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.

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...

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

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.