Blue Velvet (film)



Blue Velvet is a 1986 American neo-noir mystery film, written and directed by David Lynch. Blending psychological horror with film noir, the film stars Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper and Laura Dern. The title is taken from Bobby Vinton's 1963 song of the same name.

The screenplay of Blue Velvet had been passed around multiple times in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with many major studios declining it because of its strong sexual and violent content. After the commercial and critical failure of Lynch's Dune (1984), the director made attempts at developing a more "personal story", somewhat characteristic of the surrealist style displayed in his debut Eraserhead (1977). The independent studio De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, owned at the time by Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis, agreed to finance and produce the film.

Blue Velvet initially received a divided critical response, with many stating that its objectionable content served little artistic purpose. It earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director, however, and came to achieve cult status. As an example of a director casting against the norm, it was credited for re-launching Hopper's career and for providing Rossellini with a dramatic outlet beyond her previous work as a fashion model and a cosmetics spokeswoman. In the years since, the film has generated significant academic attention with regard to its thematic symbolism, and is now widely regarded as one of Lynch's major works and one of the greatest films of the 1980s. Publications including Sight & Sound, TIME, Entertainment Weekly and BBC Magazine have ranked it among the greatest American films of all time. In 2008, Blue Velvet was chosen by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest American mystery films ever made.

Plot
Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) returns to his logging home town of Lumberton, North Carolina, from Oak Lake College after his father suffers a near-fatal stroke. While walking home from the hospital, he cuts through a vacant lot and discovers a severed ear. Jeffrey takes the ear to police detective John Williams (George Dickerson) and becomes reacquainted with the detective's daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern). She tells him details about the ear case and a suspicious woman, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who may be connected to the case. Increasingly curious, Jeffrey enters Dorothy's apartment by posing as an exterminator, and while Dorothy is distracted by a man dressed in a yellow suit at her door (whom Jeffrey later refers to as the Yellow Man), Jeffrey steals her spare key.

Jeffrey and Sandy attend Dorothy's nightclub act, in which she sings "Blue Velvet", and leave early so Jeffrey can sneak into her apartment to snoop. He hurriedly hides in a closet when she returns home. However, Dorothy, wielding a knife, discovers him and threatens to kill him. Believing his curiosity is merely sexual and aroused by his voyeurism, Dorothy makes Jeffrey undress at knifepoint and begins to fellate him before their encounter is interrupted by a knock at the door. Dorothy hides Jeffrey in the closet. From there he witnesses the visitor, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), inflict his bizarre sexual proclivities—which include inhaling an unidentified gas (possibly amyl nitrite), dry humping, and sadomasochism—upon Dorothy. Frank is an extremely foul-mouthed, violent sociopath whose orgasmic climax is a fit of both pleasure and rage. He continually refers to her as "Mommy" and to himself as both the "Daddy" and the "Baby", who "wants to fuck." Frank has kidnapped Dorothy's husband and son to force her to perform sexual favors; to "Do it for van Gogh." When Frank leaves, a sad and desperate Dorothy tries to seduce Jeffrey again and demands that he hit her, but when he refuses, she tells him to leave. When Jeffrey moves to leave, she asks him to stay, though he leaves anyway.

Jeffrey relays his experience to Sandy, asking her why there are people like Frank. Sandy in turn tells him of a wonderful dream she had about robins that she interprets as a sign of hope for humanity. Jeffrey and Sandy find themselves attracted to each other, though Sandy has a boyfriend.

Jeffrey again visits Dorothy's apartment and she tells him that although she knows nothing about him, she has been yearning for him. Jeffrey attends another of Dorothy's performances at the club, where she sings the same song. At the club, Jeffrey spots Frank in the audience fondling a piece of blue velvet fabric he cut from Dorothy's robe. Jeffrey follows Frank and spends the next few days spying on him. Shortly afterwards, two men that Jeffrey calls the Well-Dressed Man and the Yellow Man exit an industrial building that Frank frequently visits. Jeffrey concludes the men are criminal associates of Frank, and tells his new findings to Sandy. The two briefly kiss, though she feels uncomfortable about going any further. Jeffrey immediately visits Dorothy again, and the two have sex. However, when he refuses to hit her, she pressures him, becoming more emotional. In a blind rage he knocks her backwards and is instantly horrified, but Dorothy derives pleasure from it.

