Blue Velvet 1986

Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune: [A] powerful, mesmerizing thriller, a masterful exercise in controlling an audience`s attention. Read more

Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune: Blue Velvet is a throughly unpredictable, frequently disturbing and sometimes jaw-droppingly funny film. There isn't anything else quite like it, and it's pretty wonderful. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: [A] finely wrought tale of erotic horror and secret evil. Read more

Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times: Shocking, visionary, rapturously controlled, its images of innocence and a dark, bruising sexuality drop straight into our unconscious where they rest like depth charges. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: Destined to become a cult classic, Blue Velvet presents what is probably the most original cinematic vision to come along this year. Undoubtedly, it will be too strong for many tastes. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Lush and peculiar Blue Velvet, the latest film from the mind that spawned Eraserhead, is an unnerving combination of the wholesome and the unholy. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Lynch and his film will surely be reviled, but as an experiment in expanding cinema's dramatic and technical vocabulary, Blue Velvet demands respect. Read more

Pat Graham, Chicago Reader: The film casts its spell in countless odd ways, in the archetype-leaning imagery, eccentric tableau styling, and moth-in-candle-flame attraction to the subconscious twilight. Read more

Pauline Kael, New Yorker: The charged erotic atmosphere makes the film something of a hallucination, but Lynch's humor keeps breaking through, too. Read more

Janet Maslin, New York Times: Kinkiness is its salient quality, but Blue Velvet has deadpan humor too, as well as a straight-arrow side that makes its eccentricity all the crazier. There's no mistaking the exhilarating fact that it's one of a kind. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Blue Velvet is David Lynch in peak form, and represents (to date) his most accomplished motion picture. It is a work of fascinating scope and power that rivals any of the most subversive films to reach the screens during the '80s. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: It made me feel pity for the actors who worked in it and anger at the director for taking liberties with them. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: There's not a single false note in David Lynch's notorious masterpiece, Blue Velvet, an unnerving meditation on innocence and depravity. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: The seamless blending of beauty and horror is remarkable, the terror very real, and the sheer wealth of imagination virtually unequalled in recent cinema. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: The modest proportions of the film are just right for the writer-director's desire to investigate the inexplicable demons that drive people to deviate from expected norms of behavior and thought. Read more

Paul Attanasio, Washington Post: The movie doesn't progress or deepen, it just gets weirder, and to no good end. Read more