Blue Velvet 4K (1986/MGM/De Laurentiis/DEG/Criterion 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray)/The Offspring 4K (2009) + The Woman 4K (2011/MVD/Arrow/4K Ultra HD Blu-rays)

4K Ultra HD Picture: A & B+/B/B Sound: A & B/B-/B- Extras: A/B Films: A/C/C+

Now for 4K upgrades of some creepy films, one of which you have definitely heard about...

As much as I'd love to use this space to dig into how David Lynch's 1986 masterpiece Blue Velvet (now on 4K disc from Criterion!) is a dry run for Twin Peaks - underlying darkness rotting the veneer of small town contentment, soapy dialogue and community dynamics, dream talk, doubling, fire; the movie is set in a lumber town called, get this, Lumberton! - it's been done. And I could rehash the plot, but that's available elsewhere on this site.

What I think is worth discussing as the film nears its 40th anniversary is how Dennis Hopper seems to have been marginalized by the cult of Lynch. I'm as much a Lynchian as the next off-center nonconformist (even if it's getting harder to separate the real party people from poser Letterboxd-dwelling film nerd-fluencers). It's tremendous fun to watch nearly everything he made from Blue Velvet through Inland Empire as a singular Twin Peaks project. (The Straight Story is, obviously, the outlier.) But while watching Criterion's gorgeous 4K edition of Blue Velvet, I was struck by how remarkable Hopper is - and how we may have forgotten it. Or, at least, taken it for granted.

Hopper's black-leather-clad, black-Challenger-driving, bolo-tie-wearing Frank Booth is a singular weirdo villain. Chewing on a piece of blue velvet fabric, a security blanket for a perverted Linus. Screaming about the virtues of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Huffing on an oxygen tank in lieu of orgasming. Smearing lipstick on his face and kissing people while threatening to haunt their dreams until the end of time. Frank's energy is volatile, radioactive, Chernobylian. Anytime he's on screen is dangerous - to other characters, but also the film. When Frank shows up it feels like Blue Velvet, the physical movie itself, is under threat.

The fact that this high-key anxiety attack defines the second half of the two-hour film is astounding considering how little screen time Frank gets. He's like the shark in Jaws. He lurks, emerges and attacks, then recedes back into the shadows. Every time this cycle repeats, his menace grows. And there's only relief when Frank's head is blown off by the nerdy wannabe cop in over his head. (Seriously, this character could be Bruce Booth.)

Yet anytime Frank is around you can't look away. That's due to Hopper and his singular weirdo vibe. His hairline, his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his chin - all of it is sending different signals. None of them are good, but some seem to betray a long-lost humanity in Frank. Every part of Frank is in conflict with itself, a bearing only Hopper could pull off.

Like so many other actors of his generation - the ones who actually made it out of their youth, more or less intact - Hopper knew how to use his instrument, and he knew that it was a tool shellacked with years of experiences. The knife-wielding delinquent from Rebel Without a Cause is in Frank. So is the drug-addled nutso from Easy Rider. And the maniacal burn out of Apocalypse Now. And the mournful outcast of Out of the Blue. It's such a multifaceted, nuanced performance, despite how incredibly big it is. No one has screamed obscenities or expressed lust or promised death with such scene-chewing gusto. At the same time, no one else could pull off the quieter, interior moments, like the loopy wordplay of getting Kyle MacLachlan's Jeffrey to go on a "joyride" or the absolute journey he takes while standing there, nearly mute and motionless, watching Dean Stockwell's truly singular Ben lip sync to Roy Orbison's "In Dreams."

One of the challenges to Hopper's legacy is that, like Al Pacino, once he went "big" he seemed to get lost in the vastness. Yes he took paycheck jobs (looking at you, Super Mario Bros.) and I'm sure he regretted some parts and decisions. But it's hard to dismiss everything as a once-great master who has lost the muse. Maybe his muse just communicated on a different wavelength - one that most people can't, and probably shouldn't, try to tune into.

