Henry (John Nance) resides alone in a bleak apartment surrounded by industrial gloom. When he discovers that an earlier fling with Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) left her pregnant, he marries the expectant mother and has her move in with him. Things take a decidedly strange turn when the couple’s baby turns out to be a bizarre lizard-like creature that won’t stop wailing. Other characters, including a disfigured lady who lives inside a radiator, inhabit the building and add to Henry’s troubles.
This surreal nightmare examines male paranoia. Our hero and title character, Henry, faces a number of horrifying obstacles in meeting someone of the opposite sex, meeting her parents, and procreating. Produced during a one-and-a-half-year period while director David Lynch was a student at the American Film Institute, the film launched him as a major new talent admired by cinephiles and filmmakers all over the world. It stands today as a milestone in personal, independent filmmaking.
“What makes Eraserhead great — and still, perhaps the best of all Lynch’s films? Intensity. Nightmare clarity. And perhaps also it’s the single-mindedness of its vision.” -Michael Wilmington, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
“It represented a monumental shift in how movies are seen and digested — one that raised the level of aptitude and film literacy throughout the world.” -Douglas Pratt, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
