40th Anniversary! 4K Restoration!
There's something going on behind the white picket fences of Lumberton, North Carolina. And after stumbling upon a severed human ear in a field, mystery-loving college student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan, who debuted two years earlier in Lynch’s ill-starred Dune and would go on to play Agent Dale Cooper in Lynch’s Twin Peaks across all its iterations) is determined to find out what. Teaming up with the daughter of a local police detective (Laura Dern, later star of Lynch’s 1990 Palme d’Or winner Wild at Heart and 2006’s Inland Empire), Jeffrey's investigation leads him into a strange world of sensuality and violence, with the intrigue of the missing ear seemingly stemming from the relationship between a troubled nightclub singer (Isabella Rossellini, in only her second American film role) and a sociopathic sadomasochist (Dennis Hopper, in a career-reviving performance).
“The last real earthquake to hit cinema… No one could quite match the traumatizing combination of horrific, comedic, aural, and subliminal effects Lynch rumbled out in this masterpiece… Still a hilarious, red-hot poker to the brain.” – Guy Maddin
Previously screened as part of The Films of David Lynch and our August & September 2022 series, “Waverly Midnights: Late-Night Favorites.”