User Reviews

Based on an actual event, Lynch's niece had a nightmare where she recited the alphabet in her sleep, this film is basically the same thing, with a young woman reciting the alphabet in her sleep while we see nightmarish imagery.

Its an interesting piece with truly frightening images. Unfortunately the animation isn't all that spectacular, consisting of animated drawings. Its a good piece that mostly works and shows the seeds of the later Eraserhead.

If you come across one of the short film videos of Lynch's early work this film, and one or two others, makes it worth renting.

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.

VERY weird short by David Lynch. It's in black and white and shows a girl who looks like she's going completely mad while the letters of the alphabet go flying around her. She also sings that alphabet song.

I should have expected something weird from Lynch but this is even stranger than I thought it could be. In 4 short minutes he gives you a morbid and disturbing little story about the alphabet and terror. It doesn't make a bit of sense but the imagery is so strange and the sound so odd that you're pulled right in. Basically a short little horror film. You can see where "Eraserhead" came from. Worth seeing but only for those who don't scare easily. An 8.

David Lynch says this film was an attempt at visualizing the "fear of learning." In it, a young girl is tortured by the alphabet in a competely abstract nightmare. Lynch has always been fascinated by the darker side of dreams, the seemingly nonsensical black procession of symbols and fears, and this film simply adds another phobia to the canon.

We are shown images of a head with information going in one side, and this eventually causes the head to erupt into a black mess. Lynch juxtaposes the most innocent of subjects (the alphabet), which usually marks the beginning of our schooling, with disconcerting images of blood and vomit. Disturbing? Yes. Lynch apparently formed the idea after hearing of a girl who was found reciting the alphabet during a nightmare.

On a more profound level, the film examines a fear that perhaps appears for most later in life: the dread of knowledge. There's quite a bit of truth to the oft-repeated line "ignorance is bliss." Gradually, we realize that the more we learn, the less we understand, and therefore, the less control we have over our situations. It's a problem that has vexed people since the conception of "science." We ask questions out of curiosity, find there are no accessible answers, create a religious penumbra that satisfies a great deal with a few simple passages, and then science comes along and we are confronted once again with the inconsistencies of our faith. Thus, we fear that which turns the rock-solid black and whites of our existence to a confused mass of gray.

Also, The Alphabet hints at what linguists and intellectuals and songwriters have known for centuries; words are wholly inadequate to describe even the simplest of human perceptions. And once one has etched that list of letters into one's mind, in a sense, there is no turning back. Life becomes shapes patterned on paper, and conceptions of reality will no longer be formed purely and internally; they are immediately attached to an imperfect language and remained tethered to that which will never truly suffice.

Lynch's first film is a bizarre, revolting and terrifying account of a bedridden young girl apparently being tortured by the alphabet. The letters appear as weird, threatening shapes which (as in his follow-up The Grandmother) seem to take on plant form. The girl herself eventually vomits blood.

The film's meaning isn't clear, and is really of less important than the visuals, which are themselves like moving paintings. The innocence of the child's 'ABC' rhyming song is warped to give a frighteningly naive background to the horrific events.

Lynch's trademark is the expression of fear, and this short foregrounds that motif in the most disturbing way imaginable. Fans of this director should try and catch his debut, as it casts its shadow over much of his later work.

I think it was Francis Bacon who said that the camera cannot compete with the paintbrush so long as the camera cannot be used to capture images of heaven and hell.

I think if Francis Bacon had been aware of the work of David Lynch, he may have revised this opinion. Perhaps only Kubrick's "The Shining" succeeds in depicting nightmares on film to an extent that Lynch's oeuvre is rivaled.

"The Alphabet" is the second of Lynch's short films I've watched, after "Six Men Being Sick", and I liked it more than that one. With "Six Men", you could see Lynchian touches coming through already, mostly in the movie's experimental nature. With "The Alphabet", we start to see the director doing what he does best, ie. Confronting us with visions our brains thankfully keep at bay. He'd continue doing that for most of the rest of his career.

"The Alphabet" is also experimental in that it features live action as well as animation. The animation looks like what Terry Gilliam may have made if he were suffering a psychotic episode. The live-action is chilling and bizarre.

