Webs in Lynch's Closet / R. W. Watkins

Webs in Lynch’s Closet?

Similarities Between Blue Velvet and Early Spider-Man

R. W. Watkins

Like the classic Stan Lee-era Amazing Spider-Man comics (1963-c.1972), the films and television series of David Lynch depend on a precise combination of suspense, melodrama and jet-black humour amidst a cast of extreme and offbeat characters. This is certainly more true of Lynch’s 1986 neo-noir masterpiece Blue Velvet than any of his other celluloid creations for the big and small screens. In fact, one can make a reasonably sound argument that Blue Velvet not only resembles early Amazing Spider-Man in its tone and aberrant dynamics, but indeed also owes a great deal to the actual early plots and characters of the classic comic magazine.

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o begin with, Kyle MacLachlan’s Jeffrey Beaumont resembles the 1960s Peter Parker physically, as well as in dress (e.g., blazer, casual trousers), and is sometimes seen walking in the same slouching melancholic manner often associated with the hard-luck comics character. Similar to Parker (starting in 1965), he is a university student who once attended a secondary school called Central High (Parker attended ‘Midtown’ High). The Beaumont family home is reminiscent of the Parkers’ two-storey abode in Forest Hills, Queens, and is situated in a similar quiet uptown neighbourhood. The soundtrack music (Bobby Vinton, Roy Orbison, etc.), clothes, motor vehicles (including a vintage ambulance and fire truck), and flower-hemmed white-picket fences reek of early to mid ’60s Americana.

In the aftermath of his father’s hospitalisation, Jeffrey moves back home from university to help run the family hardware store. This is comparable to Peter Parker’s situation following his Uncle Ben’s death, when he considers easing the financial strain by quitting high school to find a job, and putting his plans for university on hold indefinitely (Amazing Spider-Man No. 1, 1963). As well, Jeffrey’s Aunt Barbara (Frances Bay) moves in with his mother and him, not unlike Peter’s Aunt May, who eventually moves in with her neighbour Anna Watson (in No. 46, 1966), the aunt of Peter’s future girlfriend, Mary-Jane. The presence of an ‘Aunt Barbara’ may also suggest Aunt May herself. In an early scene, Jeffrey comes downstairs at twilight and announces he’s going out for a walk, drawing an Aunt May-like warning from his Aunt Barbara about going “down by Lincoln [Street]”. At that same moment, his mother and aunt are watching what appears to be a suspense or noir film on the living-room television set. On the screen, a pair of feet creeps stealthily up a staircase, suggesting the treachery that accompanies Jeffrey’s newfound sleuthing—á la that of the early Peter Parker.

In a later scene, Jeffrey walks downstairs in the morning with a black eye to be subtly ‘interrogated’ by his aghast mother and aunt. The scene reminds one of the comics panels dedicated to images of Parker, after battling a deadly supervillain overnight, dragging himself downstairs, through the front door, or into the Daily Bugle offices to confront a worriedly inquisitive Aunt May, Mrs. Watson or Betty Brant.

As for the lovers in Jeffrey’s life, the fair-haired Sandy Williams (Laura Dern) is analogous with both of the two blondes closest to Peter Parker in the 1960s. Like Liz Allen in the earliest comics (1962-’65), she is still a high-school pupil, and is officially dating Mike, the star of the varsity football team, making him comparable to Liz’s usual date, Flash Thompson. Like Gwen Stacy in the somewhat later issues of Amazing Spider-Man (Nos. 31-122, 1965-’73), she is the daughter of a major police officer (Detective Williams, played by George Dickerson). Just as Peter Parker befriends Captain George Stacy (in the line of police investigations into Doctor Octopus [Nos. 53-56, 1967]) without the captain ever knowing Peter’s Spider-Man identity, Jeffrey, following his discovery of an ant-infested severed human ear on a shortcut through a neighbourhood field, befriends and consults with Detective Williams without the officer knowing the full extent of his involvement with the suspects until the latter scenes of the film.

Also, like Gwen, Sandy eventually develops a long and lasting relationship with the young male protagonist. Very similar to Liz’s situation, her estranged boyfriend responds by attempting to pick a fight with Jeffrey as the new couple drive home from a teenage dance party, recalling the occasional fisticuffs between envious Flash Thompson and Peter during high school and university events, parties, etc.

