As the CBS reality show "Armed & Famous" illustrates, small towns can appear charming on the surface, but in the subterranean depths lurk people and situations rarely illuminated by the public limelight.
An idyllic, all-American town with the dark, twisted underbelly forms the central theme of "Blue Velvet," showing 7:30 p.m. today at Pruis Hall as the first part of this semester's University Film Series.
David Lynch's surreal 1986 film stars Kyle MacLachlan as Jeffrey Beaumont, a clean-cut college kid who returns home to the town of Lumberton, N.C., after his father suffers a stroke.
Chris Shea, Ball State University Film Committee chairwoman, said "Blue Velvet" is one of the only movies to be shown as part of the film series more than once.
"It was the feeling of the committee that it was such an important film, and that it led to so many other films ... that people should see it again," Shea said.
Film committee member Stanley Keil said he remembers the film as "very dark."
"Most cities have two parts: the part that the city chamber of commerce want you to see and the part that's a little seamy," he said.
The opening credit sequence of "Blue Velvet" shows the clean, cheerful side of Lumberton as the Bobby Vinton song for which the movie is named plays. But when Beaumont finds a severed human ear in a field on the way home from visiting his father in the hospital, he discovers the seemingly quaint town's dark side.
The police seem disinterested in the ear, so Beaumont investigates himself. This leads him to Dorothy Vallens, a nightclub singer played by Isabella Rossellini. Spying on Vallens while hiding in her living room closet, he witnesses Frank Booth sexually assault her.
Booth, a violent and drug-addicted sociopath played by Dennis Hopper, has kidnapped Vallens' son and murdered her husband, though he leads her to believe her husband remains alive. In exchange for keeping Vallens' son and, supposedly, her husband alive, he makes her indulge his fetish for "Blue Velvet" - the song and the cloth - and play the role of "mommy" as he assaults her.
The American Film Institute named Booth the 36th greatest movie villain of the last 100 years, out of a total of 50 that included Darth Vader from "Star Wars" and Joan Crawford from "Mommie Dearest."
As the film goes on, Beaumont discovers his own dark side. When Vallens discovers him hiding in the closet after Booth leaves, the two start a secret relationship, even though Beaumont has already been dating squeaky-clean high school girl Sandy Williams, played by Laura Dern.
"I thought it was interesting that they had this dichotomy, a 1950s 'Ozzie and Harriet' type of society layered on top of the other society," Keil said.
Students of film would have a lot to learn from the movie, especially from Lynch's use of tone and light, he said.
The University Film Committee is made up of students and faculty members who share a passion for film. The goal of the committee, Shea said, is to bring classic and important feature films for the education and entertainment of the Ball State community.
"We're movie freaks, and we hope to spawn a new generation of movie freaks, so we bring the movies that freaked us out and show them to you and hope you will all feel the same way," Shea said.
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