This avant garde piece miraculously comes off without being cliché or dismissible (as is so common with artsy avant garde film). Peggy Lynch (I'm assuming is his daughter) goes through a sequence of harrowing events that had some connection with the alphabet. I particularly liked the bed-wetting and the dirt. The person I watched this with said the dirt looked very "inviting." I strangely agreed. Only Lynch could make dirt inviting. Very interesting work. 8/10

The Alphabet is in many ways what you would expect if you put a Sesame Street-short, a Terry Gilliam animation and a Japanese horror film in a blender. What is interesting is that all of these came after this short. This is a truth with modifications though, as Gilliam was making animations before Monty Python's Flying Circus, and educational shorts existed before Sesame Street - but it's still interesting to see how "timely" this short is.

The short itself seems to touch upon themes of indoctrination, how knowledge and world views are forced from one generation to the next. Here, the knowledge is represented by the alphabet - maybe the first thing we (formally) teach our children. It's an OK approach to the subject matter, but not the reason why this short is interesting today. Instead, it's a look on a director developing his talents, exploring sound design and animation.

If you ended up looking through this short's reviews, you've either seen it, or you are curious about it. If the latter: Check it out! It's short enough to either way be worth the experience.

"The Alphabet" is a really bizarre experimental film short from David Lynch. It contains images that nightmares are made of. Many strange and abstract objects give birth to the letters of the alphabet. There is many creepy sound effects that give this little short film's imagery a strange hallucinatory and hypnotic feel. I could definitely see a Salvadore Dali influence during the film's animated scenes. David Lynch's former wife Peggy than sings the alphabet song against a black background. Wow, the alphabet song has never sounded more horrifying! It's like a preschooler's worst fears caught on film. If you can find a copy of David Lynch's short films, you won't be disappointed. There's no doubt about it, David Lynch is an artist who comes up with some of the most amazing nightmarish imagery.

This is probably one of the worst films you could use to teach your child the actual alphabet. While it does contain each of the letters of the alphabet, and in an extremely memorable sequence, you child will likely be very scarred if shown this film. It feels like it was just a nightmare David Lynch had and he decided to adapt to the screen.

A lot of Lynch's early short films like "Six Figures Getting Sick" or "Absurd Encounter with Fear" aren't all too spectacular (I mean, they're okay, but they lack anything really good in them), but "The Alphabet" is definitely one of the better ones.

It feels sort of similar to "Eraserhead" with its lack of true logic, horrifying visuals, and avant garde approach. However, "Eraserhead" actually has more of a plot than this film (if you can imagine that), while "The Alphabet" is simply just a collection of images (a lot of them made with animation), and what truly nightmarish images they are!

I love this short movie by David Lynch. The movie, on the surface, is about a girl being tortured by the alphabet. A very surreal part in this movie for me was when the thing that melts when hit with the alphabet letters melts and that face says "Please try to remember you're dealing with the human form." I just love that part of this movie. Anyway, if you can find this movie, see it. If you're into surreal movies and abstract art, you'll love this.

I'm a huge Lynch fan so I'm always excited to see his work.

This piece however feels a little muddled and ineffective. I guess considering it's based on his niece's dream it makes sense that it doesn't have any kind of logic. But that makes it less interesting to watch as there is no real original vision behind the piece.

Maybe good to screen as a short before Eraserhead or something.

David Lynch's earliest work... a short film that somehow involves a girl (Peggy Lynch) and the alphabet, and what seems to be the most screwed-up nightmare anyone could ever possibly imagine. What inspires this sort of thing? I have no idea.

The film has been called "avant garde", and I really can't think of a better classification. I'd say something a bit more vulgar, but I won't. One reviewer said this film is what should have been on the tape in "The Ring", and I think that's a fine suggestion. This could scare the pants off of many people.

If you've seen Lynch's films, and I recommend pretty much all of them, you know he's capable of some messed-up imagery. I mean, the ear in "Blue Velvet"? Or all of "Lost Highway"? Crazy weird. But after you see this early work, you'll understand that Lynch has been weird for over forty years...

The second of David Lynch's films, The Alphabet, is a significant progression from his debut Six Men Getting Sick. Where the latter was a short piece of static animation, The Alphabet incorporates stop-motion and live action alongside the animated sequences. It's a much more interesting film that achieves an undoubted nightmarish mood.