The other woman in Jeffrey’s life, dark-haired singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rosellini), is also analogous with two of Peter Parker’s favourite females: the spicy, multidimensional Mary Jane Watson (a redhead) and, to a lesser extent, Daily Bugle secretary Betty Brant (a brunette). Like Watson in the comics, Vallens has a dark and unclear past (although more of it is revealed than that of Watson’s—at least Watson’s in the original 1960s story arcs). Vallens is a night-club singer at The Slow Club. This is also quite similar to Watson, who is a budding actress/dancer/model, and for a few issues in 1968 (Nos. 59-61), worked as a go-go dancer at a ‘hip’ nightclub known as The Gloom Room A-Go-Go. In regards to nomenclature, Dorothy Vallens’s missing husband’s name is Donald James Watts—‘Watts’ is strikingly resemblant of ‘Watson’. Also, the manner in which Jeffrey first meets her is amusingly comparable to the way in which Parker finally meets Watson. Vallens opens the door to find Jeffrey hiding in the closet of her apartment. Somewhat similarly, after months of ‘ducking’ and hiding from Mary Jane (since No. 15 in 1964), Peter finally comes face to face with the ravishing young woman in the doorway of her Aunt Anna Watson’s, after he agrees to a Sunday dinner arranged by Mrs. Watson and his Aunt May (No. 42, 1966).

Similar to Betty Brant—who faces extortion from The Enforcers over a debt to a loan shark, and is blackmailed by jailed gangster Blackie Gaxton into arranging (with Doctor Octopus) his prison break after her brother Bennett ‘welches’ on a gambling debt (Amazing Spider-Man Nos. 10-11, 1964)—Dorothy Vallens is forced to perform sadomasochistic acts with gangster Frank Booth, who, with the assistance of his offbeat cronies, has abducted her husband and young son. Like Brant’s brother, Vallens’s husband is later murdered.

Just like in the comic books, wardrobes and accessories in Blue Velvet appear exaggerated as if to establish characters as easily recognisable ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’. For example, Detective Williams is seen wearing his shoulder holster while relaxing at home. Jeffrey dons overalls and feigns being an exterminator to get a peek into Dorothy Vallens’s apartment, prompting her to refer to him as ‘The Bugman’ (a notable spideresque reference). Similarly, in her role as lounge chanteuse, Dorothy Vallens is known as The Blue Lady, and wears a black wig and blue dress. ‘The Yellow Man’, Detective Gordon, is referred to as such by Jeffrey based on his mustard-yellow suit. Gangster Frank Booth wears a gas canister from which he regularly inhales amyl nitrite using a mask; he also masquerades as ‘The Well-Dressed Man’. Ben, the effeminate host of the ‘party’ to which Frank and his cronies drag Jeffrey and Dorothy, is described repeatedly by Frank as ‘suave’, and, with his makeup, slick coiffure, smoking jacket and cigarette holder (shades of Spider-Man foe The Kingpin), plays the role of ‘sick dandy’.

Less significantly, in his initial meeting with Sandy, Jeffrey describes an old schoolmate of his as having “...the biggest tongue in the world”. Such a freakish attribute reminds one of some of the hideous characteristics of Spider-Man’s more monstrous superfoes, particularly that of The Lizard. Also less significant, but still worth noting, are the two black clerks (both named ‘Ed’) at Jeffrey’s father’s hardware store, either of whom is comparable to Joe Robertson, the fatherly African-American city editor whom Peter Parker works under at The Daily Bugle. One of them, despite being a cane-dependent blind man with dark glasses, seems capable of locating items around the store and discerning the number of fingers Jeffrey holds up on his left hand, simply by staring blindly. (The latter feat is achieved by having his fellow black clerk pat him once on the back per each finger raised. In the scene where we’re given an example of this trick, Jeffrey raises four fingers. Four is also the number of times that Sandy blows the car horn to warn Jeffrey that Dorothy Vallens is on her way up to her apartment where he’s sleuthing. Connexion?) In this regard, he also uncannily resembles Marvel Comics superhero DareDevil, a.k.a. Matt Murdock, the blind crime-fighter who was introduced shortly after Spider-Man, and with whom the web-slinging superhero would occasionally collaborate on the pages of each other’s magazine. Yet another item of minutiae worth citing involves the inclusion of a particular song on the soundtrack: Roy Orbison’s ‘In Dreams’ makes mention of a “...candy-coloured clown they call the Sandman...”. Interestingly, ‘Sandman’ was the name given to a Spider-Man foe introduced in 1963.

