Absurd Encounter with Fear (1967)
Fictitious Anacin Commercial (1967)
The Alphabet (1968)
The Grandmother (1970)
The Amputee (1974)
David
Lynch was, as you probably guessed, weird right from the start of his directing
career. In the years before he made Eraserhead, he directed some very strange
short films – as art projects, school projects, etc. – or seemingly just to
amuse himself. If you enjoy the works of David Lynch, than these first six
shorts are a must-see – not because any of them are truly great (they are not)
– but because they certainly do show the roots of Lynch’s career – his dark
sense of humor, and his penchant for weirdness.
The
first short he ever made was Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) in 1966 – and it
was designed to be a “moving painting” – and in doing that, Lynch has
succeeded. The film runs about 4 minutes, and is precisely what the title says
it is – a moving painting of six men (or figures) who literally vomit, and then
the whole process starts again and runs six times. The moving painting is, in a
word, weird. The film starts with the six floating heads – and then gradually
their internal organs appear, fill with some sort of red liquid, which rises
through the bodies and then is vomited out the mouth. On the soundtrack, is the
sound of a siren. That’s it, that’s all there is. The film is strange to say
the least, and yes it is repetitive by design. It’s also rather haunting and
disgusting, again by design. It’s not really a film – but it feels like
precisely what it was – a student art project. On that level, it’s interesting,
and shows us the fucked up stuff going on in a young David Lynch’s mind. It’s
probably of no interest to anyone note a Lynch fan – but to those of us who
are, it’s great.
The
next film I saw was from the following year - the appropriately titled Absurd
Encounter with Fear (1967). It runs all of two minutes – and has a man slowly
approach a woman in a field sitting alone in a field. The man stands over the
woman – undoes his fly and then starts taking out a series of unexpected items
before collapsing. Oh, and the man’s skin is blue. Lynch’s use of horror-film
type music here precludes his later films, and he builds a palpable sense of
fear and dread throughout the 2 minutes. The whole thing is an experiment to be
sure – something a young artist makes to see if he can – and by itself, it’s
pretty meaningless. But it’s certainly interesting to see.
Perhaps
the biggest oddity of these six shorts was made that same year – entitled
Fictitious Anacin Commercial (1967) – and it precisely what the title implies
(Lynch’s titles tended to be very literal at this time). For those who don’t
know, Anacin is like Aspirin – a headache reliever. The short, 1 minute, film
has a man with a pounding headache – another man holding up a box of Anacin,
which apparently the first man takes, and he goes from in pain to frolicking in
a matter of seconds. It is, in short, precisely like real headache pill
commercials – that haven’t much changed in the nearly 50 years since Lynch made
the film. The odd part of the film is twofold – the first being that the man
with the headache doesn’t just do the typical “touch the side of my head to
show I have a headache” thing – but actually writhes around on the ground as if
he’s dying. The second is that the man holding the Anacin box doesn’t look like
the type of guy you would expect in a commercial like this – he’s older, he has
a bushy beard – and Lynch flashes to him so many times holding that Anacin
package that it becomes comical. Why did Lynch make this? I have no clue. It’s
amusing though.
As
strange and somewhat interesting as those first three films are, The Alphabet (1968)
is really Lynch’s first real short that is a must-see for fans. A mixture of
live action and animation, The Alphabet is a surreal, disturbing film about a
young girl’s maturation into a woman. Lynch says the movie was inspired by his
wife, whose niece was having a bad dream, and repeating the alphabet song in
her sleep. Lynch turns that into the nightmare we see in the film – as the
young girl, while sleeping, hears the alphabet song – we see her strange,
animated dream – which grows more sexual and disturbing, before the great
finale – in which she spews blood. The film is about the terrifying, and
bloody, transition to womanhood – and is the first time Lynch seems to working
at full capacity. This film was what really put Lynch on the map - and allowed
him to make his follow-up film.
Made
in 1970, The Grandmother was Lynch’s longest film up to that point by a large
margin. Running 33 minutes, The Grandmother, like The Alphabet, tells a
terrifying story of a child’s nightmare existence. The young boy in the film is
alternately ignored and abused by his uncaring parents. He plants a seed, and
from that grows a kindly grandmother – the only person who actually cares about
him. Lynch uses no dialogue in the film – the parents speak in animal sounds,
which makes them creepier. The birthing sequence of the Grandmother is
visceral, bloody and disturbing. Lynch, again, mixes live action with animation
to create a terrifying view of childhood – one in which his main character is
forced to confront the horrors of what he sees, and move onto in adulthood with
no parental love. If someone told me the little boy in The Grandmother grew up
to me the main character in Eraserhead – I would believe them.
The
final film Lynch made before completing Eraserhead was The Amputee – and unlike
The Alphabet and The Grandmother, it’s more of an experiment than anything
else. Lynch had already started shooting Eraserhead, but ran out of money.
Frederick Elms was at the AFI, and was tasked with testing two different types
of black and white video – and Lynch asked if he could shoot something on both
for the test. The result is two versions of the same 4 minute short – where a
young woman who has had both legs amputated writes a long, meandering,
melodramatic letter to someone, while her nurse (Lynch himself – although he
may be playing a woman) cleaning up one of the amputated stumps. Things go
horribly wrong, and the stump becomes a bloody mess, and the nurse tries to
clean it up, while the woman keeps on writing her letter as if nothing has
happened. The whole thing is rather amusing, but after both The Alphabet and
The Grandmother, kind of a letdown – watching them twice (one on each video
type) doesn’t help.
Overall,
these six early shorts are worth watching for Lynch films – in particular The
Alphabet and The Grandmother, which are the two that really show why Lynch
built up his reputation before finally completing Eraserhead. The rest are
curiosity pieces at best – but if you like Lynch, you know you’re curious.
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