Film Summary of Blue Velvet by David Lynch
The film Blue Velvet begins In a small, picturesque city in North Carolina called Lumberton, Mr. Beaumont is watering his lawn and suddenly falls down holding the left side of his head. Simultaneously, bugs devour a severed left ear in an empty field.
Jeffrey Beaumont comes home from school (out of state) to visit his father who’s in the hospital after suffering a stroke. His father tries to say something to Jeffrey but can’t because of the trachea in his throat. Walking home from the hospital, Jeffrey finds a human ear in a vacant field and takes it to Detective Williams at the Lumberton, North Carolina Police Department. The coroner tells the detective that the ear was cut with a pair of scissors.
Jeff leaves home for a late night stroll, unable to get the severed ear off his mind. Later, Detective Williams tells Jeff that he think he’s found something and tells Jeff not to tell anybody about the ear.
Later, Jeff runs into the detective’s daughter Sandy. They take a stroll. Her room is by her father’s and she overheard him talking about the ear, connecting it with a singer named Dorothy Vallens who lives near the field where Jeff found the ear. The cops have Dorothy under surveillance. Sandy takes Jeff to the building where Dorothy lives on the 7th floor.
Jeff picks Sandy up from school to talk to her. He takes her to a restaurant and there, says to her: “There are opportunities to gain knowledge and experience.”
He asks Sandy to help him. He’ll disguise himself as pest control to gain access to her apartment. After he’s up there for 3 minutes, he needs Sandy to come up and knock on Dorothy’s door as a Jehovah’s Witness. This distraction will allow him to open a window to enter the apartment later after Dorothy leaves.
Sandy agrees to this and Jeff gets out of the car and takes the building’s fire escape up to Dorothy’s apartment. She answers the door in a red dress and lets him in. He begins spraying in the kitchen, around the baseboards as slow as possible to case out the windows. Someone knocks on the door and Dororthy opens it; it’s not Sandy! A man in a yellow jacket steps in and locks eyes with Jeff for a moment before stepping out into the hall with Dorothy. Jeff takes a set of keys off a hook under the kitchen counter and finishes up the job.
Back in his car, he tells Sandy that he plans on sneaking into Dorothy’s apartment tonight. He asks Sandy for her help and she agrees to, promising to break a date with her boyfriend Michael, whom she loves.
Jeff and Sandy go by the Slow Club where Dorothy Vallens sings ‘Blue Velvet.’ Her red lipstick is popping under the blue light. Jeff seems captivated.
He and Sandy leave the club and go to Dorothy’s house. Sandy has cold feet and refuses to go into Dorothy’s apartment. Sandy decides to stay and honk 3 times when she sees Dorothy come home.
Sandy: “I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert.”
Jeff: “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
He goes up to Dorothy’s apartment and uses the key he stole from her. The rooms are dark.
Sandy sounds the horn 3 times when she sees Dorothy and a man pull up to the apartment. Jeff flushes the toilet and doesn’t hear the horn. He does, however, hear the keys in the front door. He hides in the closet and peeks out to see Dorothy undressing. The phone rings and she answers it, begging to speak with her son. Later, she puts on her blue velvet housecoat, goes to the kitchen, comes back with a butcher knife, and orders Jeff to come out the closet. He comes out apologizing.
He just wanted to see her. She makes him strip and gives him oral pleasure. She asks him if he likes it and he says yes. She makes him lie on the couch and kisses him. Someone knocks at the door and he goes back into the closet. Dorothy lets Frank in and he tells her to shut up and call him ‘Daddy.’
Frank tells her to open her legs as he takes a deep pull from an inhaler. He calls her mommy in a baby voice and asks for some blue velvet. She stuffs his mouth with her blue velvet house coat. He chokes her, then throws her to the floor. He takes out a pair of scissors and cuts a small patch off of her robe. He mounts her and, afterwards, punches her in the face for looking at him. He finally leaves the apartment and Jeff comes out of the closet to assist Dorothy to the couch. She begs him to stay and they kiss. She calls him Don and asks him to hit her; he doesn’t. On his way out, he sees a picture of her husband and their son.
Jeff tells Sandy about everything that happened last night at Dorthy’s place. "It’s a strange world,” he says. He believes that Frank is holding Dorothy’s husband and son hostage to make her indulge his sexual fantasies.
Sandy had a dream the night she met Jeff. The dream starts off dark because there aren’t any Robbins but all of a sudden thousands of Robbins are set free and to bring love to the world.
Jeff visits Dorothy and she tells him that she had looked for him in her closet. They kiss.
At the Slow Club later, Dorothy is on stage singing Blue Velvet. Jeff is there and sees Frank with a patch of the blue velvet patch he’d cut from Dorothy’s housecoat. Frank and several men leave the club and get into a car. Jeff follows them to a warehouse.