The behaviour of the various characters is also on par with that of superheroes and supervillains. From the time Jeffrey handles the ant-crawling severed ear, he seems drawn in a maverick fashion towards crime and intrigue, with the enhanced ability to hear/sense thing. This is comparable to Peter Parker’s suddenly being endowed with the powers and instinct of a spider after being accidentally bitten by the radioactive arachnid. Not unlike Spider-Man scaling walls and crawling through windows, Jeffrey decides to sneak into Dorothy Vallens’s flat at Deep River Apartments on the aforementioned Lincoln Street, once it has been pointed out to him by Sandy after their initial nocturnal meeting on the sidewalk outside her home. (This meeting and subsequent exploration of the apartment building actually recalls a short sequence of panels from Amazing Spider-Man No. 25, in which Peter scales a building in plainclothes after a nighttime study date with a smitten Liz Allan, who watches from the doorway as he leaves her family’s yard.) He tells Sandy, “First thing I need is to get into her apartment and open a window that I can crawl into later” (emphasis mine); the apartment, interestingly, is on the seventh floor. “I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert,” Sandy later comments. This helps establish Jeffrey as a renegade figure—like Spider-Man—who is somewhat ‘beyond good and evil’, taking the law into his own hands, and upholding and (occasionally) breaking those laws at his own discretion—unbeholden to the criminal world or law enforcement either. He eventually surveils Vallens in her flat and stakes out Frank’s apartment building as well, explaining to Sandy along the way, “I’m seeing something that has always been hidden... I’m in the middle of a mystery”. When Vallens catches Jeffrey spying from her closet, she pricks his face with a kitchen knife and demands that he get undressed. This is highly similar to the manner in which villains often unmask captured superheroes in the comics, including Spider-Man on two or three occasions.

The manner in which Jeffrey stakes out Frank Booth’s apartment building and photographs evidence of his dealings is intriguing, to say the least. Operating the shutter by a remote switch on a chord, he candidly snaps photos of Frank and the Yellow Man, using a camera he has rigged and taped to the car’s dashboard and hidden beneath an old Jarman shoe box. This is comparable to Peter Parker’s cameras, which he wears on his utility belt and secures to ceiling corners and crevices in order to capture saleable photos of himself doing battle as Spider-Man. Also, like his earlier improvisation with the pesticide sprayer in Vallens’s flat, this clever ability with a mechanical device is similar to Peter Parker’s technical prowess in designing various types of liquid webbing, web-shooters, gas masks, etc.

After a night of (sometimes) bizarre romance with Dorothy Vallens, Jeffrey is caught leaving Vallens’s flat by Frank Booth and his offbeat henchmen. Frank (Dennis Hopper) is a demented and drug-dependent sadist who appears to possess multiple personalities, including that of The Well-Dressed Man, the previously noted disguise which he executes courtesy of a wig and false eyebrows and moustache. He is obviously analogous with Spider-Man’s featured arch-nemesis in the 1960s and early ’70s, the Green Goblin—a.k.a. Norman Osborn, the respected but stressed middle-age chemical plant owner who developed a split personality following his exposure to an explosive chemical reaction (revealed as a flashback in No. 40, 1966). The steaming chemicals to which Osborn was exposed may be construed as equivalent to the amyl nitrite which Frank inhales.

Similar to the Green Goblin, whose favourite colour is green (the colour of the chemical concoction that exploded), Frank fetishises Dorothy Vallens’s blue velvet robe, and is emotionally overcome by her renditions of Bobby Vinton’s song ‘Blue Velvet’, from which the film (presumably) takes its title. In one scene at the Slow Club, Jeffrey secretly watches as Frank becomes distraught. Later, when Frank and his three sidekicks speed off in Frank’s car, Jeffrey follows them from the club parking lot back to the lobby of the apartment building where Frank resides. This scene recalls panels from Amazing Spider-Man No. 96 (1971), in which Peter observes Osborn becoming distraught while attending a musical featuring Mary Jane Watson staged at Osborn’s own theatre. A few hours later, Osborn returns to a back room of the theatre where his old Green Goblin costume is stored, finally recovers fully from his partial amnesia, and becomes his supervillain other self for the first time in five years (i.e., since No. 40)—all the while pursued by Peter, now in the guise of Spider-Man.

