Distributed by
Castle Home Video

Cert:

Cat.no: CHV 5009

Running time: 116 minutes

Year: 1986

Pressing: 2000

Region(s): 2, PAL

Chapters: 19 plus extras

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Stereo)

Languages: English

Subtitles: None

Widescreen: 2.10:1 (J-D-C Scope)

16:9-Enhanced: No

Macrovision: Yes

Disc Format: DVD 9

Price: £19.99

Extras: Booklet, Dennis Hopper Interview

Director:

David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Dune, The Elephant Man, Eraserhead, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, The Straight Story, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Wild at Heart, TV: Hotel Room, On the Air, Twin Peaks)

Producer:

Fred Caruso

Screenplay:

David Lynch

Music:

Angelo Badalamenti

Cast:

Jeffrey Beaumont: Kyle MacLachlan
Dorothy Vallens: Isabella Rossellini
Frank Booth: Dennis Hopper
Sandy Williams: Laura Dern
Ben: Dean Stockwell
Detective John D. Williams: George Dickerson
Raymond: Brad Dourif

After he visits his father in hospital he stops off at a derelict plot of land where he regularly goes to think and chuck stones at the dusty bottles close by. Searching in the undergrowth for more projectiles, he finds a severed human ear, diseased and covered in bugs. Gingerly picking it up he takes it for investigation to Detective John D. Williams (George Dickerson), but since he can't be told much about the case itself he begins his own investigation, taking the detective's daughter Sandy (Laura Dern) along for the ride.

She suspects Dorothy, which leads to more than a bizarre encounter or two as Jeffrey breaks into her apartment and witnesses her relationship with psycho killer Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper, as brilliant as always) and the extraordinary Ben (Dean Stockwell, in a role as far removed from Quantum Leap as you could possibly get, which was what I had seen him in the most before first watching this film).

Blue Velvet is not one for the faint-hearted with its seriously sado-masochistic overtones, strong language and violence, plus an incredible moment where a dead man's point of balance is such that it leaves him standing up.

About the best thing I can say about the film's presentation is that it's not the 4:3 pan-and-scan version that was originally released. However, while the film was shot at a ratio of 2.35:1, the print used here isn't quite as wide as it should be, losing around 10% of the original image and it's not anamorphic. The Region 1 DVD is but by all accounts it was done on the cheap by trying to boost a standard letterboxed image and it came off badly. I don't know if their disc suffered a fair number of dropouts on the print as this one does though. The average bitrate is 4.70Mb/s occasionally peaking over 8Mb/s.

The sound is equally disappointing with only the original Dolby Stereo soundtrack being used here and no chance of a remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 version on any release to date. It certainly needs it because the dialogue appears muffled to a degree and almost slightly distorts when shouting suddenly breaks out. However, Angelo Badalamenti's score is impressive and there's a brilliant segue from Dorothy's performance into Jeffrey's initial night-time investigations.

The Region 1 DVD cover.

For the extras, there's a new set of liner notes written in August 2000 by Alan Robinson in an 8-page booklet with plenty of production stills and a 45-minute DVD exclusive interview with Dennis Hopper, which is fairly entertaining but Hopper doesn't quite appear to be firing on all cylinders these days.

The disc has no subtitles but does have an impressively-animated and scored menu and the film is divided up into 19 chapters.

Blue Velvet itself is a must-see but we could really use a Special Edition with a new anamorphic widescreen transfer and scores of extras to give the film content its due credit.

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.