College student Jeffrey Beaumont returns to his hometown Lumberton after his father suffered a stroke. Walking home from the hospital he finds a human ear, which he takes to police detective Williams. Williams’s daughter Sandy tells Jeffrey that it somehow relates back to a lounge singer named Dorothy Vallens. Jeffrey attends Dorothy’s nightclub act. Fascinated by her, he leaves early and breaks into Dorothy’s apartment. There he witnesses a brutal rape, and subsequently discovers that Dorothy’s husband and child had been abducted by psychopathic murderer Frank Booth... David Lynch’s psychological thriller offers a glance into the world of violence and sexual perversion concealed behind the facade of an idyllic American provincial town with blooming and well-tended front yards.