DVD REVIEW: Blue Velvet (1986)

After the thorough disaster that was Dune, David Lynch needed a comeback, something distinctive and artistic to remind audiences that he was still capable of an Eraserhead or The Elephant Man. Blue Velvet is what he came up with and it is in some ways the epitome of his style of filmmaking.

A plot synopsis of Blue Velvet will always, at least initially, make the film sound like a movie for young adults. Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) is an amateur sleuth who begins investigating a mysterious woman, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who may have ties to a group of violent criminals (including Frank, played by Dennis Hopper). He is assisted by Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), who is the daughter of the local police officer (George Dickerson) who has warned Jeffrey to keep out of danger.

The film initially has the feel of a cheesy 1940s film noir and it often approaches a spoof of the genre. The idyllic American suburbia, all white picket fences and waving firemen, is presented in all its wholesomeness (more on this shortly) while Jeffrey’s first meeting with Officer Williams is scripted with all the naïveté and comic frankness you’d expect from an old fashioned crime film. However, one of Lynch’s most interesting innovations here is his inclusion of discordant elements, which play with such simplistic generic markers. Famously, his camera moves deep into the Beaumont’s well-tended lawn to reveal the darkness and violence of the insects living within it. And his first exchange with Officer Williams immediately follows his gruesome discovery of a dismembered human ear, which is much too graphic and sinister for a 1940s potboiler. Or, more humorously but nonetheless equally telling of the morbid side of human nature, his grandmother tells Jeffrey to keep safe while watching a film on TV which features an armed man skulking up a dark flight of steps. Lynch frequently moves back and forth between these two modes – the mystery entertainment and the dark horror – keeping the audience constantly uneasy, unsure whether they are watching something funny or deadly serious. Far from a balancing act, Lynch wants his film to shift awkwardly, to not make sense, these stylistics being only a means to an end.

Blue Velvet is intentionally unclear, but there are certain themes that are clearly represented. Jeffrey Beaumont is an amateur sleuth, a plucky kid who naïvely gets involved in things that are too serious for him to initially comprehend. However, this is not restricted to the crime-story plot (the plot in Blue Velvet is fairly marginal anyway), but also to Jeffrey’s sexual awakening. Sandy makes this clear when she wonders if he is “a detective or a pervert.” In keeping with Lynch’s strategy of employing discordant moments, Jeffrey smiles but significantly does not reassure her about his mental state. As Jeffrey witnesses more and more sexual perversions during the course of the film, it is suggested more and more that he might actually get turned on by it. Just as he unexpectedly proves to be a rather capable detective, he also proves to be a bit of a pervert. In both senses, Blue Velvet can be read as a rite of passage story, in which Jeffrey must chose between a wholesome life with Sandy in suburbia or a perverse one with Dorothy in a dark apartment (as a side note, can each of his visits to Dorothy’s apartment be said to represent a further step in his maturation?).

The film is essentially dreamlike, following as it does the logic of dreams. While the more dreamy moments – the shots of the suburbs, “Blue Velvet” sang by either Bobby Vinton or Isabella Rossellini – are more clearly structured and recognisable, the nightmarish moments appear without warning and often have an unclear connection to the rest of the film – the sudden appearance of Frank and his attack on Dorothy, the visit to Ben (scored with its own love song but this time darkly out of place – “In Dreams” by Roy Orbison) and Jeffrey’s final visit to Dorothy’s apartment. Sandy, introduced in a style that emphasises her goodness and wholesomeness (as well as the 1940s potboilers the film is referring to), talks about having a dream in which darkness is defeated by robins and, in an idyllic ending, Jeffrey and Sandy see a triumphant robin eating one of the violent insects from Jeffrey’s lawn. It is unclear here whether Lynch ends his film on a sincere and optimistic note about the overcoming of evil by good or whether he is merely still spoofing the idealism and hope of the American Dream. Many people prefer to view Blue Velvet as a film about dark impulses, which hide behind white picket fences and carefully manicured lawns, others as a plea for good old-fashioned goodness. Where one extremity is too misanthropic if not nihilistic the other is too optimistic, leaving a gap in the film, which can only be filled by the viewer. As with the best kind of ambiguity, the interpretation that you choose reveals something about you as a person.

Apart from maybe The Elephant Man and The Straight Story, Blue Velvet is Lynch’s most accessible film and offers an interesting framework for deciphering his other work – in this way, it is also his most recognisably Lynchian film. It is a ‘difficult’ film if only in the sense of an artist pursuing his own artistic agenda, unconcerned that the majority of his viewers might misunderstand or misinterpret his work. Though it is unclear whether he is having a laugh or if he is being deadly serious – The Straight Story and Wild At Heart may or may not offer clues here – Blue Velvet is not a slapdash, meaningless film that Lynch’s critics (myself included) claim he can’t help but make, but a challenging, interesting and sinister retelling of the rite of passage story.

