Eraserhead (1977)

Eraserhead (1977)

In the debut of director David Lynch's first feature-length film (that took almost five years to finish as a student grant from the American Film Institute (AFI)) - it was a surrealistic, troubling, expressionistic, warped and nightmarish cult and black comedy-horror film about the fear of fatherhood, an unwanted pregnancy, an extremely-deformed child, and domesticity. The strange sound track (with industrial rumblings, buzzings and mechanical droning sounds) also provoked some audiences into thinking there was some kind of subliminal thought-control being orchestrated.

The highly unusual and repulsive 'body-horror' film, regarded as sick and in bad-taste, did very poorly when first released, but has since become one of David Lynch's most beloved cult films. It became recognized for its influential nature after 'midnight movie' showings in Greenwich Village in 1977 increased its visibility (and then it became a hit during late-night showings in the late 70s and early 1980s in San Francisco and Los Angeles).

• the film began with no opening title credits; in the opening dream sequence, the first image was of the head (in gigantic close-up) of Henry Spencer (Jack Nance); he appeared to be tilted, or lying on his side as he floated or drifted in space in front of a grungy-looking planet (his brain?) behind him
• situated on the planet, a pock-marked, damaged "Man in the Planet" (Jack Fisk) was sitting in a building (next to a cracked window) with an open roof; the disfigured man was manipulating rusty mechanical levers that were controlling Henry's central nervous system (sexual desires?); a giant worm-like sperm creature was ejected from Henry's open mouth and then flew through space and fell downwards into a watery hole; the ejected spermatozoa entered into (or splashed into) a female's dark puddle (vagina, egg or womb) - it was symbolic of male ejaculate impregnating a female, leading to conception; Henry was positioned at the other end of the hole

• it was revealed that the opening images were part of Henry's intensely fearful fever dream about accidentally getting his female partner pregnant; Henry was having pre-marital sexual intercourse with his girlfriend Mary X (Charlotte Stewart), first viewed later in a ripped photograph in Henry's drawer
• the depressed, lonely, timid, introverted, and black-suited Henry lived in a noisy, bleak industrial wasteland neighborhood; the area appeared to have suffered from a catastrophic, apocalyptic event (a mushroom cloud picture of the Hiroshima bombing was later seen hanging next to Henry's bed); he returned home with groceries in his arms to his slummy, drab, and dirty apartment with dead grass
• in the hallway corridor outside his place, the sexy character of the desirous "Beautiful Girl Across the Hall" (Judith Anna Roberts) spoke the film's first lines of dialogue to Henry about a call and a dinner invite from his unmarried partner Mary X; inside Henry's claustrophobic, one-room dwelling (with no view and only one window, facing a brick wall), there was a radiator with electrical wires attached to it

• that evening, Henry (with a pocket protector in his lapel pocket) walked to the home of Mary X for dinner with her unusual parents: Mr. X (Allen Joseph) and Mrs. X (Jeanne Bates), and comatose grandmother (Jean Lange); as he arrived at the door, Mary asked why Henry wasn't coming around regularly anymore; Mrs. X also asked Henry about his job, flustering Mary when he explained how he was currently on vacation, and that he worked as a printer in a blue-collar factory; Mrs. X combed Mary's hair to calm her down
• at the dinner table once the meal actually started, Henry was presented with a whole, cooked artificial ("man-made") mini-chicken (or Cornish Game Hen) on a plate; explaining that he had a disabled arm, Mr. X suggested: "Mary usually does the carving, but maybe tonight you'll do it, Henry. All right with you?" - Henry responded: "Of course. I'd be happy to. (long pause) Do I just, uh, just cut them up like regular chickens?"

