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.