Blue Velvet

David Lynch let Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell loose – to haunting effect – in his surreal 1986 trip through the underbelly of small-town America.

Welcome to Lumberton.

After a family health scare brings college student Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) back to his idyllic hometown, he soon discovers that not everything is as it seems. The catalyst comes in the form of a severed human ear Jeffrey finds in an abandoned lot, and soon he finds himself drawn into a dark mystery.

Curator's note

Marking a shift away from the industrial cityscape of his young adulthood, Blue Velvet begins a new stage of Lynch’s filmmaking as he veers toward the dark side of the small-town America he grew up in.

With nods to Alfred Hitchcock and Luis Buñuel, Lynch’s alluring film noir – with heavy emphasis on the noir – draws audiences into the darkness hiding under the surface of place and person.

Blue Velvet attracted emphatic critical acclaim upon its release, whetting our collective appetite for stories set in small towns where everyone knows everyone, and nothing is what it seems.

– Reece Goodwin, Curator (Film & TV)