BLUE VELVET — SHOCKTOBER!

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In 1986 David Lynch broke the language of cinema wide open in the same way that Jackson Pollock did with the art world in the early '40s.

Using a minimalist filmic palate for a neo-noir set in small town America, Lynch blends surrealist elements into a suspenseful story of adult sexual awakening (vis a vis BDSM) juxtaposed against violence, mystery, and mental illness.

Using iconographic character names drawn from '50s Americana iconography (see Frank, Sandy and Ben), and a moody musical score to match, Lynch presents returning hometown boy Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan).

After his father suffers a heart attack while watering the family lawn, Jeffrey unearths a severed ear in a field that he crossed thousands of times in his youth. Unspeakable acts are being carried even in America's most seemingly provincial towns. Every city has its "bad side of town."

Our curious protagonist finds a willing ally for his impromptu private investigation into the mystery of the ear's owner in the local police detective's romantically inclined daughter Sandy (Laura Dern). On the surface, Sandy seems like natural girlfriend material for Jeffrey, but this guy has a taste for the exotic (if incestuous) that vanilla Sandy can't fulfill. 

However, Jeffrey is unprepared for the psychological and emotional upheaval that will devour him when he stalks the fetishized life of Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), a sultry nightclub singer used to playing rough with a very debauched criminal named Frank (Dennis Hopper). The bi-polar Dorothy has a nasty little taste for kink.

"Blue Velvet" is David Lynch's greatest cinematic achievement next to "Eraserhead." His balance of symbols, and artful use of montage, is at its most poetic and powerful. His metaphoric allusions about the dysfunctional nature of the ideal "American Dream" family incite hellish visions of the abusive father (as embodied in Hopper's character) and the traumatized wife/mother who needs saving from her idealized son.

Every role is perfectly cast. Dennis Hopper's portrayal of a whacked-out crime boss is terrifying. Lynch's haunting small-town mystery carries an indescribable undertow that kicks like a spastic mule in heat. 

"Blue Velvet" is the closest that any filmmaker other than Buñuel has ever come to such a daring cinematic feat.You can bet that Quentin Tarantino took notes from "Blue Velvet" in creating "Reservoir Dogs." Here is a film that alters everyone who sees it.

Rated R. 120 mins.

FANTASTIC PLANET — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

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Beautiful French animated surreal dystopian sci-fi flick will mess you up.

René Laloux's 1973 classic is full of surprises. 

Simplistic animation soars to Salvador Dalí levels of bizarre imagination over a funky jazz score by Alan Goraguer.

Big alien people oppress small human people as if they were on par with gerbils.

Agitprop storytelling spells out dangers of "conformity and violence" with a biting satiric wit, writ large.

Trippy baby. Trippy.

Do your own thing.

Not Rated. 72 mins. 

EL TOPO — CANNES 2006

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Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1970 avant-garde showpiece of transgressive cinema revolutionized the commercial landscape of what was possible for an "art film" to achieve.

Jodorowsky's off-kilter use of religious symbols and Western genre motifs, against a visually open palate of a Mexican desert, fit naturally into the era's lexicon of drug use.

"El Topo" became the catalyst for the Midnight Movie phenomenon where stoned audiences returned week after week to absorb unusual films — the bloodier or weirder the better.

In spite of its limited production values, "El Topo" is an obviously ambitious effort. Jodorowsky employs asymmetrical storytelling devices in conjunction with exploitation elements of violence and sex to weave an inventive film that challenges its audience on intellectual and visceral levels. The filmmaker’s abundant casting of dwarfs, amputees, and nonprofessional actors adds to an atmosphere of seething underground rebellion.

“El Topo” announces its bizarre socio-political allegory in an opening pre-roll that describes a protagonist mole digging tunnels toward the sky only to discover that when he finally breaks through, the sun blinds him. That brief synopsis encapsulates the A-B story that follows.

El Topo (played by Jodorowsky) is the film's allegorical mole. He is a black-clad avenging cowboy who differs significantly from the Don Quixote archetype upon which he is loosely based. El Topo’s naked six-year-old son rides on horseback with his father. They arrive at a recently massacred town covered in paint-textured blood. Corpses cover the ground. A dying man crawls, begging to be put out of his misery. El Topo hands his son his pistol to do the honors. The vulnerably naked child complies.

Jodorowsky's version of a brave new world is a retro post-apocalyptic country where life is cheap. El Topo hunts down the fascist Colonel responsible for the massacre and castrates him, prompting the autocrat’s consequent suicide. Our hero abandons his son in the care of monks in the interest of taking off with a passionate woman of the desert. He names her Mara. Their relationship turns on her demands that El Topo prove himself as the best gunfighter around.

Mara encourages her lover to engage in duels with religious zealots from four divergent disciplines, existing in nomadic isolation. The ethically challenged El Topo cheats to dispatch his holy rivals until he sees through his contravention. El Topo’s dubious victories momentarily satisfy Mara before she slips into a lesbian affair with a whip-wielding dominatrix. The outlaw destroys his pistol before transitioning into a Christ-like phase of existence that makes up film’s ladder half where our mole of salvation attempts to free a community of deformed people by digging through their cave toward the relative freedom of a Western-styled town run by violent cultists.

For all of its easily mocked elements, “El Topo” is a work of mad cinematic genius that stays with you.

Not Rated. 125 mins.