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Eraserhead (1977)
In the debut of director David Lynch's first feature-length
film (that took almost five years to finish as a student grant
from the American Film Institute (AFI)) - it was a surrealistic,
troubling, expressionistic, warped and nightmarish cult and black
comedy-horror film about the fear of fatherhood, an unwanted pregnancy,
and domesticity. The strange sound track (with industrial rumblings,
buzzings and mechanical droning sounds) also provoked some audiences
into thinking there was some kind of subliminal thought-control being
orchestrated.
The highly unusual and repulsive 'body-horror' film,
regarded as sick and in bad-taste, did very poorly when first released,
but has since become one of David Lynch's most beloved cult films.
It became recognized for its influential nature after 'midnight movie'
showings in Greenwich Village in 1977 increased its visibility (and
then it became a hit during late-night showings in the late 70s and
early 1980s in San Francisco and Los Angeles).
- the film began with no opening title credits; in
the opening dream sequence, the first image was of the head (in
gigantic close-up) of Henry Spencer (Jack Nance); he appeared to
be tilted, or lying on his side as he floated or drifted in space
in front of a grungy-looking planet (his brain?) behind him
- situated on the planet, a pock-marked, damaged "Man
in the Planet" (Jack Fisk) was sitting in a building
(next to a cracked window) with an open roof; the disfigured man
was manipulating rusty mechanical levers that were controlling Henry's
central nervous system (sexual desires?); a
giant worm-like sperm creature was ejected from Henry's open mouth
and then flew through space and fell downwards into a watery hole;
the ejected spermatozoa entered into (or splashed
into) a female's dark puddle (vagina, egg or womb) - it
was symbolic of male ejaculate impregnating a female, leading to
conception; Henry was positioned at the other end of the hole

Dream: Henry's Head Floating in Space
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Henry's Fear Dream of Impregnating His Partner - A Giant Wriggling Sperm Was
Ejected From His Mouth
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Henry's Fear Dream of Conception: His Sperm Fell into His Girlfriend's 'Puddle'
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- it was revealed that the opening images were part
of Henry's intensely fearful fever dream
about accidentally getting his female partner pregnant; Henry
was having pre-marital sexual intercourse with his girlfriend Mary
X (Charlotte Stewart), first viewed later in a ripped photograph
in Henry's drawer
- the depressed, lonely, timid, introverted, and black-suited
Henry lived in a noisy, bleak industrial wasteland neighborhood;
the area appeared to have suffered from a catastrophic, apocalyptic
event (a mushroom cloud picture of the Hiroshima bombing was later
seen hanging next to Henry's bed); he returned home with groceries
in his arms to his slummy, drab, and dirty apartment with dead grass
- in the hallway corridor outside his place, the sexy
character of the desirous "Beautiful
Girl Across the Hall" (Judith Anna Roberts) spoke the film's
first lines of dialogue to Henry about a call and a dinner invite
from his unmarried partner Mary X; inside Henry's claustrophobic,
one-room dwelling (with no view and only one window, facing a brick
wall), there was a radiator with electrical wires attached to it
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Henry's Apartment Window View
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Henry Returning to His Drab, Industrial-Styled
Apartment With a Bag of Groceries
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- that evening, Henry (with a pocket protector in
his lapel pocket) walked to the home of Mary X for dinner with
her unusual parents: Mr. X (Allen Joseph) and Mrs. X (Jeanne Bates),
and comatose grandmother (Jean Lange); as he arrived at the door,
Mary asked why Henry wasn't coming around
regularly anymore; Mrs. X also asked Henry about his job, flustering
Mary when he explained how he was currently on vacation, and that
he worked as a printer in a blue-collar factory; Mrs. X combed Mary's
hair to calm her down
- at the dinner table once the meal actually started, Henry
was presented with a whole, cooked artificial ("man-made")
mini-chicken (or Cornish Game Hen) on a plate; explaining that
he had a disabled arm, Mr. X suggested: "Mary
usually does the carving, but maybe tonight you'll do it, Henry.
All right with you?" - Henry responded: "Of course. I'd
be happy to. (long pause) Do I just, uh, just cut them
up like regular chickens?"
