Eraserhead

  • Introduction

    Director of programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

featuring

Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates, Allen Josephs,

Almost four decades later, Lynch’s debut feature, a self-described “dream of dark and troubling things,” remains a work of queasy genius. Eraserhead is the story of Henry, cursed with an innocence bordering on retardation, and a lonely life in a box-like apartment. Henry, however, does have a girlfriend, and she is in a family way. Their life together is filled with substance—every rubbery, nauseating substance one could imagine—and Baby makes just one more, a genuine horror that only a parent could love. Eraserhead is not for the squeamish, precisely because every image (and sound) evoked is somehow all too familiar.

Judy Bloch
FILM DETAILS 
Cinematographer
  • Frederick Elmes
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 35mm
  • 90 mins
Source
  • Janus Films/Criterion Collection
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