Eraserhead (1977) * * * 1/2 A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1999 by Serdar Yegulalp
"A Dream of dark and troubling things." -- David Lynch
There are those who say "Eraserhead" makes little sense, and then there are those who say that "Eraserhead" isn't supposed to make sense. I'm with the second camp: if "Eraserhead" made any sense at all, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting. "Eraserhead" is allegedly a horror movie, but I put it instead on that small shelf of films that abandon all pretense at being entertainment and just give you an experience: "Begotten", "The Reflecting Skin" and Alejandro Jodorowsky's head-trips ("El Topo", "The Magic Mountain") are close cousins in spirit to this film.
There is a story, sort of. Henry Spencer (Lynch regular John Nance) is a nerdish, creepy-looking man living in a squalid little apartment. He's accidentally impregnated his girlfriend, and the baby turns out to be a vile little creature that looks something like E.T. after thalidomide. The news about the pregnancy, by the way, comes out during a dinner where the main course consists of chickens the size of one's fist that still move and spurt blood when sliced into. There's also a strangely deformed woman who seems to live in Henry's radiator... and by this point you're either shaking your head in dismay or wondering where to find the movie. I guess that means I've done my job.
"Eraserhead" needs to be seen on the big screen to work properly. On TV, the black-on-black photography -- this is the single darkest movie ever made, and I don't just mean in terms of subject matter! -- reproduces very poorly. Also, on TV, the black and white images don't saturate the senses the way they do in a theater. There's also the most creative use of sound in almost any movie I've ever seen: not a single scene in the film is silent. There's always something rumbling, hissing, clattering, bubbling, booming away in either the background or the next room over, and it has the same effect on the audience's nerves as a dentist's drill.
Before David Lynch started screwing with America's mind via "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks", he spent five years, on and off, making "Eraserhead". It shows. There is a level of obsessive care in every frame of this film that many movies costing hundreds of times more don't show at all.
People may wonder: If this thing's so weird and so repulsive, why did I give it three and a half stars? Because it dares to be different and succeeds. I don't automatically reward every movie that's "experimental" with a positive review, but they sure deserve the benefit of the doubt.
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