David Lynch may not boast the most expansive of filmographies, but the few films he has directed have - for the most part - been memorable.
Blue Velvet, the director's 1986 suburban film noir, is both that and disturbing, and it has the kind of introduction to match.
What makes Blue Velvet's opening scene such a clever one is that it cuts right through the facade of suburban living. There are the white picket fences, the perfectly mowed lawns and the blue skies, but beneath all that lies something sinister. When your everyday homeowner collapses on his own lawn (to the tune of Bobby Vinton's eponymous 1963 song), the camera pans down to the undergrowth, picking up a disconcerting rumble before fading to black.
It's atmospheric, tonally dissonant and immediately captivating. It also sets the stage for Lynch's dissection of suburban living, and in peeling through the veneer of that dream, Blue Velvet is just as devastating today as it was when it first released.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
