Bobby Vinton “Blue Velvet”

All Time Top Five Movies That Cribbed Their Name From A Good Song, And Managed To Be Pretty Good Themselves . . .

It’s kind of hard to image all these years later, but director David Lynch was pretty unsuccessful at the time of “Blue Velvet,” having come off the disastrous “Dune.” Same for Kyle McLachlan. Isabella Rossellini was just another model who wanted to act. Laura Dern was just another actor’s daughter. Dennis Hopper had long been washed up and written off. And Bobby Vinton hadn’t had a hit in more than a decade.

A pretty unlikely combination of folks, to all be part of one of the most influential films of the 80s.

Having the film center on Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” (Rossellini sings it; Hopper fondles to a swatch of actual blue velvet; the song plays a number of times) managed to make the film feel both like a throwback to early noir, AND up the contemporary unease of the film, with its yearning croon against a backdrop of violence and grotesquerie.

Some other time, I’m going to have to do an All Time Top Five Songs Ruined By Movies. Because I can’t hear Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” without shuddering to think of this scene.

Hear a sample of Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet”


See the Isabella Rossellini sing, Blue Velvet

Buy Bobby Vinton’s ”The Best Of Bobby Vinton”, The ”Blue Velvet” movie soundtrack, David Lynch’s ”Blue Velvet” on DVD, or be like Dennis Hopper and fondle your own swatch of actual Blue Velvet.