East of Elephant Rock East of Elephant Rock East of Elephant Rock is a 1977 British independent drama film directed by Don Boyd and starring John Hurt, Jeremy Kemp and Judi Bowker. It was Boyd's second feature film following his little-noticed 1975 "Intimate Reflections". Like William Somerset Maugham's 1927 play "The Letter" and two subsequent film adaptations, its narrative content depended on the 1911 Ethel Proudlock murder in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which became a "cause célèbre" scandalising British colonial society and which had been featured in a "Sunday Observer" article as recently as the year before. Boyd, drawing in part on his own experience
The Elephant Man (film) for Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Production Design and was nominated for Golden Globe awards. It also won a French César Award for Best Foreign Film. Frederick Treves, a surgeon at the London Hospital, finds John Merrick in a Victorian freak show in London's East End, where he is kept by Mr. Bytes, an alcoholic and sadistic showman. His head is kept hooded, and his "owner," who views him as intellectually disabled, is paid by Treves to bring him to the hospital for examination. Treves presents Merrick to his colleagues and highlights his monstrous skull, which forces him to