Sick, disturbing and surreal short from David Lynch. A man and a woman get married and have a son who they don't really want. The child grows up being horribly abused by his parents. Then, in a dark sinister room, he plants a seed who sprouts into a grandmother. She, in a way, shows him the affection his parents never gave him. There's more but I won't spoil it.

The film mixes live actors with animation seamlessly. It has sound but no dialogue--the actors just make sounds somewhat like human speech. It's in washed-out color which certainly fits the subject matter. Also you see Lynch using odd noises on the soundtrack which he perfected years later with "Eraserhead". I'm giving this film a 10 but it is VERY disturbing. It's definitely not for everybody. The abuse scenes are horrible to watch and the nonstop morbidness did start to wear on me, but I couldn't stop watching. It all leads to a very sad ending. Sick, troubling and (at times) horrifying movie but just incredible. A 10 but only for those who can stand extreme subject matter.

"The Grandmother" has got to be one of the strangest works of David Lynch next to "Eraserhead". In order to get the film made, Lynch got a grant from the American Film Institute. Too bad AFI doesn't fund amazing films like this anymore. In some aspects the film looks like it had a huge influence on "Begotten" (1991), except "The Grandmother" is only about 34 minutes and never wears out it's welcome. The story concerns a boy, who has very mean and abusive parents. They act like animals and only talk in barks. The little boy is very pale and Gothic looking, and almost all the film's sets are painted pitch black in darkness. This causes images to pop right out. The boy plants seeds in his bed, a huge abstract stump like object grows and gives birth to an old lady. The old lady seems to give the boy peace of mind, like a grandmother would. It's really hard to tell the exact story, since the film feels like a surreal nightmare that leaves the viewer disoriented. The music and experimental sound mix sounded way ahead of 1970. This only added more impact to it's disturbing imagery. Not to mention, it had some weird animated scenes too. From all the movies I've seen, I'd have to say the best examples of surrealism in film have to be Bunuel and Dali's "Un Chien Andalou", Jodorowsky's "The Holy Mountain" (1973) and David Lynch's "The Grandmother". All three of these films have images that will probably haunt you for the rest of your life.

One of the most disturbing things i've ever seen. The actors in this film, David Lynch's third film technically, but his first narrative film, were never in any other movies - one of them, Father, died a few years ago - it is as if they exist only in the frightening nightmare world of this boy's life, which consists of two dog-like parents who only bark at him with unintelligible sounds, and beat him and rub his face in the urine when he wets the bed, like a puppy. The subject of the film (and if i don't tell you this, it'll make so little sense to you, because its never properly explained in the film) is the boy has no love from his parents, and no grandmother to give him respite from them and comfort him, so he grows one in the attic.

It is a horrifying, brilliant film, which creates an imaginative world very successfully - albeit one you desparately want to escape from as soon as possible, but it does this well at least.

The Lynchian oeuvre is almost fully formed here, right from the start. Little dialogue, atmospheric soundtrack of constant sound effects which you find in Eraserhead, Elephant Man, Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr; impressionistic approach to performance and makeup/costume and sets; the quality of estrangement in the direction, and most importantly there is the union of terrible, twisted darkness and optimistic naivety (developed to the full in Blue Velvet and Mulholland Dr).

For Lynch fans, this is a thing to see. Unlike Six Men Getting Sick or The Amputee, this is not just an experiment or an early film of a Director that ruins your impression of them, it stands on its own, irrespective of Lynch's subsequent work (though it also sets the tone for his subsequent narrative work) as a great surrealist/impressionist narrative short.