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Custom made action figures of Robert Smith, The Cramps, Eraserhead & more!


A nice shot of the custom Poison Ivy and Lux Interior figures by an artist known as “N TT” over at Figure Realm. YES!
 
There are times when I’m out and about on the Internet looking for new and exciting things to bring to all of our dedicated Dangerous Minds readers, and occasionally (or always) I come across something I wasn’t looking for in the first place. And that’s how I happily ended up finding a bunch of different DIY figures and dolls based on the gothy likeness of Robert Smith, the one and only vocalist for The Cure, as well as Poison Ivy and Lux Interior of The Cramps. According to the person behind theses figures, artist “N TT” over at Figure Realm, it was noted that the six-inch version of Lux was made out of an action figure of Vince Neil from Mötley Crüe. Way to make the world a better place by recycling, N TT. Well done.

If you keep up with me here at DM, you know I have a deep affinity for all things action figures and the like. So stumbling on these figures by N TT was kind of like winning the action figure lottery for me. Anyway, good-old N TT has created some pretty fantastic DIY dolls/figures such as Robert Smith, Ivy and Lux (with Mr. Interior wearing a pair of black heels no less) and Jack Nance in character from the 1977 film Eraserhead. And since I know you’re wondering, though it’s not entirely clear, it would appear that N TT occasionally sells the tricked out figures that are posted on this page at Figure Realm.
 

Custom Lux Interior and Poison Ivy figures. Nice.
 

 

This disturbing interpretation of The Cure’s Robert Smith is based on the video for “Lullaby” from 1989. YIKES!
 
Many more after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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09.14.2017
09:35 am
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Stunning stills, movie posters and lobby cards from David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’
07.18.2017
11:35 am
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A fantastic movie poster for ‘Blue Velvet’ by Italian artist Enzo Sciotti.
 
I found the movie poster pictured above for 1986’s Blue Velvet, by Italian artist Enzo Sciotto, so inspiring that I decided to write this post just so I had an excuse to showcase it for you. If for some reason you’ve never seen Blue Velvet, I hope this will help convince you to change that as quickly as possible—though I’ll warn you that after watching the film for the first time, you might not be so eager to answer your front door for quite a while, even if it’s just the pizza delivery guy because in your mind it very well might be “Frank Booth,” the beyond sinister character masterfully played by Dennis Hopper in the film. For those who have seen Blue Velvet, you are probably reminded of the movie anytime you see a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. There is an abundance of trivia and folklore associated with Blue Velvet that is as fascinating as the movie itself, some of which I was unaware of before I took this deep dive into the Lynch classic today.

So since we were just talking about good-old Heineken-hating Frank, let’s start with some tidbits regarding Hopper’s experience on the film. Blue Velvet was the first time Hopper and ethereal actress Isabella Rossellini had ever worked together. Their relationship in the film is complicated, to say the least, and Hopper’s character was charged with subjecting Rossellini’s character to some pretty awful stuff including a horrific rape scene. Unbeknownst to Hopper, when it came time to shoot that particular scene, Rossellini was completely naked under another object of Frank’s affection, her blue velvet robe. When Hopper finally opens Rossellini’s robe he got an unexpected eyeful of the gorgeous actress and her lady parts which left the seemingly unshakeable Hopper rather stunned.

Another interesting piece of trivia concerning Hopper’s portrayal of Booth is his excessive use of the word “fuck” and its many variations in nearly every line of his dialog resulting in more than 50 “fucks” (55 in total I believe) coming from Hopper himself exclusively.
 

A French lobby card for ‘Blue Velvet.’
 
According to Hopper, David Lynch himself would never utter the four-letter word, choosing instead to simply point to the word in the script instructing him to say “that word.” Lynch would later somewhat dispute the claim by the newly sober Hopper who used to snort a terrifying amount of coke which he washed down with 28 beers and a bottle of rum on a daily basis before he went into detox. And yeah, I just dropped another Blue Velvet bombshell—Dennis Hopper was booze and drug-free for the first time in a very long time while playing Frank Booth—a frenzied drug addict with a penchant for PBR and murder.