Afterwards, Frank catches Dorothy and Jeffrey together and forces them both to accompany him to the apartment of Ben (Dean Stockwell), his suave, effeminate partner in crime who is holding Dorothy's son. Ben lip-syncs a performance of Roy Orbison's "In Dreams", sending Frank into maudlin sadness, then rage. Frank takes Jeffrey to a lumber yard and when he molests Dorothy, Jeffrey stands up to Frank by punching him. Frank's cronies drag Jeffrey out of the car and Frank kisses Jeffrey's face, intimidates him, and then savagely beats him to the overture of "In Dreams". Jeffrey wakes the next day at the same place and walks home, overcome with guilt and despair. He goes to the police station, where he notices that Sandy's father's partner is the Yellow Man—an officer named Lieutenant Detective Tom Gordon (Fred Pickler). Later, at Sandy's home, her father is amazed by Jeffrey's story, but warns Jeffrey to stop his amateur sleuthing lest he endanger himself and the investigation. Jeffrey and Sandy go to a dance together and profess their love, only to be confronted by Sandy's boyfriend. A confrontation is averted when the group finds Dorothy—naked, battered, and distressed—on Jeffrey's front lawn. Barely conscious, Dorothy reveals her intimacy with Jeffrey, causing Sandy to become upset and to slap Jeffrey, although she later forgives him.

Jeffrey insists on returning to Dorothy's apartment and tells Sandy to immediately send the police there, including her father. At Dorothy's apartment, Jeffrey finds Dorothy's husband (Don Vallens), who is dead from a gunshot to the head and identifiable by his missing ear, as well as the Yellow Man (Gordon), who bears a gruesome head wound and appears to have suffered a crude lobotomy. When Jeffrey tries to leave, he sees the Well-Dressed Man coming up the stairs and recognizes him as Frank in disguise. Jeffrey talks to Detective Williams over the Yellow Man's police radio, but lies about his location inside the apartment. Frank enters the apartment and brags about hearing Jeffrey's location over his own police radio. While Frank searches for him in the wrong room, Jeffrey retrieves the Yellow Man's gun and hides in the same closet in which he hid during his first visit to the apartment. Frank fires sporadically, knocking over the dead Yellow Man, who had still been standing up, and when he opens the closet door, Jeffrey fatally shoots him in the head. Detective Williams, gun drawn, enters with Sandy a moment later. Jeffrey and Sandy now go ahead with their relationship and note the unusual appearance of robins in their town. A montage sequence ends the film, which shows Dorothy and her son reunited.

Cast

 * Kyle MacLachlan as Jeffrey Beaumont
 * Isabella Rossellini as Dorothy Vallens
 * Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth
 * Laura Dern as Sandy Williams
 * Hope Lange as Mrs. Williams
 * Dean Stockwell as Ben
 * George Dickerson as Detective John Williams
 * Priscilla Pointer as Mrs. Beaumont


 * Frances Bay as Aunt Barbara
 * Jack Harvey as Tom Beaumont
 * Ken Stovitz as Mike
 * Brad Dourif as Raymond
 * Jack Nance as Paul
 * J. Michael Hunter as Hunter
 * Dick Green as Don Vallens
 * Fred Pickler as "Yellow Man"/Det. Tom Gordon

Production
The film's story originated from three ideas that crystallized in the filmmaker's mind over a period of time starting as early as 1973. The first idea was only "a feeling" and the title Blue Velvet, Lynch told Cineaste in 1987. The second idea was an image of a severed, human ear lying in a field. "I don't know why it had to be an ear. Except it needed to be an opening of a part of the body, a hole into something else...The ear sits on the head and goes right into the mind so it felt perfect", Lynch remarked in an interview. The third idea was Bobby Vinton's classic rendition of the song Blue Velvet and "the mood that came with that song a mood, a time, and things that were of that time." Lynch eventually spent two years writing two drafts, which, he stated, were not very good. The problem with them, Lynch has said, was that "there was maybe all the unpleasantness in the film but nothing else. A lot was not there. And so it went away for a while."