Awkward Dinner Scene With Mary's Family
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- in the awkward, sexualized scene, Henry stabbed
the twitching and moving chicken to hold it down with a large fork
utensil [Note: The sequence paid homage to Hitchcock's similar sequence
in Suspicion
(1941).]; the bird began pulsating bloody pus from its crotch
area (childbirth metaphor, or loss of virginity metaphor?) - and
its legs began kicking; Mrs. X across from Henry began to moan as
her head angled backwards, before she fled from the table with Mary
following after her
- shortly later in the dining room, Henry
was pulled aside and confronted by Mary's pressuring mother: "Did
you and Mary have sexual intercourse?...You're in very bad trouble
if you won't cooperate!"; after strangely licking, nuzzling
or kissing Henry's neck and being pulled off by Mary, the mother
announced that Mary had birthed a premature baby: "There's
a baby. It's at the hospital...and you're the father!"; Henry
disagreed: "But that's impossible. It's only been...";
Mary blurted out that the 'baby' might actually not be a baby: "Mother,
they're still not sure it is a baby"; the mother continued
by insisting that they should instantly be married: "It's
premature, but there's a baby. After the two of you are married,
which should be very soon, you can pick the baby up"
- Mary noticed that the stressed Henry had a nosebleed, and then anxiously
asked: "You don't mind, do you, Henry? I-I mean about getting married" -
he responded: "Oh, no"
- the couple's baby at the hospital was a stark-sight
- a deformed, monstrous, bleating, sickly and whining lamb-like mutant;
wrapped in bandages, the armless and legless creature was brought
to Henry's one-room industrial-type tenement apartment from the hospital;
the innocent and vulnerable deformed child immediately began wheezing,
cried non-stop, and refused to eat by spitting at Mary
- meanwhile at his mail-box, Henry removed a box (with
a tiny worm inside), and later he saw his radiator light up
(with a small stage); in the middle of the night, he placed the live
worm inside a cabinet; in disgust and anger over the disagreeable
crying baby, the stressed-out Mary
moved out for the night and deserted Henry; as
Henry took the baby's temperature, he noticed the loathsome baby was
covered with sores and pox marks
- during the night (a 'wet-dream'), Henry watched the
inside of his radiator, where he saw a puffy-faced, fantasy 'dream-girl'
dancing - she was known as the Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near)
with deformed cheeks; she was stomping on and crushing several mutated
worm creatures (tadpole-like spermatozoa) on the floor
- soon after, Mary
left Henry permanently to take care of the mutant all by himself; Henry
also dreamt that he was having an affair with the provocative "Beautiful
Girl Across the Hall" (possibly
a prostitute); she claimed she had locked herself out, and entered
Henry's place to spend the night in his bed and seduce him; they
melted into bed together in a pool of milk (semen?), but she became
frightened when she saw the planet (from the opening)
- as Henry listened to his phonograph playing the "Lady
in the Radiator Song" (Fats Waller on a pipe organ), Henry
had another vision of the Lady in the Radiator, dancing on a stage
and singing: "In heaven, everything is fine" to reassure
Henry; he was enraptured by her, wrapped in white light, but then
they both became invisible to each other; the Lady disappeared when
a large rock rolled onto the stage
Dream Sequence - Judgment Upon Henry: A Severed
Head and Transformed Neck Stump
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Phallic-Shaped Appendage on Henry's Neck Stump
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Henry's Severed Head Fell to the Floor
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Henry's Head Replaced by the Growth of the Mutant
Baby's Head on His Neck
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- in a perplexing dream scene, judgment was placed on
Henry for being an irresponsible father who wished to murder his
abomination of a son; Henry's head was severed at the neck
by a phallic-shaped appendage that suddenly burst from his neck and
knocked his head off; Henry's decapitated head fell from
the sky, fell to the floor and rolled around; blood poured profusely
from the large rock and pooled around Henry's head; the head fell
through the stage onto the street pavement below, where Henry's head was
found by a child in a puddle of blood (with its brain showing)
- Henry's head was taken to a pencil factory, where
one of the workers-operators, Pencil Machine Operator (Hal Landon
Jr.) drilled a pencil into Henry's brain, to use Henry's
brain matter as the raw materials for pencil erasers
(a symbol of Henry's sublimated wish to "erase" what
was happening to him?); on Henry's headless neck stump inside his empty
collar, a new deformed head (the cranium of the crying mutant baby)
grew in its place
- Henry woke up from his bad dream and went across
the hall, but realized that the 'beautiful girl' had another male
visitor

Henry's Decision to Cut Open the Bandages Wrapped Around the Mutant Baby
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The Innards of the Grotesque Baby Exposed
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Henry Stabbed the Baby's Heart With Scissors
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The Elongated Neck of Baby
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- in the film's final surrealistic sequence, Henry
decided to murder his hideous, deformed reptilian baby (infanticide);
he cut into the baby's bandaged middle with scissors, revealing
that the baby's innards (without skin) were only held together
by the tight wrappings; the agitated baby began to bleed, gurgle,
and screech; to put it out of its misery, Henry then stabbed the
creature in the heart with the scissors, producing an oozing, foaming
thick white liquid (the baby's innards?)
- power surges in the room caused
the lights to go off and on; the neck of the baby elongated and
then the head grew gigantic, became disembodied and teleported
to outer space (the planet in the film's opening); Henry was apparently
unable to cope with the fact of his own homicidal murder of his
own child and went insane
- suddenly, the baby's head was
replaced by the planet (Henry's brain from the opening);
the film's most iconic image was the result of an explosion that
caused Henry's fractured head to be surrounded by the pencil erasure
shavings of his own brain - (a possible suicide?); the Pencil Machine
Operator delivered the film's final line: "It's OK!"
- the side of the planet exploded, with the 'Man in the Planet' inside near the
window, still struggling with the sparking levers
- in an after-death sequence, a relieved Henry (with
his mind literally erased, and without a head) entered Dream-land
(in a stunningly bright white light) and embraced the pure and innocent
puffy-cheeked Lady in the Radiator - a fantasy female
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Henry's Apartment Neighbor: "Beautiful Girl Across
the Hall"
Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) with His Girlfriend Mary X
(Charlotte Stewart)
Mrs. X Asked Henry: "Did you and Mary have sexual
intercourse?"
Henry's and Mary X's Sick Mutant Baby
The Puffy-Faced Lady in the Radiator - a Chanteuse: "In heaven,
everything is fine"
Dream: Sex With the "Beautiful Girl Across the Hall"
Henry's Frizzy-Haired Head Surrounded by Eraser Shavings ('Eraserhead')
Henry in a Bright "Dreamland" Void (Heaven) with His Lady
in the Radiator
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