A much more considerable movie, The Elephant Man (1980), questions the whole concept of monstrousness versus normality much more deeply. It was a theme that the director, David Lynch, had already explored in the underground classic Eraserhead, but this was his first opportunity to express himself in the world of commercial cinema.

Elephant Man, like The Entity, but far more responsibly, purports to be based on a true story. John Hurt plays the hideously deformed freak in the 1880s, who is exploited in circus sideshows. He is then rescued by a surgeon, who gives him a private room in the London Hospital, but who ironically exploits him very much as before, by displaying him to astounded colleagues, and then to visiting socialities. The film carefully and tactfully delays its revelation of the nature of John Merrick`s deformity for some time; when we see it (a convincing and, in a curious way, low-key make-up design by Christopher Tucker) it is all too clear why he is called the Elephant Man.

The true revelation, of course, is that of the man inside the monster. We are staggered, in a tenderly wrought scene, when we learn that he can even speak. Hurt`s carefully judged performance hovers on the edge of sentimentality, but stays on just this side, as we become ever more aware of his real sensitivity. There is melodrama and pessimism of course; he is kidnapped at one  point, and his abnormality causes panic and derision among most of the people who see him. The film is very good in its understanding of unthinking cruelty, and of the almost primal reflex that causes us to shy away from abnormality like this. ("There but for the grace of Go go I"); we simply do not know how to cope with it.