See also:

Scanners

From Beyond

The Commander

Bemusement: The Worst Facial Expression in American Cinema

DVD REVIEW: From Beyond (1986)

Stuart Gordon is a horror director who owes his cult credentials to only one film: 1985’s loose H. P. Lovecraft adaptation Re-Animator. A low-budget schlocky horror-comedy with a lot of splatter, Re-Animator has been made harder and harder to be fond of following two unlikeable sequels (Bride of Re-Animator and Beyond Re-Animator), directed by Brian Yuzna, the producer of the original Re-Animator and Gordon’s own 1986 follow-up From Beyond.

With Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton returning from Re-Animator, From Beyond is essentially a re-run of the previous hit albeit with a role reversal. Dr Crawford Tillinghast (Combs) and Dr Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel, channelling Ernest Thesiger from Bride of Frankenstein in more than just name) are working on a machine that can stimulate the pineal gland of any human nearby, allowing them to see visions of a world beyond their senses. Pretorius is apparently killed when the experiment goes wrong and Tillinghast is committed as a crazed schizophrenic.

While institutionalised, Tillinghast meets Dr Katherine McMichaels (Crampton), who is intrigued by his research and who manages to get Tillinghast released into her custody. With policeman Bubba Brownlee (a very good Ken Foree, the lead in the original Dawn of the Dead, now slumming it in Rob Zombie’s terrible movies) keeping a wary eye on Tillinghast, they return to the site of the experiment in order to carry it out again. It is not long before an evil presence from another world starts to affect their minds.

As with Re-Animator, the plot is not essential as Stuart Gordon’s primary concern here are the special effects, which have aged reasonably well. In the 1980s, especially after the innovations in the transformation sequence in the otherwise rather dull An American Werewolf in London, horror filmmakers tackled special effects with élan and ingenuity. Whether the film was serious, as in Cronenberg, or less so, the make-up and special effects were effective precisely because they felt so homemade and weirdly natural. Fake blood will always be more convincing than its spurting CGI counterpart, which has taken a lot of the fun out of these kinds of films, and there is always something likable about a film that puts its actors through all manner of splatter and uncomfortable make-up.

However, as convincing as the majority of the special effects remain, splatter films are rarely well paced and are almost always perched on the wrong side of camp. As a result, From Beyond does not have much of a plot and the actors do not really have very much to do other than gawk at whatever the special effects team throw at them. As well as this, it is difficult to take the film all that seriously as you are constantly waiting for the next gag rather than the next scare. There is little to no suspense and the film is never frightening. With its focus on the pineal gland and abnormalities therein, From Beyond fits into the body horror category and yet it does not manage to convey the same levels of disgust and unease that Cronenberg can without really trying. As good as the special effects are, From Beyond is almost entirely focussed on them to the exclusion of nearly everything else.

Having said that, the film is not devoid of other interests. The actors are all reasonably good, particularly Ken Foree, who keeps the film somewhat down to earth and likable. There is an entire set piece involving a giant worm during which Foree is wearing only very small underwear because, after all, he just got out of bed. Combs continues to show his ability to overact and say ridiculous things while keeping an entirely straight face. Early in the film, he stares directly at the camera, his face twisted in sheer terror, and says, “It bit off his head…like a gingerbread man.” Crampton’s obvious miscasting only adds to the fun and she gamely pretends to be an expert psychiatrist. Sorel is entertaining as the villain almost in spite of the sheer amount of make-up on him. A lot of the film takes place inside a creepy house on Benevolent Street and Combs, Crampton and Foree make an engaging trio, so much so that when the film splits them up and moves to a different location it is much less interesting. Ultimately, From Beyond is undone by messy plotting more than anything else.

From Beyond, despite having the bigger budget and more special effects, seems like a toned down version of Re-Animator. It is not as dark or as funny or as well paced. However, it is reasonably entertaining in the same way as the 1960s Hammer horrors and the 1930s monster movies. Its major flaws are that is not scary enough and that it is too focussed on special effects at the expense of plotting and characterization. It feels a lot more calculated than the surprise hit Re-Animator, the attempt at making more of same betraying the spirit of the original. Though still fun, it is probably best suited for a boring afternoon than a late night.

See also: The Commander (1988) and Scanners (1981)