Director's Chair:Blue Velvet

Any film that starts with a heart attack and goes on to massed insects, mutilated body parts and Dennis Hopper inhaling mysterious gases is OK with me, so Blue Velvet is very much my kind of movie.

We're in David Lynch country - a phrase I'm legally obliged to include, under the David Lynch (Cinematographic Reviews) Act 1986, along with words such as idiosyncratic, eccentric, neo-noir and Middle America.

Kyle MacLachlan comes home to idyllic Lumberton ("It's a sunny day, so get those chain-saws out") to see his ailing father only to discover as he walks back from the hospital a detached and mouldering human ear. Intrigued, he begins investigating, with the help of police detective's daughter, Laura Dern, but finds himself trapped in a closet (sic) watching seductive femme fatale Isabella Rossellini being terrorised by homicidal rapist Dennis Hopper.

Blue Velvet was greeted with disgust when it first appeared, sullying the pure white screens of middle America. And rightly so. Where would we be without dark, vulgar, disgusting cinema? Dennis Hopper, black leather, suppressed homo-eroticism, gas-inhaling and all, must be one of the most truly nasty and scary screen villains. H Lecter doesn't lay a flesh-eating glove on him.

This movie has visual sparkle, a great sound track, and attitude - especially attitude. Thank the Lord for that, in the blandsville that passes for cinema 2007. It has personality, ideas, and 60s pop songs when that wasn't already a cliché. It's got characters - sharp-etched, dragged screaming and steaming from the weird backwaters of wherever Lynch keeps his odd-ball imagination. It's got hypocrisy, sexual confusion and a perverted romantic view of life with a twist of acid.

But most of all it's got a stonking good story.

With mutilated body parts.

Enjoy.

Charles Harris