• in the awkward, sexualized scene, Henry stabbed the twitching and moving chicken to hold it down with a large fork utensil [Note: The sequence paid homage to Hitchcock's similar sequence in Suspicion (1941).]; the bird began pulsating bloody pus from its crotch area (childbirth metaphor, or loss of virginity metaphor?) - and its legs began kicking; Mrs. X across from Henry began to moan as her head angled backwards, before she fled from the table with Mary following after her
• shortly later in the dining room, Henry was pulled aside and confronted by Mary's pressuring mother: "Did you and Mary have sexual intercourse?...You're in very bad trouble if you won't cooperate!"; after strangely licking, nuzzling or kissing Henry's neck and being pulled off by Mary, the mother announced that Mary had birthed a premature baby: "There's a baby. It's at the hospital...and you're the father!"; Henry disagreed: "But that's impossible. It's only been..."; Mary blurted out that the 'baby' might actually not be a baby: "Mother, they're still not sure it is a baby"; the mother continued by insisting that they should instantly be married: "It's premature, but there's a baby. After the two of you are married, which should be very soon, you can pick the baby up"
• Mary noticed that the stressed Henry had a nosebleed, and then anxiously asked: "You don't mind, do you, Henry? I-I mean about getting married" - he responded: "Oh, no"
• the couple's baby at the hospital was a stark-sight - a deformed, monstrous, bleating, sickly and whining lamb-like mutant; wrapped in bandages, the armless and legless creature was brought to Henry's one-room industrial-type tenement apartment from the hospital; the innocent and vulnerable deformed child immediately began wheezing, cried non-stop, and refused to eat by spitting at Mary
• meanwhile at his mail-box, Henry removed a box (with a tiny worm inside), and later he saw his radiator light up (with a small stage); in the middle of the night, he placed the live worm inside a cabinet; in disgust and anger over the disagreeable crying baby, the stressed-out Mary moved out for the night and deserted Henry; as Henry took the baby's temperature, he noticed the loathsome baby was covered with sores and pox marks
• during the night (a 'wet-dream'), Henry watched the inside of his radiator, where he saw a puffy-faced, fantasy 'dream-girl' dancing - she was known as the Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near) with deformed cheeks; she was stomping on and crushing several mutated worm creatures (tadpole-like spermatozoa) on the floor
• soon after, Mary left Henry permanently to take care of the mutant all by himself; Henry also dreamt that he was having an affair with the provocative "Beautiful Girl Across the Hall" (possibly a prostitute); she claimed she had locked herself out, and entered Henry's place to spend the night in his bed and seduce him; they melted into bed together in a pool of milk (semen?), but she became frightened when she saw the planet (from the opening)
• as Henry listened to his phonograph playing the "Lady in the Radiator Song" (Fats Waller on a pipe organ), Henry had another vision of the Lady in the Radiator, dancing on a stage and singing: "In heaven, everything is fine" to reassure Henry; he was enraptured by her, wrapped in white light, but then they both became invisible to each other; the Lady disappeared when a large rock rolled onto the stage

• in a perplexing dream scene, judgment was placed on Henry for being an irresponsible father who wished to murder his abomination of a son; Henry's head was severed at the neck by a phallic-shaped appendage that suddenly burst from his neck and knocked his head off; Henry's decapitated head fell from the sky, fell to the floor and rolled around; blood poured profusely from the large rock and pooled around Henry's head; the head fell through the stage onto the street pavement below, where Henry's head was found by a child in a puddle of blood (with its brain showing)
• Henry's head was taken to a pencil factory, where one of the workers-operators, Pencil Machine Operator (Hal Landon Jr.) drilled a pencil into Henry's brain, to use Henry's brain matter as the raw materials for pencil erasers (a symbol of Henry's sublimated wish to "erase" what was happening to him?); on Henry's headless neck stump inside his empty collar, a new deformed head (the cranium of the crying mutant baby) grew in its place
• Henry woke up from his bad dream and went across the hall, but realized that the 'beautiful girl' had another male visitor

• in the film's final surrealistic sequence, Henry decided to murder his hideous, deformed reptilian baby (infanticide); he cut into the baby's bandaged middle with scissors, revealing that the baby's innards (without skin) were only held together by the tight wrappings; the agitated baby began to bleed, gurgle, and screech; to put it out of its misery, Henry then stabbed the creature in the heart with the scissors, producing an oozing, foaming thick white liquid (the baby's innards?)
• power surges in the room caused the lights to go off and on; the neck of the baby elongated and then the head grew gigantic, became disembodied and teleported to outer space (the planet in the film's opening); Henry was apparently unable to cope with the fact of his own homicidal murder of his own child and went insane
• suddenly, the baby's head was replaced by the planet (Henry's brain from the opening); the film's most iconic image was the result of an explosion that caused Henry's fractured head to be surrounded by the pencil erasure shavings of his own brain - (a possible suicide?); the Pencil Machine Operator delivered the film's final line: "It's OK!"
• the side of the planet exploded, with the 'Man in the Planet' inside near the window, still struggling with the sparking levers
• in an after-death sequence, a relieved Henry (with his mind literally erased, and without a head) entered Dream-land (in a stunningly bright white light) and embraced the pure and innocent puffy-cheeked Lady in the Radiator - a fantasy female