The Amputee

IMDb RATING

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A double leg amputated woman sits and writes a long meandering letter while her ineffective nurse attempts to attend to her stumps.A double leg amputated woman sits and writes a long meandering letter while her ineffective nurse attempts to attend to her stumps.A double leg amputated woman sits and writes a long meandering letter while her ineffective nurse attempts to attend to her stumps.

Director
- David Lynch
Writer
- David Lynch
Stars
- Catherine E. Coulson
- David Lynch

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

5.5/10

5.2K

YOUR RATING

Director
- David Lynch
Writer
- David Lynch
Stars
- Catherine E. Coulson
- David Lynch

See production info at IMDbPro

Photos9

+ 4

Top cast2

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Catherine E. Coulson

Amputee
(as Catherine Coulson)

David Lynch

Nurse

Director
- David Lynch
Writer
- David Lynch
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

User reviews18

5.55.1K

Featured reviews

4Red-Barracuda

A little throwaway short from David Lynch

David Lynch made this short during a troubled time when filming of Eraserhead had come to a stand-still due to lack of funds. He volunteered to make a short film twice as a test for a couple of stocks of black and white videotape that the American Film Institute wished to compare. As a result he made a film called The Amputee twice. Both versions are more or less the same and consist of a woman who is a double-amputee reading aloud to herself the contents of a letter that she has written while a doctor tends one of the stumps on her legs. It ends with the stump gushing blood, the doctor fleeing and the woman completely oblivious.

In truth it isn't very interesting. It's shot in one take with ugly composition. The quality of the videotape is poor in both versions; while the content is a combination of the repulsive with the mundane. It was written and filmed over the course of one day, and it is throwaway stuff that is of limited interest. It's more an example of the director's bizarre humour than anything else. It stars Catherine Coulson who would go on to play the part of The Log Lady in Twin Peaks.

8enmussak

Simply gruesome

If you enjoy being disgusted (as I do), then you will love this. It is challenging to really make your audience want to gag (as I heard John Waters say once), and Lynch does it very well here. The 5 minutes consists of an amputee getting her wounds cleaned and it is not pleasant. Enjoy! 8/10

jbels

This I didn't care for so much

While David Lynch's films tend to gross you out through their art, this seemed to be made just to gross out. If the woman was saying something in her letter, it gets lost in the first viewing and this is not something I'd like to see a second time. Albeit, there are two versions of this on the DVD. The second, shorter version looks like it has more goop shooting out, though the quality makes it hard to tell.

danlee27

A short, avant-garde film in the same vein as "The Alphabet"

If you like early Lynch, you may like this. A commentary, I think, on amputation not only of the physical variety, but of the emotional as well. At five minutes long, sitting through the film is not exactly the test of patience a film like "Lost Highway" or "Eraserhead" may be... but in terms of its content, it is decidedly just as experimental as either of those.

4Quinoa1984

meh, but it goes without saying...

Maybe the lesser of the bunch of David Lynch shorts I've seen, the only real interest are in some seconds here and there within the four minute un-broken shot of some nasty, black-death humor that's ingrained into the material. Unfortunately, it's almost a waste to watch the film as it is by admission of Lynch himself a technical 'throaway', something to just get onto film to bite back at the AFI for possibly switching to video. Therefore we get what could be comparable to what Godard did around the same time- tool around with the possibilities of video by just going for something off-putting within the frame. It could've worked maybe as something worth watching more, but it's really a bit too un-pleasant even in its own biting sense-of-what-the-hell way. It's just an amputee who writes a confessional letter (heard in voice-over) as a wacko doctor plugs away at one of her stumps. He also, at the end, just runs away in a hurry, perhaps as to just add that last bit of "whoa" for Lynch to work with. That part is actually a nice bit of surreal whimsy, but the work is just too simplistic and deranged to really give any sense of visual amazement like in the other shot works of Lynch, or to build on the outrageousness like in Eraserhead. Worth a watch, once, then never again unless you have a thing for, well, stumps, and confessional letters written during their upheaval.

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Trivia
This short came about because the American Film Institute was testing two different kinds of black and white video, and they hired cinematographer Frederick Elmes to shoot the test footage. David Lynch convinced Elmes to shoot a short film for the test and stayed up all night writing the script. As a result, the short exists in two different versions, being shot once on each of the types of video being tested.

Quotes
Woman with amputation to the legs: This isn't what I am telling you. You weren't in the room when Jim said that. And I was. And he really did. He told me that everything was fine between Helen and him. And I knew that even if he didn't say it, that it was true. He knew it then. No one else did. You maybe thought you did but I knew you didn't. And it makes me furious when you tell me I didn't know about Helen. She was my best friend. She even told me about that time she drank gin with you. So maybe now you'll believe me. After that I got sick of the beach. Harry turned on all of the burners on the stove before we left the cabin. He said he wanted to set fire to the whole row. Made me sick. Everything was bad between us. And that was it for me. I never said one word to him on the way back. When he stopped and we saw Joann at Jim's, he bought some cigarettes and told Joann that I was a flirt, a dumb flirt. I never was a flirt. I was not flirting with Jim. I didn't flirt then and I don't flirt now. And you started this that night Jim told me. You have never understood Jim. After the way you treated Helen it isn't a wonder that he feels the way he does. And you know it. And you know that even Paul isn't the same. You have never understood Jim. You had it all wrong, honey. You and Joann. Now you know what Paul is really talking about. By the way, where were you when Paul got home at three in the morning?