But it is true that, with the exception of Speed and True Romance, Hopper never really connected with audiences again. Blue Velvet is a singular film. Frank Booth is a singular lowlife. And Hopper's performance is a singular feat, one that's worth rescuing from the cheap bombast and laugh lines film school students have consigned it to.

If Criterion's Blue Velvet 4K release can't canonize it, nothing will.

The cache of extras included on the disc are the same as on the 2019 Blu-ray: The Lost Footage, 53-minutes of deleted scenes and alternate takes; "Blue Velvet" Revisited, a "meditation" on making the film shot during the production; the 2002 making-of documentary *Mysteries of Love*; the 2019 documentary It's a Strange World: The Filming of "Blue Velvet;" a 2017 interview with composer Angelo Badalamenti; Lynch reading from his 2018 book Room to Dream; and a 30-page booklet.

It's an exhaustive collection of material on an impeccable disc befitting a stone-cold American classic.

For more on the film and to see the cover art, try this link:

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/15472/All+About+Lily+Chou-Chou+(2001/Film+Movement

Andrew van den Houten's The Offspring 4K (2009) and Lucky McKee's The Woman 4K (2011) have also been reissued in 4K, though that is a bit of a surprise considering they are not as known as so many other films, even within their genre. My fellow writer reviewed them on regular Blu-ray from Arrow and I pretty much agree with him on these ones. You can read more about them at this link:

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/15730/The+Offspring+(2009/MVD/Arrow+Blu-ray

Not very memorable for me and no fan of McKee, whose 2008 Brian Cox thriller Red was co-directed, while van den Houten has not directed since, doing some acting and a larger chunk of producing. But the question is, do they really look better in 4K? See below.

Extras repeat the previous Arrow Blu-ray editions, listed at the link above.

Now for playback performance. This is the best Blue Velvet has looked and sounded and probably ever will. Criterion released a Blu-Ray in 2019 sourced from a Lynch-approved 4K digital restoration, which is included in this package; see the link below, but the 4K disc, which gives the source room to breathe and includes Dolby Vision/HDR, is where you get your money's worth.Blue Velvet has an intentional and specific palette: vibrant primary colors for the suburban homes and yards; muted earth tones for less populated spaces; drab, washed out, almost gray hues for the bad parts of town. And because this is Lynch, the film spends a lot of time in darkness, both as a factual space and a setting for menace. The 4K disc handles all of it beautifully. (When Laura Dern's Sandy emerges from the dark, it's truly a holy revelation. I doubt it hit so hard even on a pristine original print.) If there's a false frame here, I didn't see it. Then again, I may have been too agog at how good this film I know so well looks.

The audio presentation is similarly exceptional. The 4K disc includes a 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio (MA) lossless track, with the original 2.0 Stereo Surround track also available in the same lossless DTS format. I watched with 5.1 surround, and it does right by Lynch's similarly intentional soundscapes. It immerses us in the world of Lumberton, both the unexceptional everyday hubbub and the terrifying horrors lurking on the fringes. The rattling garden hose spigot and insect chewing that famously open the film have never, ever sounded so primal or threatening. At the same time, it illuminates facets of the soundtrack I hadn't appreciated before, like how MacLachlan's scenes with Dern sound like they're talking on a soundstage despite being on a real-life street. This is clearly a function of post-production dubbing, but it adds an uncanny layer that elevates the film.

The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 1.78 X 1, Dolby Vision/HDR (10; Ultra Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition image transfers on The Offspring 4K and The Woman 4K somehow just manage to surpass the transfers on the older Arrow Blu-rays from not that long ago and will never look better, while the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo lossless mixes repeat the soundtracks from the prior releases and the films will still never sound better either, so this is the way to go for the most serious fans of the films and their makers.

- Nicholas Sheffo and Dante Ciampaglia (Criterion)