SOURCE: Coleman, John. “Monstrous.” New Statesman 100, no. 2586 (10 October 1980): 25-6.

In the following review, Coleman characterizes The Elephant Man as a sensational film that exploits the “horror film potential” of its subject matter.

It was David Lynch who made the squalid and diseased fantasy Eraserhead in 1976 and the first difficulty in dealing candidly with his The Elephant Man is exactly that knowledge. Had I seen the new film unascribed would I have felt the same initial unease, verging on queasiness, during its portentous opening sequences, which offer trumpeting pachyderms on the move, a woman's face, a form of mushroom cloud (the birth, or death, of creation?), cutting in to the surgeon Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) as he proceeds down canvas corridors towards a freak show?

Freddie Francis's black-and-white photography is generally pretty stunning, but one recalls that he has latterly been associated with horror movies; and there is considerable...