That was in insane movie. But in the good way. Isabella Rossellini was beyond gorgeous and Hopper was so creepy (even for him), that Hannibal Lecter looked like a Disney character in comparison. But for me, Dean Stockwell stole the show when he lip-synced Roy Orbison's "In Dreams." I always liked Stockwell as a character actor. He was one of the saving graces in "Married to the Mob," an otherwise silly film. And I LOVED him in "Quantum Leap."

Absolutely insane, PB. His next film, Wild at Heart, had plenty of off-the-wall humor (Willm Dafoe's last gesture, the dog with the hand, etc.) Lynch directed a short-lived (three episodes) TV series called "On the Air." It was outrageously funny. I have those episodes on a fuzzy VHS tape. But Lost Highway? Fuggedaboutit.

Speaking of off-the-wall humor, have you ever seen "True Romance," TB?

Hopper has an hysterical turn as Christian Slater's lowlife, ex-cop father. His take on the Moors conquering of Sicily is nothing short of a racist diatribe, but I can't help but laugh whenever I see it. And Christopher Walken (the King of off-the-wall humor) is phenomenal.

That whole first part, including Gary Oldman's over-the-top depiction of a black pimp, was worth the price of admission. Almost the best part was when Walken, after hearing Hopper's racist taunt, blinks and says, "Excuse me?"

I wrote a brief obituary on my blog, idFilm:

On his Blue Velvet performance:

As Frank Booth, Hopper is a genuinely scary presence, a ridiculous, hysterical crook whose nastiness is somehow magnified by odd slips of humanity – when he allows Isabella Rossellini's Dorothy to see her son, whom he has kidnapped for ransom – and an outraged loss for words, as when Kyle Maclachlan's Jeffrey punches him in the face.

In light of Lynch's recent forays into outright surreal associative textures, Blue Velvet remains refreshingly linear, its power as both a mystery-thriller and even a horror film lying in its placement of a dangerous, morally disturbed layer into a more innocent whole. It incorporates Ray and then some.

When he first read the script for the film, Hopper famously said he needed to play Frank Booth because he was him. Since the fiction is such a brutal ogre, we might assume the actor meant his words figuratively. There is, however, something very immediate about the performance; perhaps Hopper saw in Booth the opportunity for an on-all-cylinders commitment, a character whose absence from a scene makes one worried and whose presence simply brings the screen to life.