When in a psychotic rage, Frank is physically similar to the Goblin / Norman Osborn as well, displaying bugged white eyes and facial contortions. When Frank meets with and double-crosses fellow criminals disguised as the briefcase-toting Well-Dressed Man, it recalls panels from Amazing Spider-Man No. 38, in which a similarly disguised Osborn keeps an appointment with assorted gangsters while sporting a briefcase. Frank’s trio of unsavoury henchmen—Raymond, Paul and Hunter—are comparable to The Enforcers gang, with whom The Green Goblin teams up in his first appearance (No. 14, 1964), correlating with Fancy Dan, cowboy Montana and strongman The Ox, respectively.

When Frank and this team of ‘baddies’ force the exposed Jeffrey and Dorothy to join them on a ‘joyride’ aboard Frank’s black (1968?) Dodge Charger (vaguely comparable to the Green Goblin's ‘bat-glider’), Jeffrey is shoved into the backseat with the three cronies, recalling panels from No. 10, where Peter Parker is waylaid by The Enforcers and shoved into the back of a sedan between Montana and Fancy Dan. Jeffrey and Dorothy are taken to an establishment (variously interpreted as a sleazy hotel, brothel, etc.) apparently owned and operated by the eccentric ‘sick dandy’, Ben. With his fancy retro clothes, receding hairline, and effeminate sway, Ben parallels the Hollywood director, B.J. Cosmos, whom the Green Goblin and Enforcers con into luring Spider-Man into their clutches during the Goblin’s inaugural appearance.

Towards the end of the ‘abduction’ sequence, following the bizarre ‘party’ at Ben’s, Frank applies lipstick to himself and savagely kisses Jeffrey before beating him in what appears to be a deserted lumber yard. This climactic mid-film sequence of events corresponds with the Green Goblin’s abduction and attempted murder of Peter Parker after learning of his superhero identity in Amazing Spider-Man No. 39 (1966).

One can also make a reasonable argument that the Yellow Man (Detective Gordon) corresponds quite reasonably with secondary character Fred Foswell from the ’60s Spider-Man stories. Interestingly, Foswell was introduced in No. 10 as a small, wimpy journalist at The Daily Bugle who moonlights as The Big Man—a masked, padded-out gangster with built-up shoes who was the original leader of The Enforcers before the Green Goblin appeared on the scene. In this, he is comparable to the Yellow Man, a high-ranking policeman who works alongside Detective Williams and has ties to underworld figures, notably Frank and his Enforcers-like cronies. After being apprehended and serving a stint in prison, Foswell is rehired by J. Jonah Jameson (No. 23, 1965). At this point, Foswell enhances his career by adopting the guise of ‘Patch’, an eye-patch-wearing small-time hood who functions as a ‘stoolie’, uncovering the rackets and schemes of the criminal underworld he knows so well. All the while, Peter Parker remains wary of Foswell’s presence around the newspaper offices, recalling Jeffrey’s encounters with the Yellow Man at the police precinct and the Williams household. Later, in Issues 50-51, when word gets out that Spider-Man has abandoned crime-fighting, Foswell betrays Jameson and attempts a return to the world of crime as the Kingpin’s next in command, only to be shot dead by the Kingpin’s men when he attempts to prevent them from killing Jameson, on whom the Kingpin has ordered a ‘hit’. Foswell’s being torn between the establishment and organised crime is on par with the plight of the Yellow Man, who also fatally succumbs to his criminal associations in the end.

Drugs play a large role in the plot of Blue Velvet, as they do in Amazing Spider-Man stories involving Harry Osborn—the Green Goblin’s son and Peter Parker’s roommate (beginning in No. 46, 1967). In the early ’70s, in a very controversial story arc (Nos. 96-98), Harry turns to LSD after being dumped by his rather flippant girlfriend, Mary Jane Watson, who is increasingly interested in Peter. Following the death of his father (No. 122) in 1973, the drugs and pressure drive Harry to become the new Green Goblin and wage war on his roommate, who is now dating Mary Jane full-time. This may be represented in Blue Velvet by the car-chase scene, in which Jeffrey and Sandy mistake their pursuers—her estranged boyfriend Mike (=Green Goblin II) and his jock pals—for Frank (=Green Goblin I) and his gang. (Mike’s vintage black sports car looks considerably similar to Frank’s Dodge Charger in the darkness.) As they pull up in front of Jeffrey’s family home, Mike attempts to draw Jeffrey into the aforementioned grudge-fight.