The next day, he picks up Sandy at school. Mike, Sandy’s boyfriend, is playing football nearby and sees Sandy get into Jeff’s car. At a restaurant, Jeff tells Sandy what he saw at the warehouse. That he saw a man in a yellow jacket and Frank come out of the building with a well-dressed man carrying an alligator briefcase. They got into a car and he followed them to a factory downtown. Not far from this factory, the police find a dead man in an apartment and a woman with a broken leg on the sidewalk.
Sandy is amazed and asks Jeff why he’s putting himself in danger and going back to see Dorothy. She feels guilty because she got him into this and feels responsible. He tells Sandy that he’s compelled to do so and that he’s seeing something that was always hidden. He’s involved in a mystery and he tells Sandy that she, too, is a mystery. They kiss.
Dorothy lets Jeff into her apartment and they kiss and make love. She asks him to hurt her. He tries to switch the subject and she pushes him off of her. He finally gives in and hits her hard in the face. He strikes her again and they make love. Afterwards, she tells him that his disease is inside of her and calls him her special friend.
Frank and his crew arrive at Dorothy’s apartment as Jeff is leaving. Frank takes Jeff and Dorothy to see Ben at a club called ‘This is it.’
A middle-aged man with his face powdered up like a woman orders one of the fat women sitting on the sofa to bring beers for Frank and the others. Frank calls Ben ‘Suave’ and punches Jeff in the face. Then, Ben punches Jeff in the stomach. Frank follows Ben into another room and Ben gives Frank a wad of money, a scrip of paper, and puts a pill in Frank’s mouth. Frank tells Ben that Gordon, a cop, had killed and robbed a drug dealer in broad daylight.
Frank orders one of his men to let Dorothy see her son in another room. Ben starts lip-syncing to a Roy Orbison’s song called ‘In dreams.’
Frank turns off the radio and orders everyone out for a joy ride. He tells Ben that he’ll see him Tuesday.
Dorothy is in the front seat beside Frank who is driving. He stops the car when he sees her looking at Jeff in the back seat. He draws off his inhaler and starts groping Dorothy. Jeffrey punches Frank in the nose. Frank and his boys drag Jeff out the car where Frank punches him to the tune of Roy Orbison’s ‘In Dreams’ while the fat girl they brought along dances nearby. Frank tells Jeff to stay away from Dorothy. Jeff passes out and when he wakes up the next morning everyone is gone.
Jeff calls Sandy to tell her that he has some info for her father.
At the police station, Jeff sees the man with the yellow jacket behind a desk. The name plate on the desk says Gordon, the name Frank mentioned to Ben who robbed and mudered a drug dealer. Jeff shows pictures he had taken of Frank and his crew and Gordon to Detective Williams.
Jeff stops by the hospital to see his father. On Friday, Jeff goes by Sandy’s house to pick her up for a date and Gordon is there also because he and Detective Williams are taking their wives out.
Jeff and Sandy attend a party. As he is driving her home a car follows them to Jeff’s house— it’s Sandy’s boyfriend Mike itching to fight. Dorothy comes out of Jeff’s house naked and bloody. Jeff and Sandy help Dorothy in the car and drive away with Dorothy clinging to Jeff’s arm.
Jeff takes Dorothy to Sandy’s house. Sandy looks hurt and confused as she watches Jeff with Dorothy’s face very close to his asking him where he’s been (Dorothy naked is a metaphor for the truth about Jeff coming to light) and calling him her secret lover. Jeff looks embarrassed. Sandy’s mother calls the police and an ambulance. Dorothy tells Jeff that she loves him, then she tells Sandy and her mother that Jeff put his disease inside of her. Mother and daughter have stunned looks on their faces. Jeff shakes his head as if to say “No, I didn’t, baby.” Sandy asks him what’s going on. Again, Dorothy tells Sandy that Jeff put his disease in her.
An ambulance arrives for Dorothy and Sandy slaps Jeff.
Later, they talk on the phone and she forgives him for lying to her. But he has to go back to Dorothy’s place because she is in danger. Sandy hangs up the phone and says, “Where’s my dream?”
Jeff uses his key to enter Dorothy’s apartment. Gordon and Don are there but dead from being tortured. Elsewhere, Detective Williams raids Frank’s place. Jeff leaves Dorothy apartment as Frank, disguised in a fake mustache and carrying a lizard-skin briefcase, is coming up the fire escape. Jeff rushes back into the apartment, and uses Gordon’s radio to let the police know where Frank is.
Frank enters the apartment with his gun, takes off the wig and mustache, and follows the sound of the police radio to the bedroom. The instant he kicks down the door, Jeff comes out the closet, takes the pistol off Gordon’s dead body, and returns to the closet. Frank comes out of bedroom, draws off of his inhaler, and approaches the closet. When he opens the door, Jeff shoots him in the head. Jeff and Sandy enter the apartment.
Later, the apartment is swarming with police. Sandy kisses Jeff.
Epilogue:
Jeff is laid out in a lawn chair under a bright blue sky. Sandy calls him inside for lunch. A Robin is perched on the windowsill with a bug in its mouth—the nightmare’s over. Film ends the way it began, with daffodils, white picket fences, roses, blue skies. Dorothy and her son embrace on a park bench.
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