After completing The Elephant Man (1980), Lynch met producer Richard Roth over coffee. Roth had read and enjoyed Lynch's Ronnie Rocket script, but did not think it was something he wanted to produce. He asked Lynch if the filmmaker had any other scripts, but the director only had ideas. "I told him I had always wanted to sneak into a girl's room to watch her into the night and that, maybe, at one point or another, I would see something that would be the clue to a murder mystery. Roth loved the idea and asked me to write a treatment. I went home and thought of the ear in the field." Production was announced in August 1984. Lynch wrote two more drafts before he was satisfied with the script of the film. Conditions at this point were ideal for Lynch's film: he had cut a deal with Dino De Laurentiis that gave him complete artistic freedom and final cut privileges, with the stipulation that the filmmaker take a cut in his salary and work with a budget of only $6 million. This deal meant that Blue Velvet was the smallest film on the De Laurentiis' slate. Consequently, Lynch would be left mostly unsupervised during production. "After Dune I was down so far that anything was up! So it was just a euphoria. And when you work with that kind of feeling, you can take chances. You can experiment." Because the material was completely different from anything that would be considered mainstream at the time, Laurentiis had to start his own company to distribute it.

The cast of Blue Velvet included several then-relatively unknown actors. Isabella Rossellini had gained some exposure before the film for her Lancôme ads in the early 1980s and for being the daughter of actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian film director Roberto Rossellini. After completion of the film, during test screenings, ICM Partners–the agency representing Rossellini–immediately dropped her as a client. Furthermore, the nuns at the school in Rome that Rossellini attended in her youth called to say they were praying for her. Dennis Hopper was the biggest "name" in the film, having starred in Easy Rider (1969), while Kyle MacLachlan had played the central role in Lynch's critical and commercial failure Dune (1984), a science fiction epic based on the novel of the same name. MacLachlan later became a recurring collaborator with Lynch, who remarked: "Kyle plays innocents who are interested in the mysteries of life. He's the person you trust enough to go into a strange world with." Dennis Hopper—said to be Lynch's third choice—accepted the role, reportedly having exclaimed, "I've got to play Frank! I am Frank!" as Hopper confirmed in the Blue Velvet "making-of" documentary The Mysteries of Love, produced for the 2002 special edition. For the role of Dorothy Vallens, Lynch met Isabella Rossellini at a restaurant, and she accepted the role. Laura Dern, then just nineteen years old, was cast after various successful actresses at the time turned it down, including Molly Ringwald.

The scene in which Dorothy appears naked outside was inspired by a real-life experience Lynch had during childhood when he and his brother saw a naked woman walking down a neighborhood street at night. The experience was so traumatic to the young Lynch that it made him cry, and he had never forgotten it. Principal photography of Blue Velvet began in February 1986 and completed in April. The film was shot at EUE/Screen Gems studio in Wilmington, North Carolina, which also provided the exterior scenes of Lumberton. The scene with a raped and battered Dorothy proved to be particularly challenging. Several townspeople arrived to watch the filming with picnic baskets and rugs, against the wishes of Rossellini and Lynch. However, they continued filming as normal, and when Lynch yelled cut, the townspeople had left. As a result, police told Lynch they were no longer permitted to shoot in any public areas of Wilmington.

