User Reviews

When I critique a film, I usually begin with a synopsis. That is where my problems start with David Lynch's Eraserhead: what with not having a conventional narrative, it doesn't lend itself to being easily synopsised.

So let me say that it appears to be about a strange man and matters and characters concerning his strange mutant offspring although any or all of it may be fantasy.

I must say initially that I suspect that the movie is very close to showing on screen exactly what David Lynch intended: I can't imagine these images or events being accidental or unintentional.

I must then go on to say that I don't like it very much. Not just because it doesn't tell a conventional narrative in a conventional way, although that's part of it. But more because what it shows doesn't please me. The images are unpleasant and unappealing. The main character doesn't invite me to identify with him. I don't understand what Lynch is trying to do, as a result of which I can't engage with the movie on any level except visual and, on that level, Lynch seems to have set out to ply me with a disturbing visual experience which I didn't enjoy.

So I have to say that while I admire Lynch's ability to capture something which is, at best odd and, at worst, twisted, it wasn't really my thing.

Henry takes a vacation from his boring job at a printing factory to relax. He meets up with his old girlfriend and finally has to meet her wacky family! It's a hoot. Better than "Meet the Fockers", really. Henry finds out he's a new daddy during the whole ordeal too. Great special effects, good family orientated humor, a movie for the kids AND parents. The acting is great, the characters are deep and well rounded. This movie is a laugh riot. Will Henry snap under the pressure of being a new dad and dealing with the pressure from his shaky relationship and in- laws? I vote this for the feel good movie of '77. Really top notch work by David Lynch. 8 Stars and two big thumbs up.

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:

***THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS SPOILERS***

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.

***END OF SPOILERS***

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.

Now I'm not going to pretend that this is going to be a very well thought out analysis of the film Eraserhead, as I have only just finished watching it for the second time, and I'm still shuffling some ideas around in my hopefully not eraser worthy brain.

I'll try to be coherent: The true story of this movie is not of a couple living in a post-apocalyptic world, with a mutant baby, as I have seen it described, but the internal decay of the main character Henry. From the beginning through to the very end, the surreal imagery is all relative to Henry's mental condition. Now it doesn't have to get this specific, but you can rationalize it down to the fact that Henry has a mental tumour or growth that is causing his grip on reality to fracture and decay and is slowly killing him.

Everywhere Henry goes, we see destruction. It's in all things, -the barren dug up earthen fields he walks, the house with a hole in the roof and cracked windows in which sits the charred man pulling the levers, to his apartment which gives new meaning to the decorative term "earthy". Lynch uses the mounds of earth as a symbol for decay, much the way Dali does with ants in his paintings and short film "Un Chien Andalou". A recurring image of Henry's interior decay is light bulbs dimming or burning out altogether when he's around...and we take this as a figurative illustration of the sort of erratic synaptic firings that are happening inside the ol' Eraserhead.

Now there may or may not be a Mary X and a Family X, it could all be part of Henry's dissilusions, but their roles are less important than that of the "baby"...the fact that the "Doctors aren't even sure if it is a baby" about sums it up. Lynch couldn't have made it more ambiguous...it's not a proper baby, it's not a mutant...it's a growth. It's a manifestation of Henry's tumour or whatever disease it is that is eating him from the inside. Once Henry is "left alone" (it's all relative to who actually exists or not) with it, it suddenly starts decaying hideously. Henry's condition worsens. The only redemption he can find from his terrifying insanity is in a vision of a lady in his radiator inviting him to heaven through the radiator bars as if they were the pearly gates themself, telling him that there everything is fine. The woman herself is deformed as well, as Henry's projection of his sickness pervades everything around him. Yet the woman is his redemptor as she crushes the little wormly fetuses, helping soothe the spread of the tumour within. Henry's tumour manifests itself in a couple of other ways as well, one is the man in the house with the hole in the roof. The house is a cage, it's his skull, and it's got a severe deformity if it has a hole in the top, letting out all sanity. The man is charred, burned and twitchy, he's in decay, yet he's the one pulling the levers for Henry's brain. His tumour is a malignant, destructive thing, yet it is what is in control. It is what releases the worm like babies....it's sending itself elsewhere to create further decay. Henry's apartment is like himself...it's in decay, and the piles of earth do more than just remind of us that in a passive way...Henry's pet worm that he finds in his mail box tunnels through the earth gorging itself on it. That is what worms do, they eat their way through earth, and as a metaphor they are a physical representation of the destructive force of Henry's tumour, which is eating itself through his brain. Now I wish I could watch the movie again before I wrap this up, but I'll do my best with what my memory gives me. A couple of tangents...Henry fantasizes about his beautiful next door neighbour, but as she enters his world, he doesn't want her to see his growth...ie the baby, he doesn't want her to recognize his problem, but as they make love she can't help but notice, while all the while being sucked down into the void of Henry's psyche. The next thing that happens is that Henry's brain is being probed and drilled into, again highlighting the sensations and pains Henry must be receiving from this malignant growth. The next time Henry sees his neighbour, (in reality), he imagines she looks at him and sees only his decay, ie the head of the baby. This is when we come to the final destruction, the final decay, the final seizure or anneurysm.... The baby, the growth is only very precariously being held together by its bandages...as Henry's sanity is also dangling very precariously. Henry decides to stop fighting, and let the baby, let his sickness loose, to grow and overtake him, which it does, the insides of the baby swell and overflow and the baby's head increases in size 10 times, and the rest of the apartment self destructs, the power outlets spark, the lights go into epileptic fit, and the sound effects, which I have failed to mention but play an important psychological role all through, come to an excruciating head. Henry is left facing what it was we saw in the opening scene...what looked like a planet but what is actually his tumour, exploding towards him, and then it's all over and he's in the arms of the Lady from the Radiator, holding her, letting go of the pain and the trouble, and ready for his good thing. It's a very obtuse film, but very sad and beautiful and troubling all at once. It'll never leave you. -Ed

