“I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert.” The comment is directed at Kyle MacLachlan’s character in David Lynch’s first true masterpiece, 1986’s Blue Velvet. But the line — delivered by wholesome coed Sandy (Laura Dern) to the similarly clean-cut Jeffrey (MacLachlan) — serves as a thesis statement for the entire crime-movie genre.
By the time David Lynch put his stamp on tales of femme fatales and boy detectives, films like Body Heat (1981) and Brian De Palma’s Body Double (1984) had already taken the implied sex and violence of classic noir and made it explicit. De Palma in particular gave these movies a perverse new point of view, playing up the voyeurism also seen in works by his hero, Alfred Hitchcock. Still, no one was ready for Blue Velvet.
