VHS : Eraserhead [1976]

Rating: - The realm of REM
Why use a lot of words to describe a motion picture that visualizes the subconscious? Suffice it to say that this is still David Lynch's best. An oneiric odyssey, the sort of troubling, never-ending dream one can have when suffering from a high fever, in which the most bizarre and seemingly hopeless situations nearly drive one to despair. So far, I've never seen another film evoking that sort of atmosphere so well. Strange yet familiar. Archetypal. ERASERHEAD is a unique work of art, a milestone in cinema. Don't try to understand or explain this film, open up your mind and simply undergo it, visit the dream world while being awake. An exceptional experience.

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Rating: - Disturbing Horror
Henry (Jack Nance) lives in a grim apartment in a Hellish industrial nightmare. When his peculiar girlfriend gives birth to his mutant lizard baby, Henry struggles to cope with the responsibilities of fatherhood.

Eraserhead is, without doubt, the most disturbing film I have ever seen. It's like watching your most intense bad dream on film. David Lynch has translated absolute discomfort and fear so vividly into a film that I don't ever want to watch it again. It's a film that you can't really enjoy on any level but I think that it leaves such an impression that it truly is a piece of art. It repulsed me but I'd rather be repulsed than feel nothing. From the weird radiator woman to the live chicken dinner, I still have no idea what the film is actually about but I can't forget it either. Truly original.

Like this? Try: Blue Velvet

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Rating: - not to everyone's taste
Saw another review on here and just felt compelled to write.

I am not going to review the film as such - just comment on something that David Lynch has been consistenly able to do in just about every film I have ever watched of his (besides, perhaps, the lyrical and generally just downright pleasant "Straight Story").
Unnerving the viewer with the apparently trivial. Many people bandy about the phrase "surreal" without having a true idea of what it means. In fact, the "surrealist" movement in itself (it could be argued) became something of a parody of what it started out as. Take that lobster-as-telephone "work-of-art". It's nothing more than the ridiculous juxtaposition of two apparently incongruous objects. No more, no less. Similarly with most of Dali's work. Randomly placed objects in a slightly odd landscape. These are not, if we are going to be brutally frank, the depictions of the subconscious made solid. Which is what surrealism stood for originally. No. These are more like crazy images bunged together to cause slight shock and maybe some discussion. "Eraserhead" meanwhile, is the genuine, bona-fide real deal.
You know that feeling you get when you wake up and that last remnant of unease from a nightmare has not quite left you? You know how sometimes when that happens and you look around your room, something about your room just doesn't feel right? And then you spend about half an hour trying to get to sleep but you can't because all you can think about is that there is definitely something wrong but you don't know what it is? That worrying niggle. That indefinable sense of....wrongness. That's what Lynch captures. And not wrong like - hey there's an elephant in my wardrobe talking to Henry Kissinger! Just a general feeling of wrongness. A bit like William Burroughs' naked lunch moment.

When I saw "Eraserhead" for the first time, I left the cinema thinking "That man has just shown me my own nightmares". Not literally. And not the Hollywood nightmares of sooo many other films. But just that quality of a nightmare - something that only your subconscious is dealing with. No other film-maker has managed it (although the soft-toys coming alive and forming bigger soft-toys in Akira comes close). No other film maker. At all. Why? Because no other film-maker starts with a feeling then builds everything else around it. So what if his films are often impenetrable to the point of frustration? I'll keep watching them just so long as he keeps managing to capture what really ought to be uncapturable.

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Rating: - Disturbing but thought provoking
First of all, let me say that Eraserhead is not a film for everyone. Many people will find themselves confused by the strange atmosphere, surreal imagery, and signature David Lynch sense of purposefully awkward pacing.

That out of the way, I would have to say that this is possibly one of my most personal favorite films. It is dark, tense, atmospheric, and filled with sounds and images that will send chills up your spine. It is a film that takes more than one viewing to truly begin to comprehend, but is quite a ride nontheless. There are moments in this movie that will literally scare you, so much so that one could almost call this eerie surreal art-film a deconstructed domestic horror movie. This film, along with the original black and white Night of the Living dead, are two of the only films in existance that still scare me to this day. (Side note: Also, I reccomend that you see Luis Bunuel's movie "Un Chien Andalou" to see where strange art-films like this originated from.)