Like in classic Amazing Spider-Man, dreams and flashbacks are somewhat vital to the suspense and continuity of Blue Velvet, and are often quite similar in content. After his initial ‘visit’ to Dorothy’s, Jeffrey dreams in a sequence of images that includes his father’s distorted face; Mr. Beaumont’s muffled voice can be heard struggling on the soundtrack: “Jeffrey...Jeffrey....” (Also interesting is the rather grotesque, mask-like object which Jeffrey reaches for on his bedroom wall as he awakens.) This is reminiscent of Peter Parker’s dreams and memories of his late Uncle Ben, for whose death he has always held himself partly responsible (owing to his arrogantly failing to help the police apprehend the murderous burglar a few days earlier).

This dark ‘revelatory’ dream of Jeffrey’s also recalls a nightmare of Peter Parker’s first girlfriend, Betty Brant, in which Peter reveals his Spider-Man identity to her (No. 34, 1966). In Blue Velvet, Sandy tells Jeffrey of a dream she had after first meeting him; a dream prophetically similar to Betty Brant’s, in which the world was dark and gloomy until flocks of robins came.

Images representing Jeffrey’s memories of the night he hit Dorothy Vallens in bed—shown as he recovers in his bedroom following his beating by Frank—also exude the same quality of revelation (in this case, Jeffrey’s coming to grips with his darker inner self), and recall the semiconscious bedroom thoughts of a dazed and injured Peter Parker finally admitting to himself that he loves Gwen Stacy (No. 60, 1968).

Jeffrey’s difficulty in coming to grips with his nightmare-inducing after-dark assignations at Dorothy’s is reminiscent of an episode in which Peter fears that he has developed a criminally nocturnal ‘other self’ (No. 13, 1964).

The afternoon Jeffrey spends trailing and photographing Frank and the Yellow Man is always portrayed visually through flashback sequences. Similarly, classic Spider-Man stories are heavily dependent on ‘cloud-framed’ flashback panels for clarity and continuity.

The film reaches what is probably its zenith of sexual tension in a manner resembling a subplot from Amazing Spider-Man No. 25 (1965). As Mike challenges Jeffrey to a grudge-fight in front of the Beaumonts’ house, Dorothy Vallens—badly beaten and completely naked—suddenly appears on the front lawn, looking for Jeffrey. Jeffrey and Sandy take the naked woman to Sandy’s house, where she refers to Jeffrey as her secret lover in front of Sandy and Mrs. Williams. This is comparable to panels in No. 25 which have Peter’s suitors, Betty Brant and Liz Allan, simultaneously calling on him at the Parker household, only to discover newcomer Mary Jane Watson (her face suspensefully hidden from the reader) sitting with Aunt May in the living room. “She looks like a screen star,” remarks a jealous and astonished Betty. Meanwhile, a miffed Flash Thompson waits outside on the street, ready to pounce on the increasingly popular young Parker. It is also comparable to the occasional tension between Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy once the former is finally introduced to Peter (and her face finally revealed to the reader) in No. 42 (1966). Vallens tells Sandy and her mother, “He put his disease in me,” almost as if Jeffrey possessed infected or mutated body fluids not unlike Peter Parker’s spider-bite-inherited radioactive blood. At this point, Sandy is overcome with jealousy and breaks down crying; moments later, she slaps Jeffrey in the face as the ambulance arrives for Vallens.

The beaten, drugged-out Dorothy being rushed off in an ambulance seems to vaguely reference at least three key Amazing Spider-Man stories from the early to mid 1970s: Peter ringing for an ambulance after finding Harry Osborn (his roommate, Norman ‘Green Goblin’ Osborn’s son) having a bad acid ‘trip’ (No. 98, 1971); Mary Jane Watson being hospitalised after triggering a bomb that Harry—in his guise as the second Green Goblin—has set in his and Peter’s apartment (No. 136, 1974); and Gwen Stacy falling to her death off the Brooklyn Bridge in No. 121 (1973), following her abduction by the senior Green Goblin (As Vallens is ambulanced off, she screams deliriously, “Hold me! I’m falling! I’m falling!”).

The eagerness of Sandy to forgive Jeffrey in the aftermath of Dorothy’s revelation invites comparisons to a 1968 Spider-Man story. “Oh, Peter... I want to believe you!” exclaims a conflicted Gwen in No. 62, after Parker is forced to defend himself against Gwen’s father, the ageing Captain Stacy, who—unbeknownst to Gwen—has been brainwashed by the Kingpin and a certain Dr. Winkler. “O, Peter... if only you had one word of explanation! I’d believe anything you tell me!” thinks Gwen tearfully when she spots Peter at university in No. 63; “Nothing seems to matter anymore without you.” Similarly, when Jeffrey phones Sandy from the hospital shortly after having Dorothy admitted, she tells him, “You lied to me.... I forgive you, Jeffrey.... I love you... but I couldn’t watch that.”

