Eraserhead is a 1977 American experimental body horror film written, directed, produced, and edited by David Lynch. Starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates, Judith Anna Roberts, Laurel Near, and Jack Fisk, it tells the story of a man who is left to care for his grossly deformed child in a desolate industrial landscape. The film’s score and sound design were also created by Lynch, with pieces by a variety of other musicians also featured. In 2004, the film was preserved in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”
About Eraserhead in brief
Eraserhead is a 1977 American experimental body horror film written, directed, produced, and edited by David Lynch. Starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates, Judith Anna Roberts, Laurel Near, and Jack Fisk, it tells the story of a man who is left to care for his grossly deformed child in a desolate industrial landscape. The film’s score and sound design were also created by Lynch, with pieces by a variety of other musicians also featured. In 2004, the film was preserved in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress as \”culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\”. The Man in the Planet pulls levers in his home in space, while the head of Henry Spencer floats in the sky. A giant spermatozoon-like creature emerges from Spencer’s mouth, floating into the void. When the lights burn out completely, the child’s head is replaced by the billowing cloud of erasers. The child’s internal organs are cut apart after the bandages are held together, and its internal organs spill out. The power in the room overloads as the lights flicker on and off, and the child grows to huge proportions and explodes into a cloud of shavings and flames. The soundtrack features organ music by Fats Waller and includes the song \”In Heaven\”, written and performed for the film by Peter Ivers, with lyrics by Lynch. Eraserhead was produced with the assistance of the American Film Institute during Lynch’s time studying there. It was shot on several locations owned by the AFI in California, including Greystone Mansion and a set of disused stables in which Lynch lived.
The surrealist imagery and sexual undercurrents have been seen as key thematic elements and the intricate sound design as its technical highlight. Initially opening to small audiences and little interest, Eraser head gained popularity over several long runs as a midnight movie. It is Lynch’s first feature-length effort following several short films. The film nonetheless spent several years in principal photography because of funding difficulties; donations from Fisk and his wife Sissy Spacek kept production afloat. A boy finds the child, bringing it to a pencil factory to be turned into erasers, and a boy finds it in the street below. Spencer seeks out the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall, but finds her with another man and for the first time takes a pair of scissors to the child. Spencer begins experiencing visions, again seeing the Man inThe Planet, as well as the Lady in the Radiator, who sings to him as she stomps upon spermato Zoon creatures. Spencer leaves his groceries in his apartment, which is filled with piles of dirt and dead vegetation. That night, Spencer visits X’s home, conversing awkwardly with her mother. At the dinner table, he is asked to carve a chicken that X’s talkative father, Bill, calls \”man-made\”; the bird writhes on the plate and gushes blood. Spencer is cornered by X’s mother, who asks him if he and Mary X had sexual intercourse, and then tries to kiss him.
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This page is based on the article Eraserhead published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 11, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