Its genesis was a story Lynch's wife Peggy told him. She had witnessed her young niece experience a nightmare. In a little bed in a darkened room her niece recounted the alphabet in her tormented sleep. From this story Lynch devised a short film that approximates the feeling of a nightmare, one specifically where the fear connected with learning is the source of the unease. There is an alphabet song the like of which would be sung in schools, but removed into this context seems very disturbing. This is probably the first example of Lynch taking a seemingly harmless everyday thing and making it sinister with well chosen associative images and sounds. Indeed this is also the first time that the director utilises sound to disquieting effect, something he would become a master of. Here, we have not only the alphabet song sung by Peggy but also distorted baby crying. The latter being a recording he made of his daughter Jennifer that was corrupted because the tape recorder was faulty. But it was a mistake that produced a result the director loved, and it is indeed a disturbing sound that accentuates the mood perfectly. The Alphabet works often on a subconscious level but it does have a central core idea derived from the alphabet dream that is visualised here. A girl with a white face in a bed in a darkened room experiences the terror of the dream and ends up hemorrhaging blood all over her white night gown and bed sheets. It's a disturbing image but it represents a reaction to the forced learning that initiated the dream in the first place.

With this film Lynch moved forward in an important way. It's the first time where his dark sensibility was used in a way that approximated the mood of a nightmare.

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 set off the basic thematic elements of Lynch's oeuvre. Psychosubconscious horror imagery involving blood, sex, and rich textures of malaise. What's different about this is that it actually goes further, into a child's realm of disturbing imagery, which can be even more disturbing because thinking of Lynch dealing with children is kind of appalling--The Straight Story aside.

I think it's probably my favorite short of his, though, considering that it so well mixes everything in animation, stop motion, and real motion, and that overall it's quite adept at forcing you to think about all those children's shows that involve alphabet songs and alphabet animations dancing around, and how a lot of that stuff can be very disconcerting and bizarre if really looked at.

Furthermore, I believe it's probably one of his best uses of sound. Lynch is a genius at making sound affect imagery beyond levels that most directors use, and while the sound in this short are much more self-conscious and much more apparent than the underlying growling of most of his work, it's a lot more effective.

--PolarisDiB

Not sure what attracted me to this film, which is really nothing more than, as David Lynch puts it on the DVD, an interpretation of someone else's dream through his own state of mind. But I really, really felt immersed in what Lynch was doing visually with the film. Obviously, it doesn't make a lick of sense if you're looking for it, but I loved the mixture of different elements within the medium. There's actual film shot of Lynch's wife Peggy going rather bonkers while in a bed. Then this is mixed around with animation treated on-TOP of the filmed footage. Then there is other mixed media, such as a filmed animated spot shook around with other pieces of color and light. There's even a quick shot of black falling down upon white, if that makes sense (which it doesn't). I was told by some others that this one was the weakest of the Lynch shorts, but that goes without saying that each one of his early works will divide viewers like in any good old art-school class. If one knows though the lengths to which the filmmaker is ready to portray his audio-visual interpretations on screen one might appreciate it a little more if they just happen to stumble upon it. On a personal level it's one of the best student works I've seen from the period of a promising talent.

Now, I can see where a big majority of humans who see this movie will think this movie was pointless, random. I hope this majority shares these thoughts with me, for the better of course. This is everything an actual nightmare (or at least every one in my sick mind) is: creepy and distorted noises, quick flashes of haunting faces, and of course the voices of children skipping on Satan's front yard as they recite the innocent Alphabet song, a song that was one a sweet and timeless song that we all learned in kindergarten, now turned into what sounds like a damning, ritualistic chant that will summon the beasts of the blackness out of of your screen and onto your lap. Yeah, this movie did that amount of damage in the less than 5 minute run-time.

Props to David Lynch, who really created a disturbing experience. So simple at how it's done and what it is, but strong in how it's presented. This is the first short film I've seen, and I'm looking forward to more, especially knowing Mr. Lynch has more short films out there.

I highly recommend for a quick scare.

Alphabet, The (1968)

*** (out of 4)

David Lynch's second film is a four-minute short of a nightmare with a woman in bed saying the alphabet. This is an extremely weird short but at the same time it's perfectly surreal and just downright strange. The bizarre images of the woman spitting up blood are eerie to say the least. This certainly isn't a film to show you kids to each them to say their ABC's.

Six Men Getting Sick (1966)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

David Lynch's first film is an animated short running four minutes that shows exactly what the title says. The animation is ugly, the soundtrack annoying but these two things are what makes the film work. The film is rather surreal in a weird sort of way but this fits the director just fine.

It's borderline unacceptable how unnerving this is. Nevertheless,

Thank you, David!