Horrorfest 2011: Eraserhead

Growing up as a movie nerd, of course I heard of ERASERHEAD and its dark brand of weirdness many times. The famous black and white shot of Jack Nance as Henry Spencer with his wild tower of hair has become iconic and writer/director David Lynch has become synonymous with cult films. Now, I've finally seen it first hand.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect, partially based on ERASERHEAD's widely known and notorious weirdness, but also based on my experiences with the David Lynch films I have seen. He has made films I honestly enjoyed like THE STRAIGHT STORY and ELEPHANT MAN, films I like in spite of the fact that they're a giant mess, like DUNE, and films I wanted to like but just didn't vibe with like LOST HIGHWAY.

Now that I've seen it, I'm still not sure what to think. ERASERHEAD is just as weird as they say. The movie doesn't go to very far lengths to explain itself, but goes a long way to set a creepy, foreboding tone using stark black and white photography and a lot of disturbing white noise on the soundtrack.

ERASERHEAD seems to take place in some kind of post apocalyptic world -- there doesn't seem to be many people around and everyone seems to live in abandoned buildings in urban industrial areas. The white noise droning in the background makes it clear industry still survives and that this urban area is not pleasant to live in. Wandering this wasteland is the afore mentioned Jack Nance as the wild haired Henry Spencer, an unassuming single man living in a tiny rathole of an apartment.

At the outset of the film, Nance is invited to his ex-girlfriend's (Charlotte Stewart) house to have dinner with her parents (Jeanne Bates and Allen Joseph). The gathering is suitably awkward and weird, and ends with Nance finding out that he has apparently impregnated his ex and now must marry her.

"They're still not sure it is a baby," Nance's future wife says, ominously.

The couple moves in together to raise the baby, and sure enough, we see why there was some confusion on the doctors' part. The baby doesn't look human -- it is nothing more than a monstrous, alien head poking out of a sack of bandages, constantly wailing, eventually breaking out into diseased boils. Nance's wife can't take it and bails early on. Nance can't take it either, but he won't leave the kid, so instead he descends into his fantasies, flights of madness, dreams and nightmares in an effort to escape.

That literal description of what little plot the film has doesn't really do it justice. Like most weird movies, this one must be seen to be believed. The plot tells us very little about the movie's intended "meaning" -- that's all conveyed in mood and tone, both of which the movie has plenty, laid on nice and thick. Most of the movie is a succession of striking visuals, including a grotesque woman singing on a stage while alien like creatures reminiscent of sperm drop from the ceiling on her and a sequence in which parts of Nance himself are recycled into pencil erasers, hence the name of the movie.

A movie like this, heavy on imagery and light on exposition, leads viewers to think there must be some deeper underlying meaning. These images must be symbols, right? I'm not 100% convinced there's much here beyond what's literally shown in the film, but it is definitely a uniquely stunning piece of work. My own guess is that the whole movie is just a nightmare manifestation of some common deep rooted fears among young, single males -- the fear of being alone, the fear of women, the fear of fatherhood, the fear of losing your freedom, the fear of death. Basically, the entirety of human experience.

One thing that saves this film from getting too full of itself is the central performance by Jack Nance. He plays Henry Spencer as bemused, confused, naive, shy, and often times nonplussed by the weird things going on around him. Most of his line readings have an open tone to them, giving us a character who is not cynical or self conscious, which stands as a stark contrast to the feelings a viewer might get about the film itself. This also helps provide a little bit of dark humor to keep the movie from dropping entirely into the realms of despair. Still, it gets pretty damn close.