Eraserhead (1977)

David Lynch, who is still alive and working on movies and TV, is a really great American artist. He has something moral to say, not moralistic, but something moral in his storytelling and what he projects in them. He depicts a visual sense of eeriness as well as an evil mood stalking his heroic characters. There is something with its own rules and eerie laws underneath us.

Lynch is a basically, conservative mind, as it is with many modern artists such as a T.S. Elliot or Salvador Dali. There is a sense of morality in all his films and TV shows. I’ve had the privilege of seeing his early student movies shot in Philadelphia where he went to school. His first full length movie, “Eraserhead” (1977), takes its time, is rather artistic in a good way and it took 5 years to complete because of technical issues. There are students, art people and bohemians who have used this movie as a test for their boyfriends and girlfriends to see if they’ll accept this movie. That is how this work is a cult movie and is probably one of his finest.

Jack Nance, a favorite stock actor of Lynch’s who did several movies with him until an early, horrible death, basically fills out the role as Henry Eraserhead. We first see him, after all, as floating in space in a troubled world of his own in the first scenes. Lynch purposefully shot the film in a deep, troubling, black and white as well as used industrial noises, sounds and broken up soundtrack tricks to make this unreal and depressed on purpose. We are not in a world where love and beauty or some kind of kindness and tenderness exist. This is all purposefully done. People here are predators on Henry and he is a little as well.

The 1970’s hairdo with a pompadour look is not a stylish thing and makes Henry odder in this world. The suit he always wears is correct and nice but shot in a black and white look gives it some dinginess. There is no escape for anyone in this movie from bad choices, as well as some outer cosmic eeriness and evil that strikes all the characters. There is even a fear of being a father, if you carefully follow the story, as Lynch himself had at the time.

“Eraserhead” has the quality of early American and European underground art movies from the 1920’s-1970’s when Lynch did the film. The black & white was even exaggerated on purpose by the cinematogropher, Frederick Elmes, who has worked on all of Lynch’s films since. This gives it a haunted as well as “not real” look and dare I even use the word “hellish”.

Henry makes many bad decisions in the movie that cost him as well as the father he fails at being. There is really no soundtrack music except for the vintage organ and 50’s Blues music that give it a timelessness and a fairytale sound. None of the actors except for the late Jack Nance went on to have a career, but they are known for this movie, so there is something that lives on from the movie.

The film took a little bit of getting used to for distributors and businessmen. It first gained its name in colleges, cult cinemas and independent theaters. It got Lynch to do the second movie and first Hollywood movie he ever did, “The Elephant Man”. It was a calling card that was worth it and got him a career of many years of filmmaking. The son of an agricultural researcher and government scientist from Montana, Lynch has a sense of texture and look to his films. He didn’t do anymore black and white movies after “The Elephant Man” but even in color, there is also something menacing and artistic in a rich way. There is a sense of using outsiders and troubled people in his stories who become heroic.

“Eraserhead” has been mentioned on TV shows and in movies and got him to be on the talk show circuit for a while. His movies are rich enough that you can watch them visually for the effects, beauties and decoration alone. Although more money, more studio support and more visuals were used in later movies, the theme still harks back to an innocent caught between two worlds, like “Eraserhead”, who in the end find their way to the light.

One issue with Lynch is the way he shows women at times. “Eraserhead” does have that, from the wife who is not very helpful, to the evil woman in the apartment who goes about with Henry for a while. Let's not forget the lady in heaven with her strange song and sense of comfort for a wounded Henry. Lynch does have that imagining in this movie and it takes some getting used to, but if you bear that, the movie does have its riches. This is a late 1970’s thinking of a male kind. “Eraserhead” does get beyond that though in the end and whatever is said, Lynch’s movies do work.

“Eraserhead” is a troubling dream as Pauline Kael, the movie critic, called it. It’s not a movie you want to see again but its rich, visual storytelling is a troubling and strange dream that works on you. It has the pleasures of a great, terror fantasy tale. You can only watch it one time but it works on some deep fantasy level.

a villain from 'eraserhead'

the cast from 'eraserhead'