
Blue Velvet (1986) is screenwriter and maverick director David Lynch’s artistically bizarre cult film. It is an original look at sex, violence, crime and power under the peaceful exterior of small-town Americana in the mid-80s. Beneath the familiar, peaceful, ‘American-dream’ cleanliness of the daytime scenes lurks sleaziness, prostitution, unrestrained violence, and perversity – powerful and potentially-dangerous sexual forces that may be unleashed if not contained. A controversial film often criticized for its depiction of aberrant sexual behavior, the surrealistic, psychosexual film was a throwback to art films, 50s B-movies and teenage romances, film noir, and the mystery-suspense genre.
