Review of Eraserhead (1977) by Matthew B — 31 Aug 2010

Horrific in every possible manner. Viscerally, this film is unparalleled in its frank grotesquerie; the cooing and slurping of the "child," the suckling puppies in Mr. and Mrs. X's sitting room, the horrid splattering of Henry Spencer's head in the dream sequence, and the constant, unflinching, unceasing mechanical and hydraulic swells, drones, and humming (a motif repeated in Lynch's The Elephant Man, set among the "dark Satanic mills" of Victorian-Industrial Revolution London) all converge, variously and wholly, in a uniquely otherworldly experience.

The film lacks the self-indulgence which plagues David Lynch's more recent films (Lost Horizon, Mulholland Dr.); its aim is the jugular, and it succeeds with every aghast, stomach-turning, eye-shutting frame.

Jack Nance is to be commended for his bewildered, everyman performance. The appalled visage ingrained in his expression mirrors the viewer's discontent perfectly. While the rest of the cast is quite strong, Judith Roberts deserves particular attention as the "Beautiful Girl Across the Hall.

" Her catatonic delivery and vulturine gaze are frighteningly human maleficence set against the general backdrop of post-apocalyptic, mechanical, amphibious horror; her confrontation with Henry after being locked out of her apartment is almost as unnerving as the repugnant "child" lying on the table in the background.

A strange film, certainly not for the faint of heart.