David Lynch’s “haunting” real-life drama with a 91% Rotten Tomatoes score is now available to be streamed online.
The Elephant Man is loosely based on the life of Joseph Merrick, a British artist with severe physical deformities, played by Oscar-nominated actor John Hurt.
Frederick Treves, played by Anthony Hopkins, is a doctor who finds John at the freakshow to work with him at the hospital. The pair bond as Merrick learns about human kindness at a time when he was seen more as a freak than a human being.
The 1980 film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Director and Best Score.
John Hurt was nominated for an Oscar for his scene-stealing speech: “I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!”
The Elephant Man was a huge hit for David Lynch in 1980 (Image: Paramount Pictures)
The film however didn’t win any Oscars, but did win the BAFTA Award for Best Film, and other BAFTA Awards for Best Actor for John Hurt and Best Production Design.
The Elephant Man airs on Two at 11.55pm on Sunday (February 9) and will be available on iPlayer thereafter.
It forms part of a double bill with Blue Velvet to celebrate the life of legendary director David Lynch, who died from complications of emphysema at his daughter’s home on January 15.
The surrealist director also helmed Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive and the much-loved TV show Twin Peaks and its sequel Twin Peaks: The Return.
The life of John Merrick (John Hurt) was loosely dramatised in The Elephant Man (Image: Paramount)
One Guardian review reads: “It has to be said that Lynch’s Elephant Man, while not exactly sentimental, takes a determinedly un-alienated attitude to Merrick’s image: rational, compassionate and very different from his approach to what might be called body-nonconformity in Eraserhead in which the keynote is clearly one of horror.
“There is far more empathy in The Elephant Man, especially in the moving scene in which Treves brings Carr-Gomm to see Merrick for the first time – and poor Merrick is at first hardly able to speak and then astonishes both men by reciting the 23rd Psalm from memory.”