10 Movie Characters That Shocked The World
1. Frank - Blue Velvet
It's difficult to choose the most controversial character in cinema - too much factors in, from their political stance to their onscreen behaviour to how we identify with them - but Dennis Hopper's Frank is a fairly safe choice. He's a figure so monstrous and insane, huffing from an oxygen tank and chugging Pabst Blue Ribbon all the way, there's nothing to identify with beyond his human-like shape.
The opening moments of Blue Velvet are among director David Lynch's least subtle or elusive: a man is mowing his lawn behind a perfect, picket white fence when he suddenly suffers a heart attack. As he writhes on the ground, the camera pans below the green grass to an insect colony, full of ants in seeming hysteria, all fighting to poke out of their underground world and into ours.
Frank is that colony, thrusting us into the seedy, disturbing underground in Everytown, USA. He poked his head out, or we sunk to his level, and he's forcing us to explore aspects of our own personality of which we may not be aware.