Eraserhead

[Steve.]

Anyone seen this? I can't decide if it's a steaming heap of doggy-doo, or er...just plain weird and horrible. It has to be seen to be disbelieved, but whatever it is, it features the most jaw-dropping, freakiest "mutant baby" you are ever likely to see.

[js-7]

I would definitely put "Eraserhead" in the steaming heap of doggy-doo category.  So much was made of the supposed brilliance of the movie, that sentiment was certainly lost on me.  Wasn't it by David Lynch of "Twin Peaks" fame?

[Scott]

I think we can all agree that this film can be catagorized as "disturbing", Phew............. What a wacked out film.

[Steve.]

David Lynch was indeed the culprit. "Whacked out" is a good, overall description.

[Creeps]

I actually really enjoy this movie.  Just got finished watching it for the first time.  I went into it knowing it was supposed to be nightmarish and deranged...but...whew.  I'm all for hellish, nightmare images, and this film serves them up in spades.  And the baby...sweet Mother MacRae.

[Vermin Boy]

I'm with Creeps on this one... I thought it was a great, creepy movie with some nice, unsettling humor (Gotta love the Grandmother!). Here's an interesting tidbit; to this day, Lynch has never revealed how he made the baby. Kinda makes you wonder...

[Steve.]

Vermin Boy - The best explanation of the baby's origins that I have heard was in Lynch's words: "It was born somewhere nearby"?! Granny is certainly a strange-o, although everything in this movie is strange-o - like Dad's "Man-made" chickens!

[peter johnson]

What sticks with me about the film -- aside from God as a cobweb-covered cripple moving rusty old machinery to prod the world to action -- is the solid dream factor of it.  It seems to have been dreamt up, literally, & simply photographed.  The internal logic of it is that of a dream, the characters all behave as if in a dream.  I've never seen another film --- though Jean Cocteau's "
Blood of a Poet"(1934) comes darn close -- that gets this quality as consistently right as this one does.
This was originally made by Lynch as his Bachelor's Thesis student film -- it used to play on double-bills with a more mainstream art-house film called "Asparagus".
The distributors even tried to make it work as a "midnight movie" for art-house fans, but its downer quality did that idea in.