Lynch's original rough cut ran for approximately four hours. He was contractually obligated to deliver a two-hour movie by De Laurentiis and cut many small subplots and character scenes. He also made cuts at the request of the MPAA. For example, when Frank slaps Dorothy after the first rape scene, the audience was supposed to see Frank actually hitting her. Instead, the film cuts away to Jeffrey in the closet, wincing at what he has just seen. This cut was made to satisfy the MPAA's concerns about violence. Lynch thought that the change only made the scene more disturbing. Lynch announced in a radio interview on January 18, 2011, that footage from the deleted scenes, long thought lost, had been discovered. It later appeared on the 2011 special edition Blu-ray disc release of the film. The final cut produced by Lynch runs for just under two hours.

Interpretation
Despite Blue Velvet's initial appearance as a mystery, the film operates on a number of thematic levels. The film owes a large debt to 1950s film noir, containing and exploring such conventions as the femme fatale (Dorothy Vallens), a seemingly unstoppable villain (Frank Booth), and the questionable moral outlook of the hero (Jeffrey Beaumont), as well as its unusual use of shadowy, sometimes dark cinematography. Blue Velvet represents and establishes Lynch's famous "askew vision," and introduces several common elements of Lynch's work, some of which would later become his trademarks, including distorted characters, a polarized world, and debilitating damage to the skull or brain. Perhaps the most significant "Lynchian" trademark in the film is the depiction of unearthing a dark underbelly in a seemingly idealized small town; Jeffrey even proclaims in the film that he is "seeing something that was always hidden", alluding to the film's plot central idea. Lynch's characterization of films, symbols, and motifs have become well-known, and his particular style, characterised largely in Blue Velvet for the first time, has been written about extensively using descriptions like "dreamlike", "ultraweird", "dark", and "oddball". Red curtains also show up in key scenes, specifically in Dorothy's apartment, which have since become a Lynch trademark. The film has been compared to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) because of its stark treatment of psychotic evil. The premise of both films is curiosity, leading to an investigation that draws the lead characters into a hidden, voyeuristic underworld of crime.

The film's thematic framework hearkens back to Poe, James, and early gothic fiction, as well as films such as Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and The Night of the Hunter (1955) and the entire notion of film noir. Lynch has called it a "film about things that are hidden—within a small city and within people." Like many other Lynch films, Blue Velvet is immersed in pop culture imagery, both from the 1950s and the 1960s, as well as the 1980s.

Feminist psychoanalytic film theorist Laura Mulvey argues that Blue Velvet establishes a metaphorical Oedipal family—"the child", Jeffrey Beaumont, and his "parents", Frank Booth and Dorothy Vallens—through deliberate references to film noir and its underlying Oedipal theme. The resulting violence, she claims, can be read as symbolic of domestic violence within real families. For instance, Frank's violent acts can be seen to reflect the different types of abuse within families, and the control he has over Dorothy might represent the hold an abusive husband has over his wife. Michael Atkinson reads Jeffrey as an innocent youth who is both horrified by the violence inflicted by Frank, but also tempted by it as the means of possessing Dorothy for himself. Atkinson takes a Freudian approach to the film; considering it to be an expression of the traumatised innocence which characterises Lynch's work. He claims that "Dorothy represents the sexual force of the mother [figure] because she is forbidden and because she becomes the object of the unhealthy, infantile impulses at work in Jeffrey's subconscious".

Symbolism
Symbolism is used very heavily in Blue Velvet. The most consistent symbolism in the film is an insect motif introduced at the end of the first scene, when the camera zooms in on a well-kept suburban lawn until it unearths a swarming underground nest of disgusting bugs. This is generally recognized as a metaphor for the seedy underworld that Jeffrey will soon discover under the surface of his own suburban, Reaganesque paradise. The severed ear he finds is being overrun by black ants. The bug motif is recurrent throughout the film, most notably in the bug-like gas mask that Frank wears, but also the excuse that Jeffrey uses to gain access to Dorothy's apartment: he claims to be an insect exterminator. One of Frank's sinister accomplices is also consistently identified through the yellow jacket he wears, possibly reminiscent of the name of a type of wasp. Finally, a robin eating a bug on a fence becomes a topic of discussion in the last scene of the film. The robin, mentioned earlier by Sandy when she recounted her dream, represents love conquering evil.