Lastly, if you’ve ever wondered what exactly was streaming through Booth’s oxygen mask, the details about that are also quite compelling. Lynch’s vision for further mythologizing the character of Frank Booth involved altering Booth’s voice to reinforce the concept that he would regress to, at times, a child-like persona while huffing an unidentified “drug” through his gas mask. To do this, Lynch wanted to have Hopper inhale a bunch of helium through the mask so he sounded like a deranged version of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Hopper made a sage recommendation based on his not-so-long-ago drug days saying that using amyl nitrite (a drug used to treat chest pain) would help enhance the sexual energy of the scene. Lynch agreed and the result is one of the most savage and unhinged moments in movie history. Though Hopper had been warned by Hollywood insiders and his agents to run away from the role, the actor would correctly refer to the part as “a fucking dream, man.” Beautiful. Rossellini was also concerned about her role being too “risky” but immediately identified with her character saying that she saw a woman who was totally “victimized,” who had lost all her “rationality” and was left with “only emotions.”

Another point of interest concerning the film, and one some of you may already be aware of, is the fact that David Lynch and Isabella Rossellini developed a serious romantic relationship while filming Blue Velvet. The two spent four years together and were engaged to be married, though they would part ways shortly after the premiere of another one of Lynch’s films, 1990’s Wild At Heart in which Rossellini played the blonde ex-girlfriend of Nicolas Cage’s character. Rossellini has gone on the record as saying that Lynch was the “big love of her life” and after he ended their love-affair she was “broken-hearted.” Another curious item of note regarding the role of Dorothy is that Lynch originally wrote the role for Deborah Harry who turned the part down because she was sick of playing “weirdos.” Wow. I’ve included some beautiful and rather brutal images from the film, from French lobby cards to stills, and a few intriguing movie posters for you to scroll through below. Most of them are NSFW. 
 

A Turkish movie poster for ‘Blue Velvet.’
 

Dennis Hopper as the demonic “Frank Booth” in ‘Blue Velvet.’
 

Director David Lynch looking into the “face” of an artificial Frank
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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07.18.2017
11:35 am
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Tuxedomoon, Cult With No Name & John Foxx make music inspired by ‘Blue Velvet’


 
In 1985 a German photographer named Peter Braatz traveled to North Carolina and ended up filming a good deal of behind-the-scenes footage of the making of one of the best movies of the 1980s, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Diverging from what most people would have done, I’d say, Braatz declined to make a regular documentary and opted instead to make a free-standing work of art called “No Frank in Lumberton”—we wrote about it a while back.

In late 2015, as part of its “Made To Measure” series, Brussels-based label Crammed Discs put out an “original soundtrack” composed by Tuxedomoon and Cult With No Name for the documentary Blue Velvet Revisited, a more recent reworking that Braatz forged from his original footage. In 2013 and 2014 Braatz came to realize that the contributions of Cult With No Name and Tuxedomoon would complement his images perfectly—in short order an agreement was made for the two groups to create a “joint soundtrack.”

Of the collaboration, Braatz commented:
 

In July 2013 I first heard the album ‘Above as Below’ by Cult With No Name. As the song ‘As Below’ came on I immediately had the idea to use it for my ‘Blue Velvet Revisited’ project, and to edit a trailer to the track that would showcase my footage.

...

I was keen to hand over the making of the soundtrack to one group of musicians, particularly as much of my film would have no dialogue. The soundtrack would need to carry the feel of ‘As Below’ throughout. Erik Stein revealed to me that the amazing trumpet part on ‘As Below’ was played by Luc Van Lieshout of Tuxedomoon, a group I also knew well and greatly admired. Because it was the trumpet part that I found so perfect, we soon pitched the idea of a joint soundtrack between Cult With No Name and Tuxedomoon.


 
Later on Braatz added a track by John Foxx, the original lead singer of Ultravox. Originating in the Bay Area, Tuxedomoon were one of the most important and influential bands of the post-punk movement. Self-described “post-punk electronic balladeers” Erik Stein and Jon Boux collaborate as Cult With No Name.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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12.23.2016
01:22 pm
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For mommy’s little Frank Booth: It’s the ‘Blue Velvet’ play set!
05.05.2016
09:44 am
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Parents, is it taking forever for junior to utter his first fuckwords? Then help your little sadist grow up fast with the Blue Velvet play set! From a swatch of blue fabric and an inhalant mask to a decomposing ear and a bottle of PBR, it’s got everything* your toddler needs to act out his cruelest fantasies.

