Blue Velvet

A college student returns to his sleepy suburban hometown after his father suffers a near-fatal heart attack. Upon discovering a severed ear behind his house, the inquisitive lad unearths a sinister mystery involving a nightclub singer and a deranged gangster. Laying the foundations upon which he would later build his televisual opus Twin Peaks, Lynch tears away the net curtains and white picket fences to expose an insidious evil lurking in the most innocuous and wholesome locales. A threat personified by Hopper’s career-reviving turn as the oxygen-huffing, expletivespewing sadist Frank, who remains one of ’80s cinema’s most iconic villains.

20/9 (Sat): Speaker: Joyce Yang (Researcher, film critic)