David Lynch, the peerless director behind such masterpieces as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, and Mulholland Drive, was one of cinema’s all-time greats, a unique visionary whose dark and surreal films were the stuff of both unsettling dreams and sumptuous nightmares.

Reactions to the death of David Lynch, the visionary filmmaker behind “Twin Peaks” and “Mulholland Drive,” whose death at 78 was announced Thursday. — “He’s one of those filmmakers who was influential but impossible to imitate.

Steven Spielberg, Nicolas Cage, and Kyle MacLachlan are among the prominent figures paying tribute to David Lynch, whose death was announced Thursday. “I loved David’s films. Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive,

Questlove, Ron Howard and Steven Soderbergh are among those mourning the death of movie director David Lynch Reactions to the death of David Lynch, the visionary filmmaker behind “Twin Peaks ...

Director Steven Soderbergh, in an interview with The Associated Press. — ''I am astounded and heartbroken I can't express with any words the profound loss of the great David Lynch my friend.''

Steven Soderbergh, Questlove, Ron Howard and More Pay Tribute to David Lynch Reactions to the death of David Lynch, the visionary filmmaker behind “Twin Peaks” and “Mulholland Drive ...

"I always operate the camera, but this was next level," the director says. "I’m really in there with the actors."

David Lynch's unrelenting 1992 horror film, a prequel to his "Twin Peaks" series, aimed to kill "Twin Peaks," which had been a television sensation just two years earlier. "Fire Walk With Me" famously starts off with a shot of static on a television set,

Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh takes us there in “ Presence ,” a ghost story filmed entirely in a New Jersey home. Unlike most films in the genre, the movie, in theaters Friday (Jan. 24), is told solely from the point of view of the ghost.

Doing his own camerawork, the director gleefully enriches the haunted-house genre with a simple but ingenious device.

Lynch broke through in the 1970s with the surreal “Eraserhead” and rarely failed to startle and inspire audiences, peers and critics in the following decades.

The entertainment industry is paying tribute to David Lynch, with Steven Spielberg remembering the iconic director as a "visionary dreamer."