Frank Booth

Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth is the most unhinged villain in cinema history — a nitrous-oxide-huffing psychopath who exists in a state of constant, barely contained rage. David Lynch created Frank as the dark underbelly of suburban America: the violence and depravity that lurks beneath the white picket fences. Hopper, drawing on his own history with substance abuse and personal demons, delivered a performance so raw and so terrifying that it nearly ended his career and resurrected it simultaneously.

Frank is frightening because he is unpredictable. He can shift from childlike affection to homicidal rage in a single breath. He weeps, he screams, he whispers, he threatens — often in the same scene. Hopper plays him without any of the safety nets that actors usually employ when playing villains: no camp, no wink, no distance. Frank Booth is played straight, and straight is horrifying.

The performance is Lynch's most disturbing creation — which, given Lynch's filmography, is saying something. Frank Booth exposed the violent id beneath Reagan-era America's wholesome surface, and Hopper's commitment to the role makes the exposure feel genuinely dangerous. Watching Blue Velvet, you are not sure whether you are watching a movie or a document of something that should not be seen.