Eraserhead

Rating:
Summary: The greatest film of all time???
Review: There need to be more films like this! "TETSUO:THE IRON MAN" and Pi come close (as does the works of david cronenberg), but ERASERHEAD isn't just a film. It is 90 minutes of a frightening parrallel world (photographed in stunning black and white) Where a man named henry is forced to marry his girlfriend when she gives birth to a baby..."But MOM!! They're not even sure it IS a baby!"
Fans of lynch will notice that this film is his most extreme, difficult, and best.

Rating:
Summary: Cult Classic
Review: David Lynch’s debut was an instant cult classic. A startling film that falls outside any frame of reference you can think of, except perhaps Fritz Lang movies of the 1920s. Shot in grainy black&white, a minimum of dialogue and constant wash of industry a mbient noise pervades the whole film. The events are driven forward by a series of obscure left-of-centre images like the Man Inside the Planet (what the heck is that all about?).This seems to suggest that Eraserhead is foremost a visual spectacle for its own sake rather than an exercise in storytelling. Thus a plot that slips out of your fingers like a wet fish at every turn; the surreal, dreamlike imagery that intrigues and baffles rather than explains and embroiders, and the editing which in some places seems to have been done by Godzilla. This is fine for stoners and film students but not the kind of thing you’d want to put on after Thanksgiving dinner to which family members have driven half the way across to continent to attend. There are some wonderful scenes, like when Henry the geeky hero (great haircut) is invited to dinner at the in-laws and things go horribly pear-shaped.
Eraserhead is not for everyone, but it is a film I would strongly recommend to those who are into independent cinema, surrealist art, gothic cinema and of course, for all David Lynch fans.

Rating:
Summary: For those who seek the truth
Review: Shocking, disturbing, disorienting and ... magnificent.

Think of it as a cinematic Rorschach test. Forgot about logic,
plot and character development. This is a work that speaks
directly to the id, perhaps the most successful attempt to do so
in history. When the delusions and rationalizations that keep us
sane (or blind) are stripped away we face what we really
are - tiny beings adrift in a disturbing and mysterious universe.
Eraserhead is made of this strangeness. If comfort is your goal,
do not view this film. You may never get it out of your head. If
instead you wish to be awake then use this film and be grateful
that in an industry devoted to escapism, propaganda and product
placement that you got the chance.

Rating:
Summary: What Do You Do In The Most Absurd of Situations?
Review: Existentialist philosophers like Derrida and Heidegger talked about a repeated theme, that humans have been "thrown" into a world where the most absurd things can happen, and that humans must create meaning (if there is any at all) from the absurdity and react to it, if possible. "Eraserhead," David Lynch's first feature-length film, explores this notion to its absolute extreme. Many other Lynch films deal with the idea of ordinary people put into extraordinary circumstances, but in "Eraserhead" it is the overriding concept of the entire movie, and one that Lynch has teased to its grisly, beautiful perfection.

Set in a retro-future reminiscent of Lang's "Metropolis" or the worst parts of the Victorian era mingled with a post-nuclear environment, "Eraserhead" follows the perpetually-frizzy-haired Henry Spencer as he learns that his girlfriend is pregnant and is forced to marry her at her parent's request (at a dinner where the roast chickens splay themselves suggestively on the dinner table, no less). Henry wears a look of almost constant bewilderment at having been put in this position, but it is nothing compared with the outlandishness of the rest of the movie. Henry's apartment building appears to be abandoned, and the lights flicker on and off uncontrollably, while the woman across the hall gives him phone messages from a payphone, and the woman who lives in his radiator tells him (in song) that "In heaven, everything is fine." When Henry and Mary pick the baby up from the hospital, he discovers that, whatever it IS, it most certainly is NOT human.

Lynch has always concerned himself with bipolar contrasts, and "Eraserhead" is no exception. While Henry pines for Heaven, it is unclear whether he is living in Hell, or simply a world gone horribly wrong. For all the repeated imagery of copulation, reproduction, and birth, coupled with violence, it could be either, although it is clear that everything that happens is within the realm of possibility, making the latter more probable. The film is interspersed with postmodern artistic scenes evoking violence, life, and death, and there is little conventional "plot" to speak of - simply Henry reacting to the increasingly absurd, which he never gets used to nor ever fully accepts.

So what is Lynch trying to do or say? I have my suspicions, but to talk about "meaning" before the experience would ruin the whole thing. Let's put it this way: just as Henry sits there slack-jawed and glassy-eyed at what's going on around him, so too is the audience supposed to do the same - it may be one of the best tricks any artist has ever played on his viewers.

All in all, "Eraserhead" will not be to everyone's tastes. In fact, I doubt it would even appeal to those who liked other Lynch movies such as "Mulholland Drive" or "Blue Velvet." It is much more an art film, but you're the kind of person who goes to movies to escape, you might want to pass on "Eraserhead." If you like to think, especially on the existential level, see what you can make of it.

Final Grade: A

Rating:
Summary: black&white horror comedy
Review: I saw this film only once when it was first released. The details of the story are fuzzy in my memory but the sounds and images are still razor sharp.