I couldn't help but think one thing while watching this movie: "so... this is where Tim Burton got his influence". I've seen all kinds of movies, some I thought were brilliant, some overly pretentious. "Eraserhead", though brilliantly directed, lacks a lot of support and relevance, and overtly attempts to be deeply symbolic. I remember when I enjoyed creepy characters and random disturbing scenes, but this film seemingly dumbs down the audience in an almost conscious manner.

The story centers around Henry Spencer (Jack Nence) who lives in a world that either resembles a nightmare or a different dimension. His days revolve around walking around his industrial town, and sitting in his small quiet apartment suspiciously observing every angle as if he's never been there. He's told that his girlfriend (?) awaits him at her house for dinner, and with hesitation he joins her, again, in an awkward suspicious way. The girlfriend, named Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) lives with her parents and grandmother who follow lifestyles of some impulsive serial killers. After Henry finds out that he and girlfriend Mary X have a premature baby, he falls head first into a world of mayhem, delusion, and sexual provisions. His girlfriend gives birth to a mutant baby, and leaves him to take care of it by himself.

"Eraserhead" is really unique, but over-stylized and pretentiously dangerous. In the world we live in today, an audience will fall in love with any movie that has some level of cult status. While I'll agree that the directing is superb, especially on such a low budget, the story itself lacks any drive. Albeit the movie has a massive creepy feel to it, from the subtle build up of bizarre sound effects to the sinister-like score, it leaves you empty and cold asking yourself what you had just seen. I've never been one to hold a good deep screenplay that leaves you thinking for hours against the movie, but in this case there's just way too much false instinctiveness.

The mutant baby is a motif that the movie attempts to force in order for us to feel scared and shocked. And in the center of it all, the baby looks more like a dinosaur than a disfigured, dream-like figure. Then there's the "creepy" girl who sings a song about life in heaven, which Henry listens to for comfort. Her presence is almost unnecessary and oblique, making you tilt your head back more asking "why?" is this a film that observes the life of one man? Did he suffer from a traumatic experience? We don't know, and director-writer David Lynch seems to think we don't care. The movie opens up with a scene of what seems to be an asteroid and an overlapping image of Henry floating around. He then wakes up on the road and sets out in Chaplin-like posture, passing and dismissing anything out of the ordinary. In one scene, he invites his next door neighbor in and lets her seduce him into sleeping with her. They then end up in Henry's bed, falling deep into what seems to be water. A pretentious goof might say it's an excellent way of showing sexual desire and an atmosphere that seems to give Henry the relaxing feeling he's always wanted. I say it's the first thing that popped into Lynch's head.

Half way through, I looked at my watch asking if it'll be over soon. Really, you don't have to watch the rest to get the basic idea of the whole thing. However I stuck around for the beautiful cinematography and excellent underrated directing. Lynch uses his camera and works with it like an Axe murderer would with a good victim. He separates reality with non-diegetic sound that the main character can actually hear, and really knows how to handle the framing in each shot.

I watched the extra features and David Lynch put into words what I thought was a true representation of this film: "I have no idea how the idea came to me, or when it came to me". How could you? It's completely random and spontaneous. It also suffers from a weak ending, Henry gives up and murders his baby only to see the little asteroid -- or his shell of life -- burst and explode, leaving him to go into heaven with the strange butt-face girl who sings in his radiator. Well, problem solved, kill the itch and join peace for eternity. I think that's the idea the movie was conveying. As for the title itself, it's really pretty interesting. "Eraserhead" refers to the term 'erase your head,' which means to get rid of any awareness or consciousness of what you're doing. Something Lynch must have done when he was writing the script.