“There hasn’t been an American film so rich, so formally controlled, so imaginatively cast and so charged with its maker’s psychosexual energy since Raging Bull.”
– J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

“A SPARKLING NEW PRINT! Perfectly preserved in its poisonous amber…
A postmodern date movie!”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

“The seamless blending of beauty and horror is remarkable, the terror very real, and the sheer wealth of imagination virtually unequalled in recent cinema.”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London)

(1986) Aaah! An azure sky; glistening red tulips along a white picket fence; a stalwart fireman, his Dalmatian beside him, waves from a firetruck moving in slo-mo; a crossing guard directs school kids; a woman sips tea in front of the TV, while her husband waters their manicured lawn — all in gorgeous color & Scope, accompanied by the oh-so-soothing voice of Bobby Vinton singing the title tune. But wait. Now the hose is caught — is the man having a stroke?! And why are we power-diving into the earth and seeing those disgusting bugs, in ultraclose- up?! Oh, wait a minute, this is a David Lynch film. So, here’s a tip for all-American square Kyle MacLachlan: Don’t check out the rotting, ant-infested severed ear in the grass. And, even though you’ve got this thing for mysterious “Blue Lady” Isabella Rossellini, Don’t hide in her bedroom closet in hopes of sneaking a peak. But this is a Lynch movie, so its depiction of idyllic “Lumberton, U.S.A.” shows its dark underside of sexual violence, kidnapping, murder, and karaoke, and, in Dennis Hopper’s amyl-nitrite-snorting Frank Booth, one of the most dangerous, repellent, and magnetic psychopaths ever to haunt the screen, while Laura Dern, in her first major role, incarnates the girl next door as extremely as Hopper does in essaying pure slime. Controversial from its premiere — Telluride audiences laughed consistently (but, as many viewers realized later after comparing notes, for completely different reasons) — Velvet polarized critics like no other movie, with a thumbsdowning from normal champion of the offbeat Roger Ebert, but with Boston, L.A., and National Film Critics awarding it, the Academy nominating Lynch for Best Director, and an anointing by Pauline Kael, who hailed its “charged erotic atmosphere” and “aural-visual humor and poetry.”
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