Lynchland, the source of the shot above, reports that this prototype was spotted at last month’s Monsterpalooza convention. (Instagram user Rebekah McKendry uploaded the only other snap of the package I could find.)

If you’d like to get your hands on one, perhaps you should nag the inventor, Skullclown, about mass-producing these. But like Frank says, be polite!

Here’s to your fuck, ages three and up!
 

 
*1968 Dodge Charger and “well-dressed man” disguise sold separately.

Posted by Oliver Hall
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05.05.2016
09:44 am
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Art film made from behind-the-scenes footage of ‘Blue Velvet’
09.21.2015
02:50 pm
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If I had to pick my favorite movie from the 1980s, it’d be a good long while before I thought of a better candidate than David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, which came out in 1986. Blue Velvet was Lynch’s redemptive triumph after the time-consuming and expensive flop Dune, which was based on Frank Herbert’s tortuous sci-fi novel.

For reasons unknown, Lynch invited a German photographer named Peter Braatz to Wilmington, North Carolina (yes, that’s right, not Oregon or Washington) to come and document the shooting of Blue Velvet. Braatz titled his nearly hour-long movie “No Frank in Lumberton”; any fans of the movie will instantly understand “Frank” to mean the malevolent character played by Dennis Hopper and “Lumberton” to mean the idyllic logging community in which the action takes place.
 

 
You won’t “learn” anything in the ordinary sense from the movie, it’s an impressionistic tone-poem on Lynch and Blue Velvet that uses grainy footage of Lynch, Isabella Rossellini, Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, et al.; unmotivated cutaways to exercising football players; and plenty of asynchronous sound and music. Sometimes, just for fun, Braatz uses actual dialogue from the movie as the vocal track, such as Dorothy Vallens’ pained cry to “Frank!” to leave poor Jeffrey alone.

This kind of movie strikes me as being very 1980s, it’s “experimental” and self-indulgent and kind of… drunk of video cutting techniques in a way that a movie like this would never be today. But I definitely enjoyed watching it—it’s an “audiovisual experience” first and foremost that just happens to take as its subject one of the most vivid films of American cinema. To Braatz’s credit, the movie does have something of the creepy audio gestalt that Lynch achieved so many times in his work.
 

 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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09.21.2015
02:50 pm
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‘Sexy’ Turkish theatrical poster for David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’
03.13.2013
01:49 pm
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This hubba-hubba Turkish movie poster for Lynch’s Blue Velvet sort of defies comment.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The best damned poster for Brian De Palma’s ‘Carrie’ you’re EVER going to see

Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.13.2013
01:49 pm
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One hour of deleted scenes from David Lynch’s mindtwisting classic ‘Blue Velvet’
06.09.2012
03:51 pm
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Lynch in a stare-down with Frank Booth dummy.
 
David Lynch’s Blue Velvet is in my top ten favorite films of all time. I remember vividly the first time I saw it on opening day, September 19, 1986, in New York City. When the credits finished rolling, I staggered out of the theater and immediately went to my neighborhood bar where I waxed poetically about the psychedelic noir well into the wee hours of the morning. The next day I went to see it again. This was my kind of film - a dark, funny, dreamlike mindfuck that was beautifully shot and had an exquisitely haunting score.

Blue Velvet’s original shooting script is reputed to have been over four hours long. The theatrical release came in at 120 minutes. An additional hour of deleted footage was thought to have been lost when the producer of the film, Dino De Laurentis, sold his company. Fortunately, the footage was located and was released as an extra on the Blu-ray edition of Blue Velvet .  These deleted scenes have been uploaded to YouTube and I present them here for your viewing pleasure. Rumor has it that there is even more footage out there.

Things kick off with a bang in a barroom scene with Jeffrey Beaumont, Frank Booth, a bevy of prostitutes, an old dude singing some deranged blues tune, violence on a pool table and a woman with glowing nipples.

I would love to see a director’s cut with these scenes re-integrated into the film. Would they add any resonance to an already great film or was Lynch right in excising them? Perhaps one day we’ll find out.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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06.09.2012
03:51 pm
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Happy birthday Dean Stockwell - ‘One suave fucker’
03.05.2012
04:40 am
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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.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.05.2012
04:40 am
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