The severed ear that Jeffrey discovers is also a key symbolic element, leading Jeffrey into danger. Indeed, just as Jeffrey's troubles begin, the audience is treated to a nightmarish sequence in which the camera zooms into the canal of the severed, decomposing ear. Notably, the camera does not reemerge from the ear canal until the end of the film. When Jeffrey finally comes through his hellish ordeal unscathed, the ear canal shot is replayed, only in reverse, zooming out through Jeffrey's own ear as he relaxes in his yard on a summer day.

Soundtrack
The Blue Velvet soundtrack was supervised by Angelo Badalamenti (who makes a brief cameo appearance as the pianist at the Slow Club where Dorothy performs). The soundtrack makes heavy usage of vintage pop songs, such as Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet" and Roy Orbison's "In Dreams", juxtaposed with an orchestral score inspired by Shostakovich. During filming, Lynch placed speakers on set and in streets and played Shostakovich to set the mood he wanted to convey. The score makes direct quotations from Shostakovich's 15th Symphony, which Lynch had been listening to regularly while writing the screenplay. Lynch had originally opted to use "Song To The Siren" by This Mortal Coil during the scene in which Sandy and Jeffrey share a dance, however he could not obtain the rights for the song at the time. He would go onto use this song in Lost Highway, eleven years later.

Entertainment Weekly ranked Blue Velvet's soundtrack on its list of the 100 Greatest Film Soundtracks, at the 100th position. Critic John Alexander wrote, "the haunting soundtrack accompanies the title credits, then weaves through the narrative, accentuating the noir mood of the film". Lynch worked with music composer Angelo Badalamenti for the first time in this film and asked him to write a score that had to be "like Shostakovich, be very Russian, but make it the most beautiful thing but make it dark and a little bit scary". Badalamenti's success with Blue Velvet would lead him to contribute to all of Lynch's future full-length films until Inland Empire. Also included in the sound team was long time Lynch collaborator Alan Splet, a sound editor and designer who had won an Academy Award for his work on The Black Stallion (1979), and been nominated for Never Cry Wolf (1983).

Box office
Blue Velvet premiered in competition at the Montréal World Film Festival in August 1986, and at the Toronto Festival of Festivals on September 12, 1986, and a few days later in the United States. It debuted commercially in both countries on September 19, 1986, in 98 theatres across the United States. In its opening weekend, the film grossed a total of $789,409. It eventually expanded to another fifteen theatres, and domestically grossed a total of $8,551,228. Blue Velvet was met with uproar during its audience reception, with lines formed around city blocks in New York City and Los Angeles. There were reports of mass walkouts and refund demands during its opening week. At a Chicago screening, a man fainted and had to have his pacemaker changed. Upon completion, he returned to the cinema to see the ending. At a Los Angeles cinema, two strangers became engaged in a heated disagreement, but decided to resolve the disagreement in order to return to the theatre.

It was also released internationally, in Australia, most of West Germany, China, Canada, Hong Kong, and Japan, followed by subsequent video releases. The film performed well overseas, grossing $900,000 in Australia, and $450,139 in Hong Kong.

Critical reception
Blue Velvet received mostly positive reviews in the United States upon its release. Acclaim was not unanimous, but the critics who did praise the film were particularly vociferous. The New York Times critic Janet Maslin directed much praise toward the performances of Hopper and Rossellini: "Mr. Hopper and Miss Rossellini are so far outside the bounds of ordinary acting here that their performances are best understood in terms of sheer lack of inhibition; both give themselves entirely over to the material, which seems to be exactly what's called for." She called it "an instant cult classic." Maslin concluded by saying that Blue Velvet "is as fascinating as it is freakish. It confirms Mr. Lynch's stature as an innovator, a superb technician, and someone best not encountered in a dark alley."

Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times called the film "the most brilliantly disturbing film ever to have its roots in small-town American life", describing it as "shocking, visionary, rapturously controlled." Film critic Gene Siskel included Blue Velvet on his list of the best films of 1986, at the fifth spot. Peter Travers, film critic for Rolling Stone, named it the best film of the 1980s and referred to it as an "American masterpiece." However, the film was not without its detractors. Paul Attanasio of The Washington Post said "the film showcases a visual stylist utterly in command of his talents" and that Angelo Badalamenti "contributes an extraordinary score, slipping seamlessly from slinky jazz to violin figures to the romantic sweep of a classic Hollywood score", but claimed that Lynch "isn't interested in communicating, he's interested in parading his personality. The movie doesn't progress or deepen, it just gets weirder, and to no good end." A general criticism from U.S. critics was the film's often vulgar approach to sexuality and violence, which they claimed detracted from the film's seriousness as a work of art. One of the film's detractors, Roger Ebert, film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, supported that view; although he praised Isabella Rossellini's performance as being "convincing and courageous", he criticized how she was depicted in the film, even accusing David Lynch of misogyny: "degraded, slapped around, humiliated and undressed in front of the camera. And when you ask an actress to endure those experiences, you should keep your side of the bargain by putting her in an important film". During an online Q&A session in 2007, Ebert said he still had negativity regarding how Rossellini was depicted but said he should re-visit Blue Velvet and that David Lynch was a good director. In a 2010 tweet honoring David Lynch's birthday, Ebert later revealed that he viewed Lynch as a great director but that his feelings about Blue Velvet remained unchanged.

The film is now considered a masterpiece and has a "Certified Fresh" score of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 62 reviews with an average rating of 8.7 out of 10. The critical consensus states "If audiences walk away from this subversive, surreal shocker not fully understanding the story, they might also walk away with a deeper perception of the potential of film storytelling." The film also has a score of 75 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 14 critics indicating "Generally favorable reviews." Looking back in his Guardian/Observer review, critic Philip French wrote, "The film is wearing well and has attained a classic status without becoming respectable or losing its sense of danger."

Accolades
Lynch was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for the film. Isabella Rossellini won an Independent Spirit Award for the Best Female Lead in 1987. David Lynch and Dennis Hopper won a Los Angeles Film Critics Association award in 1987 for Blue Velvet in categories Best Director (Lynch) and Best Supporting Actor (Hopper). In 1987, National Society of Film Critics awarded Best Film, Best Director (David Lynch), Best Cinematography (Frederick Elmes), and Best Supporting Actor (Dennis Hopper) awards.

Legacy
Although it initially gained a relatively small theatrical audience in North America and was met with controversy over its artistic merit, Blue Velvet soon became the center of a "national firestorm" in 1986, and over time achieved status as an American classic. In the late 1980s, and early 1990s, after its release on videotape, the film became a widely known cult film, well known for its dark depiction of a suburban America. Followed by myriad VHS, Laserdisc and DVD releases, the film became increasingly well-known among American audiences. It marked the entrance of David Lynch into the Hollywood mainstream and the comeback of Dennis Hopper after a significant hiatus from work. Hopper's performance and the character of Frank Booth itself has left an imprint on popular culture, with countless tributes, cultural references and parodies. The success of the film alone has helped propel Hollywood mainstream toward more graphic displays of previously censored themes, a similar case to Psycho (1960), to which Blue Velvet has been frequently compared. It has become one of the most significant, well-recognized films of its era, spawning countless imitations and parodies in media. The film's dark, stylish and erotic production design has served as a benchmark for a number of films, parodies and even Lynch's own later work, notably Twin Peaks (1990–91), and Mulholland Drive (2001). Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine cited it as one of the most "influential American films", as did Michael Atkinson, who dedicated a book to the film's themes and motifs.

