Blue Velvet: Special Edition (2002)

Image credit: Blue Velvet: Everett Collection

FRANK BLACK Hopper (with Rossellini) mixed insanity, hilarity, and rage to create one of film's most frightening villains

Short of including a scratch-and-sniff hit of nitrous oxide, MGM couldn't have done a better job packaging Blue Velvet: Special Edition, writer-director David Lynch's ultra-kinky tale of sexual awakening. A voluptuous digital-video transfer makes every white picket fence and bug-infested blade of grass in the fictional town of Lumberton shimmer with the full, found-object mystery the director had in mind. The movie hasn't lost its power to shock as well as mesmerize, with a juiced-up surround-sound mix delivering each psychotic pronouncement from funny-scary sadist Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) like a blow to the chest as he snorts relaxants and abuses poor, confused chanteuse Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) and her would-be young rescuer, Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan). A just-right smattering of supplements features a gallery of production photos, on-camera testimony from the crew and cast (says Laura Dern, who plays MacLachlan's sweet second love interest: ''Why are there people...in this world...like Frank [Booth]? I mean, that's the question we're all asking now, man!''), and further interview snippets hidden as Easter-egg treats. More rigorously dream-logical than Lynch's latest, ''Mulholland Drive,'' and more intense and sustained than the new ''Twin Peaks'' boxed video sets, ''Blue Velvet'' remains a tearstained fabric swatch for all seasons.