Top 5 Scenes

What are your 5 favorite scenes from this movie?

1. Ben's Place- Could be my favorite scene in any movie ever made. Up to this point we see Jeffrey's town as All American and very innocent with the high school, hardware store, nice houses just perfect. Now we see the darkness at night, what' s underneath. Frank basically kidnaps Jeffrey for a joy ride and takes him to Ben's apartment. The dialogue here is amazing, every line is gold. Ben is the suavest *beep* alive and his interactions with the unstable Frank are hilarious and so strange. Then out of nowhere Ben starts lip synching "In Dreams", everyone's first reaction to this scene is "is this really happening right now" its perfectly surreal. Overall this scene is amazing in every way; funny, surreal, menacing, and unsettling its like a child's nightmare of what adults do when they're asleep at night.

2. Frank Beating Up Jeffrey- I think of the entire Joy Ride sequence as one scene including #1 and this, but I'll split them up since its pretty long. In this scene we get a deeper view into Frank's insanity. He pulls Jeffrey out of the car kisses him with lipstick and gives him a very powerful speech. We understand that Frank is truly in love with Dorothy hut doesn't know how to express it, he basically threatens Jeffrey to stay away from her. Hopper's acting is just incredible in this scene, I don't know where I've seen an actor reach this kind of intensity.

3. Sandy's boyfriend confronts Jeffrey- Jefrrey thinks he is being chased by Frank but it turns out to be Sandy's boyfriend. Jeff and Sandy are very relieved. This would be the climax of a lot of 50s movies but instead the whole thing is kind of a joke to Jeffrey after all he has been through over the past few days. It is a High School problem compared to the real world darkness that Jeffrey has experienced. When Dorothy stubmbles out of the house naked even the boyfriend realizes there is some seriously *beep* up *beep* going on here and backs off.

4. The Opening Scene- Not much needs to be said. we see the quintessential American small town in a very corny and heightened state. A man is watering his lawn and the hose gets caught symbolizing his heart attack as he falls thing go into slow motion and we see the disgusting insects beneath the grass. Its totally brilliant and is a metaphor for the whole movie.

5. The yellow man and Dorothy's husband dead in her apartment- Such a surreal image especially since the yellow man is still standing and the buzzing of the radio. The radio eventually tells Jeffrey about the raid on Frank's place and we see the gun battle there with the song Love Letters. Earlier Frank said that a love letter is a bullet from a *beep* gun.