Besides the Foswellesque demise of the Yellow Man mentioned above, Blue Velvet’s penultimate scene at Dorothy’s apartment appears to reference at least three crucial plots from the early Spider-Man comics. Jeffrey discovers Dorothy’s husband, Don, sitting dead in a chair, his hands bound, ear missing, and mouth gagged with a rag of blue velvet. This image is vaguely similar to panels of Peter Parker, bound to a chair, while being held captive by the Goblin in Nos. 39 and 40. (Interestingly, it was during this episode that the Goblin finally revealed his identity to Parker and readers alike. Similarly, Jeffrey and the viewers don’t learn for certain who the Well-Dressed Man is until a few minutes later, after Jeffrey is forced to return to the apartment to flee a pursuing Frank, who sheds his Well-Dressed Man disguise upon entry as Jeffrey watches from his hiding place in the closet.)

Similar to Spider-Man—who would often ‘duck out’ at the last moment, leaving the criminals he had rounded up for the police to deal with—Jeffrey starts to leave Dorothy’s apartment, saying to himself, “I’m going to let them find you on their own.” Before he can escape the building, however, he encounters Frank coming up the stairs in the Well-Dressed Man disguise. Dashing back into the flat, Jeffrey misleads Frank into believing he’s hiding in a bedroom, and then hides in Dorothy’s closet with a revolver taken from the lobotomised Yellow Man. Smugly thinking he has Jeffrey trapped and defenseless, the gun-wielding Frank opens the closet door only to get a bullet through his forehead. This is comparable to the manner in which Norman Osborn / The Green Goblin brings on his own demise in Amazing Spider-Man No. 122, when he ‘summons’ his bat-glider to ram Spider-Man from the back, but instead gets pierced through the chest himself when Spider-Man’s spider sense alerts him to duck at the last second.

The final scene of the film finds the Beaumont and Williams families, complete with Jeffrey’s recovered father, happily enjoying a get-together and meal at the Beaumonts’ household. A glimpse of a robin devouring a bug outside the kitchen window provides the film with its final reference to small, creeping organisms on par with spiders.

Now surely I will have my detractors in regards to all of this. Some might say that the examples I have cited are merely coincidental, and question the possibility of David Lynch, an experimental film director and screenwriter, gleaning plots and characters from classic superhero comics. But why shouldn’t Lynch have had knowledge of the early Spider-Man comics from the 1960s and ’70s? He was certainly aware of the comics world enough to have produced his own bizarre comic strip, The Angriest Dog in the World, for the The Village Voice and other alternative publications between 1983 and 1992. He has also produced Dumbland, a series of cartoonish animated shorts. Animation is not too far removed from the world of comics. Furthermore, it’s never been exactly an uncommon practice for artists in one medium to draw on work composed in other media for influence. Therefore I see no reason why Blue Velvet could not have been based to a large degree on early Spider-Man. A brief read-through of Lynch’s original screenplay (many scenes of which were left on the cutting room floor) reveals even more Spideresque plot twists and characters, including a well-defined ‘Betty Brant’.

Yes, maybe this is all coincidence and conjecture, but until someone can introduce a better theory—preferably one not involving advanced Freudian analysis and incest—then I’m content with my assessment of this classic film in regards to its primary plot and character source.

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Comics panels taken or cropped from (in order of appearance):

Amazing Spider-Man Nos. 7 (1963), 3 (1963), 7 (1963), 23 (1965), 1 (1963), 5 (1963), Annual No. 1 (1964), 34 (1966), 45 (1966), 33 (1965), 60 (1968), 90 (1970), 25 (1965), 42 (1966), 11 (1964), 25 (1965), 2 (1963), 9 (1963), 44 (1966), 96 (1971), 40 (1966), 10 (1964), 14 (1964), 39 (1966), 38 (1966), 23 (1965), 23 (1965), 50 (1967), 100 (1971), 50 (1967), 34 (1966), 60 (1968), 13 (1964), 25 (1965), 40 (1966), Amazing Fantasy No. 15 (1962), and Amazing Spider-Man No.122 (1973).

All film stills from Blue Velvet. 1986 De Laurentiis Entertainment Group. Directed by David Lynch. Produced by Fred Caruso.