ERASERHEAD...For Argument's Sake

Eraserhead (NR) 1977

Promising careers have gone kaput, marriages have been shattered, and long term friendships have been flushed down the toilet, simply because no one at the beginning of the relationship thought to ask, "How do you feel about Eraserhead?"

Director David Lynch's seminal classic may be the most polarizing film ever made. There are only two types of people in this world: those who consider Eraserhead an anxiety strewn nightmare caught on film, and morons.

(In this rare instance, I fall into the first category.)

How many films can you name that have an albino lady with mutton-chop cheeks singing inside of a radiator? Or scenes of menstruating cooked poultry? Or Jack Nance's hair? At most, like three.

This movie is the best one.

The story (for lack of a better word) centers around Henry Spencer, an oddly coiffed factory worker ostensibly on a stay at home vacation. Though technically linear, the movie doesn't follow a conventional plot line. Instead, the audience follows Henry as he sleepwalks through his monochrome existence, encountering horrific images and disturbing events backed only by the sounds of his industrial environment.

What happens on screen is never completely spelled out and Lynch has left it to the audience to decipher what's real and what's not. Since its release in 1977 there have been dozens of interpretations of the film, but none have ever been confirmed or denied by the director.

And that is what makes Eraserhead more than just another horror movie.

We've all had the experience of going to the movies with friends and discussing what we've just watched on screen. For most of us it's fun to verbally wrangle over hidden meanings, or characters' motivations, or why Joey can't pay for his own damn popcorn. The best of these movies become community events, driven as much by the impressions they leave on audiences as by the stories they tell.

Now imagine a movie so strange, so out of the ordinary, so FREAKISH, that its sole purpose seems to be as a catalyst for those arguments. A film so engaging and symbolic it enjoins each viewer to invent an interpretation and then defend it.

Can you guess what movie that might be? (I'll give you a hint: it's not Beaches.)

This movie is to film what Maggot Brain is to music. It's weird. It's impenetrable. It's fun to say. And it will make you feel something for which there are no accurate words of description.

The horror in Eraserhead doesn't come from scary monsters or bloody chainsaws or paranormal frights. It comes from that well of dread which bubbles up from our subconscious selves and warns us to be afraid of the stranger and the strange. It is a feeling more than a thought. It is something that can only be found in the darkest parts of the human mind.

And like a nightmare, it doesn't have to make a whole lot of sense to freak you the hell out.

 Eraserhead Trailer