The Twin Geeks 45: Blue Velvet

David Lynch's psycho-sexual thriller masterwork not only paved the way for much of his defining work to come but remains as frightening and potent as it was when it initially premiered. Blue Velvet is a beautiful and tragic story about so many things: corruption of youth, the decline of 1950s idealism, sexual discovery, the face of true evil, and The American Dream. Between all the nightmarish horror of Dennis Hopper's legendary villain, there are smatterings of nostalgia and melancholy sprinkled in. Lynch puts forward an actual nightmare come to life, which means it must start out very much like a wonderful dream before everything is set to turn on its head. The themes and ideas explored in Blue Velvet would go on to be more thoroughly embodied by Lynch's later work -- namely, Mulholland Dr. (2000) and Twin Peaks (1990-1991 & 2017), the generation-defining television series for which this site is named -- but nonetheless, Blue Velvet continues to be a paragon of Lynch's unique and bizarre kind of filmmaking. A perfect intersection of commercial appeal and Lynchian surreality.

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