The Alphabet (1969)

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Only a filmmaker liked David Lynch would be able to turn something so simple and mundane as a recitation of the alphabet into something so terrifying. And yet, I found this short film to be incredibly fascinating, mostly because of the nightmarish nature of it.While there have been many feature length films and shorts that try to make a depiction of the human psyche, none of those works had the same visual intensity and dream-like quality of the works directed by David Lynch, which I consider to be timeless and beautifully made (In a dark, twisted way) Of all the shorts directed by David Lynch, this one is my favorite.

The best thing about a David Lynch films are the elements of abstractly. The Alphabet was the epitome of a great artful film, but it still manages to leave you thinking about it. Sadly to say, David didn't make many outlandish films like this, rather he used elements like this as an additive. If you enjoyed this short, you would love Eraserhead.If you want to see an extraordinarily disturbing film, this would be one of my first suggestions. In the day of absurdly moronic slashers, and movies with the generic schizophrenic protagonist, I will always keep close to magnificent films like these.If you liked this, Eraserhead would be my suggestion for your next watch.

lynch has, with this short, somehow managed to recreate with disturbing accuracy the experience of any childhood nightmare. on watching you are instantly transported back to being 6 years old, wanting desperately to wake up and not being able to. you have to wonder at the fact that lynch has reproduced this experience to such effect that when it is finished you're left with that morning after feeling of relief that the dream is over, yet also that lingering discomfort as the memory gradually fades. to be able to recreate on film with such accuracy, the sub-conscious experience of people everywhere is an impressive achievement. i wish i could do it... disturbing yet brilliant.

This was the first time David Lynch shot live-action footage. It isn't really a narrative film, like The Grandmother, but its more than a filmed moving painting like Six Men Getting Sick. It is mainly animation, truth be told, but it combines live action with it. This is what a child's nightmare looks like inside David Lynch's head - and let me tell you, its quite disturbing, on a par with Grandmother and Eraserhead.Some of its images, like the girl bleeding from the mouth and reciting the alphabet - i can't get out of my head. I don't know if that's a good thing... Lynch is a very strange man, indeed. And what we get in his films isn't half the story, as members of his website will tell you. There are images there that you wouldn't even know to be wary of, to not think about - images you don't even know to protect yourself from. But as Elephant Man showed us, he is also a master director, who can control himself and a major production to perfection. As Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Dr showed us, Lynch's world can also be lots of fun. He's one of my favourite filmmakers because he gives me both fun AND haunting in the same frame - a feat not many can do.