VHS : Eraserhead [1976]

Rating: - A Real test of patience that will blow your mine!,
I swear to you in the beginning of this film I was going to throw this movie in the trash but as it progress I grew to like it. I should preface by saying this is my second taste of David Lynch (Blue Velvet being my first). I knew it would be weird, but I was not expecting this. I like weird movies, but this makes "Donnie Darko" look like "Titanic". Let's accept the fact that this is one of the most notoriously bizarre, weird and idiotic films ever made, we cannot deny that it made an impact on experimental cinema. If we were to believe that this film is nothing more than psychedelic fodder for abnormal or curious minds then we are discarding it, perhaps exalting it to an avant gard status. Is it just random imagery shown for "shock value" sake? Was David Lynch some goof ball in his youth that he was just some fool who embarked on a five year project, which isn't anything better than someone showing weird people and weird things just to discover what the reaction would be? Likely. But I think it's a bit of that and more.

Everything here is designed to shock you but the baby. The baby is absolutely normal. What is interesting, some critics say the baby is a mutant, but do they think so in the movie? They treat it like a normal child. Yes, it looks like an eye sore, but it looks so to us, how do we know how it looks to them? Or how do we know, that we see what it IS, and not what Henry and his wife SEE it to be? The answer is - we don't know that. This dimension of the movie raises everyday life misfortunes and reflects social consciousness of some family issues. Everything that concerns society and social perception is more or less clear and familiar (like the marriage). But when it comes to personal visions and submergence you fall into the jack rabbit's hole. Talking about horror effect, the Lady in Radiator is brilliant. She is the most terrible and terrifying thing I have ever seen, but you like her! You can't take your eyes from her; she has a mesmerizing effect of some unknown power.

Eraserhead, in itself, will be boring, engrossing, drab, quirky, freakish and grotesque. The real crime here is that it absolutely refuses to explain itself and leaves you impatient with virtually no plot, minimal dialogue and just seems to venture into its own indulgent surrealistic voyage with uncompromising willfulness. But it somehow works through its convoluted logic. It has spawned many reactions, both positive and negative. But this movie is likely to give art students ideas. And strange minds will likely be attracted to it. I happen to admire it. I don't admire it for its result, but rather the effort put into it. Any film maker should remark that a lot of effort and work went into this production, regardless of the budget. Five years is a long time and quite a sacrifice to have such a modest payoff. Lynch took a gamble with this movie, and I praise him for that. It is evident that after watching it we come across some elaborate sets and special effects. I'm not here to defend the film, but rather the painstaking work of David Lynch for having dedicated himself to such a torrid and abominable piece of art.

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Rating: - Horror - or Black Comedy?
You might guess from looking at the reviews of Eraserhead that it does rather divide opinion. Dialogue so sparse that you could think the volume was down on your TV if it wasn't for the industrial cacophony of a soundtrack, characters that look as if they stepped out of a freakshow and a plot that is simply incomprehensible. So what does Eraserhead offer the viewer.
It's very easy to get po-faced about a film like Eraserhead; it's very art-house and one of the most analysable films I've seen. My advice is to engage with it as a dark and comic film about modernism, fatherhood and responsibility. Scenes like the 'synthetic chicken' scene are hilarious once you engage with Henry as a character meeting his girlfriend's parents for the first time and finding the whole household is as nutty as a fruitcake. Likewise Henry's pseudo relationship with the bizarrely dreary lady in the radiator.
Clearly Eraserhead is not concerned with telling a story or developing characters or most of the concerns of conventional cinema. It's concern is presenting the viewer with a succession of arresting scenes depicting a barely adequate man's struggle to come to terms with his life. I promise you if you start laughing you'll probably never stop!

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Rating: - Don't bother
Eraserhead is the cinematic equivalent of inserting drawing pins into your testicals while listening to the sound of a pig being slowly sanded to death. This is the worst film i've seen in my life by a long stretch. It can't even fit into the 'its so bad its good' category. Obnoxious, pretentious, vile horsedung. I enjoyed Lynch's Blue Velvet and am a fan of horror: meanlingless, gory or otherwise as long as it entertains. My copy was bought in a sale and watched with a friend; afterwards i couldn't apologise enough to him for wasting an hour and a half of his life. You might be thinking this film looks edgy and controversial, like marmite it seems people either love it or hate it. Well your wrong. I can only presume anyone who who gave this film 5 stars are deluded Lynch fans who can't accept he made a film this poor, or the type of folk who told the stark naked emperor that his new clothes looked JUST FABULOUS (simper). Don't waste your time with it.

