10 Horror Movies Where The American Dream Becomes A Nightmare

David Lynch’s 1986 masterpiece takes a simple and oft-used (before and since) concept and takes it to bold, disturbing new places. There’s little that can capture the American dream better than the all-American suburb. Beautiful houses, pristine lawns, white picket fences - it’s the clearest sign that you have made it.

But what goes on behind all those closed doors? Well, in Blue Velvet, no end of horror. The film stars Kyle MacLachlan as Jeffrey, a college student returned home to care for his father. There in the innocent glow of the ‘burbs, he starts a relationship with Laura Dern’s Sandy, embracing normality.

Things don’t stay normal for long, though. Jeffrey finds a severed ear, and his curiosity leads him into the dark web of Frank Booth, played with gleeful menace by Dennis Hopper. Booth is a sadistic gangster who, among other crimes, keeps nightclub singer Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) captive for his own sick purposes.

The film is noirish in its presentation but the sheer brutality of Booth makes it more of a horror whenever he’s on screen. Hopper’s is a performance more snarling and monstrous than any supernatural creature.