Eraserhead (1977)

Directed by David Lynch [Other horror films: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces (2014)]

I think I’m somewhat forthcoming about my dislike of more experimental films, and many of them I see (with a few exceptions, such as Hausu) I end up disliking. I’ve seen Eraserhead once before (hated it), and seeing it with fresh eyes, I still hated it.

This isn’t something I want to spend much time on, mainly for the same reason I didn’t want to spend much time on My Boyfriend’s Back – this film isn’t aimed at me, and I knew that going in, so I don’t feel particularly great about giving it a low score (and believe me, Eraserhead is getting a low score). I know it’s not my type of thing, but it’s also a movie that I had seen before, and as such, had to rewatch, so here we are.

I’ll give this film props for a dark atmosphere, banging background score, unsettling imagery, and befuddling ideas. I found much of it repulsive and didn’t enjoy almost a second of it, but it was certainly trying something different, which is something I guess you can trust Lynch to do.

Of course, I can imagine that there are a hell of a lot of interpretations for this movie out there, and I’d guess that most of them are equally valid. I have no idea what this movie was trying to say, if anything, but as to not be left out in the cold, I’d just argue that it tries to expose what working-class isolation in a post-industrial society, following the results of an Atomic bomb dropped by a Western African nation in the grips of an unending civil war, can do to a man’s fragile psyche. Sounds close enough.

Jack Nance had an interesting look to him. Charlotte Stewart (who later popped up in Tremors, of all places) was certainly something. Allen Joseph could smile creepily with the best of them. And that’s pretty much it for the cast.

The story was disjointed and moderately confusing, including dream sequences about pencils and some hideous mutant child and a woman who lives in a radiator, which is also Heaven, maybe, or something like that.

Yeah. Eraserhead has a 7.4/10 on IMDb as of this writing, and I just don’t understand it. From my perspective, while elements of this surrealistic film are interesting, it doesn’t make it good, and I had a thoroughly unenjoyable time with this, and if I’m lucky, I’ll never have to sit through this trash again. It’s not my type of movie, which is good riddance, as far as I’m concerned.

1/10