Blue Velvet now frequently appears in various critical assessments of all-time great films, also ranked as one of the greatest films of the 1980s, one of the best examples of American surrealism and one of the finest examples of David Lynch's work. In a poll of two American critics ranking the "most outstanding films of the decade", Blue Velvet was placed third and fourth, behind Raging Bull (1980), E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982) and the German film Wings of Desire (1987). An Entertainment Weekly book special released in 1999 ranked Blue Velvet at thirty-seventh greatest films of all time. The film was ranked by The Guardian in its list of the 100 Greatest Films. Film Four's ranked it on their list of 100 Greatest Films. In a 2007 poll of the online film community held by Variety, Blue Velvet came in at the ninety-fifth greatest film of all time. Total Film ranked Blue Velvet as one of the all-time best films in both a critics list and a public poll, in 2006 and 2007, respectively. In December 2002, a UK film critics poll in Sight & Sound ranked the film fifth on their list of the 10 Best Films of the Last 25 Years. In a special Entertainment Weekly issue, 100 new film classics were chosen from 1983 to 2008: Blue Velvet was ranked at fourth.

In addition to Blue Velvet's various "all-time greatest films" rankings, the American Film Institute has awarded the film three honors in its lists: ninety-sixth on 100 Years... 100 Thrills in 2001, selecting cinema's most thrilling moments and ranked Frank Booth thirty-sixth of the 50 greatest villains in 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains in 2003. In June 2008, the AFI revealed its "Ten top Ten"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Blue Velvet was acknowledged as the eighth best film in the mystery genre. Premiere magazine listed Frank Booth, played by Dennis Hopper, as the fifty-fourth on its list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time, calling him one of "the most monstrously funny creations in cinema history". The film was ranked eighty-fourth on Bravo Television's four-hour program 100 Scariest Movie Moments (2004). It is frequently sampled musically and an array of bands and solo artists have taken their names and inspiration from the film. In August 2012, Sight & Sound unveiled their latest list of the 250 greatest films of all time, with Blue Velvet ranking at sixty-ninth.

Blue Velvet was also nominated for the following AFI lists:
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
 * "In Dreams"
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)

Blue Velvet was released on Blu-ray on November 8, 2011, in a special 25th anniversary edition featuring never-before-seen deleted scenes. The film had previously been released on DVD in 1999 and 2002 by MGM Home Entertainment. In early 2015, it was announced that a feature-length documentary film entitled "Blue Velvet Revisited", made up exclusively of behind the scenes footage, was in production for Autumn 2015 release. The film is based on extensive unreleased footage shot on set in 1985 by German filmmaker Peter Braatz, at David Lynch's invitation. Cult With No Name, Tuxedomoon and John Foxx were commissioned to provide the soundtrack for the film (which was released in October 2015), and a collection of previously unreleased photos is also to be published. The film was premiered at the London Film Festival in October 2016.

Inspired by the film, baroque pop singer Lana Del Rey recorded a cover version of Bobby Vinton's classic rendition of the song "Blue Velvet" in 2012. Used to endorse clothing line H&M, a music video accompanied the track and aired as a television commercial. Filmed in Post-war Americana, the video drew influence from Lynch and Blue Velvet. In the video, Del Rey plays the role of Dorothy Vallens, performing a private concert similar to the scene where Ben (Dean Stockwell) pantomimes "In Dreams" for Frank Booth. Del Rey's version, however, has her lip-synching "Blue Velvet" when a little person dressed as Frank Sinatra approaches and unplugs a hidden victrola, revealing Del Rey as a fraud. When Lynch heard of the music video, he praised it, telling Artinfo: "Lana Del Rey, she's got some fantastic charisma and—this is a very interesting thing—it's like she's born out of another time. She's got something that's very appealing to people. And I didn't know she was influenced by me!"

"Now It's Dark", a song by American heavy metal band Anthrax on their 1988 album State of Euphoria, was directly inspired by the film, and specifically the character of Frank Booth. The same phrase appeared in the liner notes of Rush's album Roll the Bones, and drummer Neil Peart later explained that "The phrase occurs in David Lynch's comedy classic Blue Velvet."