I watched the 1977 David Lynch Film “Eraserhead” on Netflix DVD for the first time. This experimental fantasy, science fiction, horror film was written, directed, produced, edited, and music scored by, David Lynch (The Elephant Man, Dune, Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Lost Highway, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, TV Episodes of Twin Peaks). It is about Henry Spencer who is on vacation and having girlfriend issues, nightmares, and a screaming premature ET embryo-looking baby.
Henry is played by Jack Nance (Dune, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway), the beautiful girl across the hall is played by Judith Anna Roberts (TV episodes of Remington Steele, Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Orange Is the New Black), Henry’s girlfriend Mary X is played by Charlotte Stewart (Speedway, Tremors, TV episodes of My Three Sons, Hawaii 5-0, Bonanza, Mannix, McMillan & Wife, Gunsmoke, Matlock, Twin Peaks), her mother is played by
Jeanne Bates (The Return of the Vampire, The Phantom, Death of a Salesman, Die Hard 2, TV episodes of Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, Mannix), her father is played by Allen Joseph (TV episodes of
Wagon Train, Perry Mason, The Invaders, The Wonderful Land of OZ, Mission: Impossible, The Brady Bunch, Mannix, Kojak, Airwolf), and the lady in the radiator is played by Laurel Near.
David Lynch had started out as a painter and had created several short films to animate his paintings. At 24 he accepted a scholarship to the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies. The script seems to be based on Lynch’s fear of unexpected conception and birth defects.
Eraserhead was a midnight movie and a cult classic. There is very little dialogue and the images are weird, sometimes grotesque, and haunting. It is in black and white throughout. Stanley Kubrick told Lynch that it was his favorite film.
There are dead plants in piles of dirt around his room and his loud radiator is like his television as he stares into it to see “the lady in the radiator”. There are also alien sperm-like creatures in the movie, a weird “man in the planet” pulling levers and a strange claymation worm he receives in the mail.
I think I might purchase the 4k version to get all the extra’s that have been included through the years. It is a great movie and I’ll give it 4 out of 5 stars. For more information read Wikipedia, IMDB, and Rotten Tomatoes.
