Eraserhead DVD

Advantages: Pure film; work of art; dark, haunting, disturbing ... truly stirring; fantastically made
Disadvantages: Misunderstood; does not appeal to a wide audience and does not try to

...for David Lynch, who with Eraserhead has created a film that is as beautiful as it is strange, a film that speaks through warped imagery rather than dialogue and really excels in this more than any other film. Henry (Jack Nance) lives in a post-apocolyptic neighbourhood of run down buildings and mounds of ash and coal. The smog of industry fills the landscape. Henry's world is one that is a limbo between hell and paradise. From the opening frame, ...
...This does not mean that Eraserhead is entertaining or enjoyable viewing; Lynch aims for the opposite. The film strives to appall with the hellishness of its imagery and by no means tries to evoke a positive feeling in the viewer. Eraserhead confuses whilst making the viewer relate to it, and as it gradually lags on, remains consistent in its weirdness until the credits roll. Everything about Eraserhead is directorally and technically perfect. Lynch ... Read review

Advantages: One of the most origianal films of all time
Disadvantages: Almost impossible to watch

Eraserhead represents one of the most confusing and unpalatable pieces of cinematic art. But yet in it’s confusion springs great ideas and a surprising anti-entertainment. Without seeing the film it is hard to understand just how confusing and alienating the image is. I first saw it as a young media student and I hated it, I couldn’t stand it, but then inexplicably I brought the DVD, and forcibly watched it, and herein I found a kindling love for ...
...film in the traditional sense, Eraserhead is the completion of an abstract piece of art. It is a deliberate attack on audiences, with the continual background hum, which is unlike any other atmospheric device ever used in film. As Polanski and Hitchcock narrowed the audiences view by confining scenes to a very compact stage (leading to claustrophobia and a heightened sense of discomfort, Rosemary’s Baby is a good example of this), so Eraserhead reduces ... Read review

Advantages: Innovative
Disadvantages: Could be quite disturbing for some

Eraserhead is one of the weirdest films that I've seen, and believe me I've seen some weird ones! It stars John Nance (as the main character), Charlotte Stewart, Laurel Near, Jeanne Bates and Allen Joseph, and was released in 1977. The main character of the film is Henry. Henry is informed by a female neighbour that whilst he was out, he had a phone call inviting him to his girlfriend Mary's house for tea (who he hasn't seen for a while). He goes ...
...is asked by Mary's father to carve the meat. Slightly bemused by the request to carve the meat of this extraordinarily small bird, he prepares to begin slicing, but before he can do so the Chicken starts moving and pumping blood from it's every orifice! Later, Mary's mother confronts Henry about having had sex with Mary, and is then informed that Mary has given birth to his child. However, the child is no ordinary child, it is, I suppose, a mutant ... Read review

Advantages: in op
Disadvantages: in op

...Well here goes! Eraserhead began when David Lynch applied for admittance to the Centre for Advanced Film Studies. Lynch had to submit previous work and a script. The previous work was The Grandmother, and the script was a piece called Gardenback. Lynch spent much of his first year at the centre working on the script. Eraserhead grew out of Gardenback. The characters, Henry and Mary, were still there, but the limit of having only one-theme (adultery) ...
...with a wild haired, staring-eyed, autistic quality by John Nance. He is inadequate, polite, withdrawn, and almost wholly incapable of ordinary social contacts. Henry lives in a squalid bed-sitting room, and has a marginal relationship with a skinny, hysterical girl (Mary X) whose family; human rejects living in an urban wasteland, alternate between total passivity and a violent mania that borders on epilepsy. He is told he has fathered a child on ... Read review

Advantages: .
Disadvantages: .

This is a seriously strange and disturbing movie from the director of such other oddities as Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet. Apparently this movie took the aforementioned nutjob, Mr David Lynch, over 5 years to make, financed solely by his day job of building sheds and delivering newspapers (although rumour has it that Sissy Spacek put up the money to enable him to finish the film) and as such was filmed entirely at night, with props scavenged from dustbins ...
...black and white it tells the bizarre tale of a small town industrial worker played by Jack Nance who fathers a small bandaged monster and lives alongside it with his girlfriend in a tiny squalid room alongside mounds of furniture-dwelling earth, a girl in the radiator and all sorts of other weirdness. When Nance’s girlfriend runs away, no longer able to cope with the day to day horror of looking after their sickly ‘child’, Nance ... Read review