An unlikeley yet compelling follow up to 'Eraserhead.

Rating: 9/10 (17 January 2002)

This tells the devastating yet highly rewarding tale of John Merrick, a child born with a deformed physical disease on account of his mother being attacked whilst impregnating him, and consequently earned the nick name the Elephant Man.' David Lynch's directorial follow up to Eraserhead couldn't be less predictable- this is every bit a mainstream film, with the occasional flash of stylistic Joi de Vivre' that occupied the entire narrative of Eraserhead (industrial noise, abstract/nightmarish imagery of deformed faces). The film loses a hint of perfection on account of its' slightly choppy editing (and too many fade outs) which makes it feel incomplete, but otherwise, this portrayal of a human being doomed to a constant freak show' attraction by exhibitionists (those who care for him are just as guilty as those who don't) is likely to reduce the most hardened viewer to tears 9/10.