There’s a handful of films that have altered my consciousness in ways that are hard to describe. It’s a chemical thing. You watch the movie and you walk out of the theater with your senses deranged and your comfortable notions of “reality” challenged or, in some cases, obliterated.

I saw Blue Velvet on the day it was released to theaters on September 26, 1986. I saw it on a big screen in Manhattan and was completely consumed by David Lynch’s extraordinary vision. I felt as though I’d taken a hit of some new exotic psychotropic - a compound composed of Andre Breton’s dehydrated spinal fluid, essential oils extracted from Luis Bunuel’s pineal gland and diacetyl-slathered popcorn. I exited the theater and made my way to the nearest bar where I waxed poetic for hours about the mindfucking movie I had just seen and was eventually shown the door by a perplexed bartender who thought I’d probably done one line of cocaine too many. Great art is exhilarating but try explaining that to a man whose life’s soundtrack is a bombardment of wild epiphanic rants uttered by men who have seen angels and devils fornicating in the amber waves lapping at the edges of their shot glasses. I had left Blue Velvet carrying its vibration with me and was in jeopardy of being declared a public nuisance.

On this birth date of Dean Stockwell, let us luxuriate in one of the most magically weird moments in cinema’s history.