Curse of the Elephant Man (2003 TV Movie) User Reviews

Intriguing and inciteful!

[Majikat76 · 7/10 · 26 March 2018]

A story that has always saddened me and so anything relating to him is an area of interest.

A modern day take on the examination in medical terms of what Joseph Merrick could have been suffering with and the knock on affect to future family members

Almost completely worthless, badly written, full of hyperbole

[polexia · 1/10 · 18 September 2016]

I expected to actually learn something in this documentary, but aside from getting to see some of Joseph Merrick's family members and at the VERY END a depiction of what they think he would have looked like had he not been so afflicted, the show really shares next to nothing useful.

The narrator constantly refers to Merrick's disease as a "curse" and I wish I had a dollar for every time he said it. The script is intensely repetitive and even offensive, making it seem like Merrick was supernaturally cursed rather than humanizing him as a person with a disease. They used a lot of hyperbole to create tension and drama "will his entire family be so afflicted? Will they all die horrible deaths like he did? Could the secret to his curse be in his remains? Can we unlock the secret and break the curse that has haunted his family for a century?"

Ugh. It goes on and on.

We get to see his bones, but you can probably do that on You Tube. The whole show keeps asking the question of whether he had neurofibromatosis or Proteus Syndrome and then at the end they slam you with, "Oh we will never know." Yep, they put so much effort in for no payoff. They don't know what disease Merrick had, and they can't find out. But they do tell you over and over that the scientist extracting the genetic material WILL ONLY HAVE ONE CHANCE TO DO IT. *gasp*

The whole show just builds up all this fake tension and then completely lets you down at every turn. They also inexplicably add in a couple of random people's health cases to illustrate I don't know what.

If you're looking for information on Merrick's life, look elsewhere. I think the people who made this movie are just extremely manipulative and needed to constantly fabricate excitement and mystery because they had such little solid information to work with.

Good Documentary on Merrick

[Michael_Elliott · 26 August 2016]

Curse of the Elephant Man (2003)

*** (out of 4)

Joseph Merrick became known as The Elephant Man and is the subject of this documentary that tries to cover several grounds. It works best as a biography of Merrick as we learn about his family, his childhood and the various hard times he hit due to his appearance. We also learn about his time in the circus and how he ended up in a London hospital where he found some peace before his death. Also discussed were his current family members, others who suffer from the same disease he had and there's also some DNA research to try and find out exactly what he had.

For the most part this was a good documentary that works best when it's telling the story of Merrick. I'm sure most people will already know his story but if not then there's a lot of great information shared here. The stuff dealing with his family members weren't as interesting but the DNA stuff is certainly interesting, although I must admit that I thought it was a little creepy or sad that Merrick's bones are still being messed with after all these years. I'm not really a "rest in peace" person but he's obviously still being used for research.