Eraserhead

Three decades later, David 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 the box-like apartment he shares with his radiator. Henry, however, does have a girlfriend, and she is in a family way through means that neither can fathom; the scene in which he must propose marriage is possibly the most pregnant moment in film history. Their life together is filled with substance-every rubbery, liquidy, textured, 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 in the film is somehow all too familiar. It is, on the other hand, a treat for anyone who has had inexplicably equivocal feelings about Los Angeles, where it was filmed at night.

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