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Rating: - Film of the 20th century
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

David Lynch's first feature is a psychotic nightmare set in a dark, industrial world where the constant whirling and grinding of the ambiance is enough to drive you to the edge of sanity, let alone the screams of the protagonist's mutation of a child or the lady that lives inside of his radiator or, in one of the film's most memorable scenes, the loss of his head (before it is concentrated down to form pencil erasers. And if you think that that explains the title, you're only just getting there).

David Lynch's world is like nothing before it, introducing, with Jodorowsky's El Topo, 'the Midnight Movie', and while it influenced established directors like Kubrick, nothing has been committed to colloid since that comes close to what Eraserhead achieved in 1977. But behind the glass, soot and dirt and underneath its dream-like ambiguity hides a very simple film, with one simple theme. The fear of parenthood. Perhaps.

In what might be reality or nightmare (or both) Henry Spencer (played by Jack Nance, who would go on to act in most of Lynch's films until his death in 1996) makes brilliant use of the sparsely written screenplay, delivering a solid performance based on almost the use of facial expression alone. And while he carries most of the film on his back, that's not to say that the supporting cast don't do a brilliant job too, Allen Job as Mr. X in particular adds an extra level of eccentricity to the already bizarre script ('We've got chicken tonight. Strangest damn things. They're man made. Little damn things. Smaller than my fist. But they're new. Hi, I'm Bill.') while Charlotte Stewart managers to deliver perfectly the most disturbingly enigmatic line ever-uttered in cinema ('Mother, they're still not sure it is a baby!') upon Henry's discovery that he is a father. But the real star of Lynch's sick show must be the baby. For Eraserhead to work Lynch had to, with the very limited budget he had, create something that perfectly captured Henry's disdain and confusion towards his newfound responsibility that came with his child. Here Lynch does not only accomplish this but he creates something so disturbing in Henry's premature baby that it will stay with you long after the credits role. Shaped like what one can only assume an aborted ET would look like, Lynch has remained tight lipped about how he created it since the film's release, but strong rumours suggest it was an actual calf foetus, adding even more to the thick air of mystery already surrounding the film. It's a testament to Lynch's skills that the baby is still as shocking today as when the film was first released.

While a lot of people may dismiss Eraserhead for its lack of coherent narrative, this would be foolish, as even though the film relies heavily on Dali/Bunuel imagery and dream logic, it is far from the puzzles Lynch would later create (Muholland Drive, Lost Highway and INLAND EMPIRE in particular) and, in my mind at least, runs in a linear manner, thus making the understanding of Henry's decent into murder a little easier to understand then the study of some other surrealists. That's not to say that the plot holds one single, definite meaning, to one person Lynch's story maybe a tale of a man's decent into suicide, to another it's a study of life and death and what happens in the space afterwards and to a third person, a story of an alien visitor, lost on an alien world. The last one, metaphorically, maybe the closest to the truth.

Lynch's characterisation and direction is flawless and Henry's situation in life is reflected perfectly in the slow camera movement and symbolism, most notably when we are shown the view from his bedroom window - a brick wall. Like the baby there are certain images in Eraserhead that will stay with you for the rest of your life, the 'Beautiful Girl Across the Hall' and her and Henry's embrace in what appears to be a bath of milk, the bloodied stepping upon of giant sperm and of course Henry's head falling off and landing in a random street are but a few. The black and white visuals not only aid the nightmarish reality of Henry's situation and show off the brilliant lighting, but give the film such a timeless feel that it will still be the same experience for decades to come. This is helped tenfold by the fact that even though surreal, Lynch's film taps into the realist and strongest of human emotions as its run it's course to bloody climax and then stays with you for days where it, like The Lady in Radiator, draws you back, beckoning you back into it's world. In Heaven, everything is fine.

Lynch's visual poetry exhibits what should be done in cinema, in a world filled with the generic blockbuster. It uses the medium to its full strength and in that sense Eraserhead demonstrates what film should be about, creating a piece of art that has only been possible since 1895 and is only possible with the power of a camcorder. It is pure cinema and a pure masterpiece. Whether you hate it or fall in love with it, there is no denying that Lynch's hypnotic imagery makes you feel as you've woken from the deepest dream/nightmare you have ever dreamt and for that experience it is worth viewing alone. But once you've seen it once, Eraserhead can only be seen again and again. And with a film as frightening, strange and alarming as this, that is a real achievement.

Jamie Panton

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Rating: - Truly Nightmarish
Just read the review below by Feca67 which mirrors my thoughts and feelings exactly. It's oddly comforting to know that someone else was affected in the same way following their viewing of this classic movie.

Dark, Deranged and Disturbing!!