Eraserhead – (1977, b/w) Writer/director/producer David Lynch’s first feature film of a very strange, nightmarish world: a dark planet intersects with Henry Spencer (John Nance), who expels from his mouth something like his brainstem, as a wart-faced man pulls mechanical levers. This is a science fiction of dark dreams.  Henry (with big hair twice the size of Seinfeld’s Kramer) in a too-small dark suit and white socks walks through an industrial landscape of pulsating noise to his apartment where the woman across the hall tells him that Mary called asking him to come to dinner with her parents. Henry walks over to spend the evening with Mary and her odd parents.

Mary’s mother asks him if he’s had sexual intercourse with Mary because Mary has given birth to a premature baby. The infant looks like an alien lifeform. After Mary returns to her parents’ home, the woman across the hall comes over to spend the night with Henry. The imagery is suggestive of mid-20^th-century sci-fi and horror; absurd events recall early Monty Python skits without the funniness. In one dream sequence Henry’s head falls off and the alien infant’s head rises to replace it; Henry’s head lands in an alley where a boy grabs it and takes it to a pencil shop where a technician drills a core from the skull, which gets made into pencil erasers.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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