When I saw it, it struck me exactly like an old 1920's silent comedy, with sound. The scene where the man is trying to keep the baby from crying seemed like an direct copy of a scene from an old silent film where the silent comedian (Harold Lloyd or someone) tries to pull his Murphy bed down and needs to sit on it so it won't bounce back up into the wall but he gets comically caught by also needing to close the door to his room so he can undress into his pajamas. The distance between the bed and the door was such that he could not do both things at once - if he stood up to close the door, the bed flew back up into the wall, but if he sat on the bed to keep it down the door came unlocked and swung open.

The main character of "Eraserhead" lives in a harsh and cruel world where people are rather mean or at best indifferent of him, so much like a vaudeville comedy or Victorian melodrama.

The theme song "In Heaven" has a bittersweet tune, but again with heavy sarcastic humor which to my mind is poking fun at John Lennon's utopia song "Imagine" and akin to the sad resignation found in many American slave spirituals. The lyrics are: "In heaven everything is fine. In heaven everything is fine. In heaven everything is fine. You have your nice things and I have mine. In heaven everything is fine."

The constant industrial sounds which underscore the film are similar to the constant loud humming of a nuclear power plant I once visited in Dungeness, England. The constant humming of an industrious hell on earth, warning of iminent death through poisinous radiation pollution.

It's a great film. It could be about man's apathy and myopia towards the environment. It could be about a humanitarian apathy versus christian ideals of charity and kindness. It could be a socialist commentary on greed in a capitalist world. Or it could be about something else entirely; it is still a great film.

My brother uses this film as the rule for measuring the weirdness of all other films.

Rating:
Summary: David Lynch's Eraserhead
Review: Although I adore most of David Lynch's work,movies & TV (Twin Peaks).Eraserhead has to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life! If you like weird,annoying and something that makes no sense at all,mixed together,then this movie is for you. All through the movie you pretty much get,a guy sitting in a room with a baby screaming at the top of it's weird little lungs.This movie will totally creep-out most people,and those that it doesn't,might want to ask themselves,if they're one egg short of a dozen,and they are cracking-up. But,just in case you'd like to check it out,I won't tell you any more,except to say,that after watching this movie,I very much wanted to run from my house screaming MY lungs out.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely disturbing...
Review: This has got to be one of the most tripped out films that I have ever seen. I was greatly disturbed by this film. YOU NEVER KNOW what is going to happen next. It is totally unpredictible. This film was truly made before its time. It totally creeped me out, and the grainy black and white color of the film is totally effective, as are the music and sound effects. It simply feels like a nightmare. The mutated baby in this film is horrifying, and the "Lady in the Radiator" scenes are, too.

See this movie and see what I mean. It will haunt your dreams.

In heaven, everything is fine....

Rating:
Summary: WHAT?!?
Review: To all of my friends who say that LOST HIGHWAY AND MULHOLLAND DRIVE are so weird, I have one thing to say to you. "Watch ERASERHEAD." Lynch's first masterpiece that introduced him (gradually) to the world is a stunningly bizarre work of art, not cinema, but art, that makes BLUE VELVET look like a mainstream summer blockbuster by comparison.

Lynch regular Jack Nance plays Henry, a mild mannered young man who lives quietly in a bleak future universe filled with dirty old buildings and industrial machines that seem to run all hours of the day. One day Henry's world is turned upside down when he learns that his girlfriend became pregnant and had his "baby." The baby, it appears, is a mutant whose disfigurement was caused by the horribly polluted world in which they inhabit. The baby is sick, the wife leaves him, and Henry is forced to make a choice that could burden his conscience for the rest of his life.

Shot in beautiful black and white, Lynch creates a nightmare world in which machines are always heard rumbling away, characters are quirky, and the only escape Henry has is his own imagination. Lynch uses shocking and bizarre images to blend dreams with reality(which will become his trademark) It is the study of one lonely and depressed soul trapped in a nightmare universe where nobody cares. It is ERASERHEAD, if not David Lynch's best film, then it is certainly his most original. Watch it once, and it will haunt you for a long time to come. Watch it twice, and it will haunt you forever.

On the question of availibility, ERASERHEAD is not a film that you can find in your neighborhood Blockbuster. It's on moritorium and is very hard to find. But like Quentin Tarantino once said, the lack of availability often adds to a cult status. The best way to get your hands on a copy of ERASERHEAD, is to do it like I did, bid for it on EBAY. It might run for a little more than an average video. But I guarantee, you will not regret spending the extra money.

Rating:
Summary: Lynch's Nightmare Masterpiece
Review: Like all of Lynch's movies, Eraserhead is completely about mood, pure and simple. It's amazing how Lynch can conjure emotion from almost nothing. He always goes for the jugular in Eraserhead, going exactly where you don't want him to.

How to describe the movie? It's a nightmare. After viewing it, you will remember it as a dream. Lynch is dead-on in creating a dream-like experience here.

...

Rating:
Summary: Welcome to my Nightmare
Review: I saw this picture in my early 20's and it changed the way I watch movies. This one crept up on me three days after I saw it and has rattled around in the back of my psyche ever since. It's the surreal dreamlike quality of Lynch's vison that is the most disturbing. I have yet to find another motion picture that captures this element so eloquently. It's as if this man got inside of Dali's head and made a motion picture out of his grey matter.

There is always something acrid, hot, moist, dirty and fuzzy in that corner in the basement. Don't look there, it's too horrible for words.

Where's the DVD?