Anyway, the film's plot while initially incomprehensible to most, can be broken down into the tragic tale of a man named Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) stuck in a dark decaying city overrun by industry. During the film, he is forced to deal with the prospect of taking care of an illegitimate premature child birthed by his girlfriend, Mary X. (Charlotte Stewart) However, he is consumed by his guilt, and begins to comprehend suicide as a way out. But the story is told through such a swirling mixture of dreamlike imagery that this is not always readily apparent.

However, in order to better understand and appreciate the film, one must figure out what each of the images mean. Here's a short cliff notes guidline to some of the more common recurring images in the movie:



Worm = sin. These creatures appear all throughout the movie. Henry even tries to hide his "little" sin from Mary at one point, only to have a nightmare where Mary is consumed by worms. Henry's room is also filled with piles dirt and dead plants as one might notice, which makes his room a breeding ground for worms.

The Baby = The product of sin. You might have noticed that the baby looks an awful lot like a worm. Futhermore, the baby is a part of Henry, and later during the dream sequence, we discover that Henry IS the baby. When Henry kills the baby, he kills himself.

Eraser = Memories. Henry feels that his memories, or his brain with his bad memories, is like an eraser that needs to be rubbed out. In his dream sequence, he sees himself losing his head, and having his brains turned into eraser bits to be rubbed out and blown into dust on the wind.

The lady in the radiator = Death. Death looks grotesque, yet strangely appealing to poor Henry. The radiator gives off warmth and seems to become a stage where death performs for Henry, promising to stamp out his sins (worms) and telling him that "in heaven, everything is fine." At the end of the movie, Henry embraces the lady in the radiator before blackness falls.

The man in the planet = God. In addition to disposing of Henry's cofessed sins at the beginning of the movie (the worm coming out of Henry's mouth) the scarred man in the planet appears to prevent Henry from opting for suicide during his dream sequence. He silently reminds Henry of his sacrifice (the bleeding tree) though it is in vain as Henry shows God what he really is underneith. (the baby)

The last is a theme that occurs in all Lynch movies:

Electricity and electrical lighting = The presence of good. Darkness = The presence of evil.

There are other aspects of the film that keep popping up, such as the reocurrence of the unlucky number thirteen. Henry waits thirteen seconds for the elevator to open up, the lady across the hall takes thirteen seconds to appear, Henry's apartment numbers add up to the number thriteen, etc. Also, there are many other images which I will let you figure out on your own.



All in all, the movie is quite an experience. This is a film that you will either love or utterly hate. For myself, I managed to "click" with the movie from the first time I saw it and have enjoyed it since. Repeated viewings only add to the enjoyment of the film, as you begin to notice more and more that you never saw before. All in all, I say that it is an excellent and extremely layered film.

With that, I give you some fun facts about the movie:

-The pencil eraser machine actually worked. It was put together by Lynch and a friend of his.

-To this day, Lynch will still not disclose how he constructed the amazingly convincing baby creature, though he claims is was created with substance/objects that anyone could find around the house.

-Jack Nance's hair was incredibly malleable. Literally, all it took was a little bit of trimming on either side of his head and some combing to get it to stand upright.

-In order to get a better sense of textures for the film (possibly for the organs of the baby) Lynch dissected a dead cat.

-When driving around town with the "Henry hair" Jack Nance would sit in the center seat while Lynch and someone else would sit on either side to keep his gravity-defying hair from being seen

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Rating: - Brilliantly Weird
I remember watching this film about 15 years ago in which various images of the baby etc were seared into my subconsious. Watching it again recently it pulls you into a dark and disturbing place which takes a while to leave your system. A nightmarish film which you should watch not just because it is strange but at a different level teases your mind into various perceptions of reality. A film that shows an extreme of human abstract thought coupled with a dream-like reality. It seems to be an insight into madness. You must see this film at least once in your life. For me it will be every 15 - 20 years.