The Amputee

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

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 reviews17

5.55.1K

Featured reviews

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.

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.

mastyrmynd

An intrigue...

While it is not as deep or impressive as some of Lynch's other works, I believe that this film breaks new ground in terms of camera work and how a scene is put together. I think it is important that this film is shot twice, once to capture the story, the other to capture what is happening. If you view simply the woman, you will grasp what her letter is all about, however, if you view the nurse, you will take in only what the nurse is doing. Viewing it once just staring at the woman, and then again viewing only the nurse gives quite a contrasting look at the same exact picture. It may very well be an experiment only, but the fact that it has this effect is intriguing on its own. Try it yourself!

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.

6Groverdox

A small nightmare

A double amputee sits on a lounge chair smoking a cigarette and writing a letter. What she writes is read to us in voice-over, and is seemingly just the minutiae of social interactions the woman is obsessed over.

A nurse, played by Lynch himself, comes and unwraps one of the stumps left by her amputation, and snips at sutures of the wound on the end. Fluid starts to come out, he attempts to stem the flow, fails, and runs out, while the woman's ponderous voice-over continues, though we've long since stopped paying attention.

"The Amputee" was allegedly made by Lynch to help a guy he knows test film stock for the American Film Institute. I'm not sure what the outcome of the test was, but having just watched the test itself, I can't imagine they were too happy with the stock. The movie looks like it was shot for a CD-ROM game made in 1993. It's black and white, heavily letterboxed with black bars on all sides, and is extremely grainy.

I'm not really sure what to make of it. I'm surprised it turned up on the "Short Films of David Lynch" DVD, because it feels like kind of a joke between him, his star Catherine Coulson (who sounds exactly like Frances Conroy on the voiceover), and maybe the guy he made it for.

At least it's pretty short, and it's not boring. There's a dark sense of humour at work here as well.

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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?