
  • Ironically, when Dennis Hopper first read the script, he purportedly called up David Lynch and said, "David, you have to let me play Frank! BECAUSE I AM FRANK!"
• Memetic Mutation: This film really helped the makers of Heineken!? Fuck That Shit! Pabst! Blue! Ribbon!! Then again, no one really wants to be like Frank so drinking Heineken might not be so bad. Additionally, Pabst Blue Ribbon was off the market for a long time due to poor sales. Perhaps this movie was the reason?
  • DON'T YOU FUCKING LOOK AT ME!
  • Near this troper's flat is a shop that specialises in imported goods from the USA and Mexico, and it does a brisk line in Pabst Blue Ribbon, having indeed a sign in the window featuring a still from this movie of Dennis Hopper inhaling gas and the slogan "Pabst! Blue! Ribbon! If it's good enough for Frank Booth it's good enough for you."
• Meta Twist: See Mind Screw.
• Mind Screw: Notably absent for the most part, given the director's other works. There are still bits and pieces that you'd be forgiven for missing on first view, however.
• Monster Clown: Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" or "CANDY COLORED CLOWN!!!" is a Monster Clown in the form of a song. Interestingly enough, Dean Stockwell, who lip-synchs the song while wearing white make up and exotic clothing, comes across as a Monster Clown Pimp.
• No Holds Barred Beatdown: Booth beats Jeffrey nearly to death in one scene.
• No Indoor Voice.
• Not So Different: "You're like me..."
• Oh Crap: Jeffrey; first when he sees "the well-dressed man" coming up the stairs to Dorothy's apartment, and then again when he realizes it's Booth wearing a mask. Booth himself gets a rather subtle one when he flings open the closet door only to find Jeffrey pointing a revolver right at his forehead.
• Out Gambited: Frank, at the end. Mind you, he didn't have much brain to try a gambit, but he was confident that he was on a roll...
• Precision F Strike: "Here's to your health fuck, Frank."
• Product Placement: As mentioned above...

  Frank: So what kind of beer do you like?

  Jeff: Heineken.

  Frank: Heineken?! Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!

• Psychopathic Manchild: ...anyone? Anyone?
• Rear Window Investigation.
• Sex Slave: Frank towards takes Dorothy.
• Sir Swears A Lot: Frank is one of the most disturbing examples of this trope imaginable. "Don't you fucking look at me! DON'T YOU FUCKING LOOK AT ME!!!"
• Soundtrack Dissonance: In addition to the titular "Blue Velvet", the film also features very disturbing usage of "In Dreams" by Roy Orbison. Orbison refused to let Lynch use the song, but Lynch was able to find a loophole to get around his lack of permission. Orbison later changed his mind anyway.
  • The song playing when the cops shoot up Frank's base of operations.
• This Is Sparta: "Heineken?! Fuck that shit! Pabst! Blue! Ribbon!"
• Titled After The Song.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible: David Lynch FTW / WTF. And this is probably Lynch's most straightforward movie (other than The Straight Story).
• Unusual Euphemism: "He put his disease in me."
• What Could Have Been: As Blue Velvet was conceived as a comeback film after the failure of Dune, David Lynch has opined publicly over the years that the film would never have been made had he taken up George Lucas' offer to direct Return of the Jedi instead of doing Dune.
  • Frank's tank was originally meant to be filled with Helium...
  • Lynch filmed a four-hour movie, which was cut down to one hour fifty-nine minutes by the studio. There's a whole two hours and one minutes worth of missing footage.
  • Sandy was originally to be played by John Hughes's muse Molly Ringwald, but she turned down the role, fearing it would taint her family-friendly image.
  • Val Kilmer was offered the role of Jeffrey but turned it down, saying that the script he read "was straight-out, hardcore pornography before page 30". Kilmer stated that, if he had been given a copy of the script that Lynch eventually filmed, he would have gladly taken the part.
  • Harry Dean Stanton turned down the chance to be Frank Booth. He'd go on to work with Lynch anyway, with minor roles in Fire Walk With Me and The Straight Story, but still.
• What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made On Drugs?: It's David Lynch. Really, do you have to ask?
  • Compared to a lot of his other films, this one is actually really straightforward.
• You Bastard: Some have interpreted Frank's "You're like me" comment (as he stares almost directly at the camera) as an example of this trope.

[edit] Notes

Template:Reflist

This page uses content from TV Tropes. The original article was at BlueVelvet. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of this article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.

Template:2013

Template:Updated