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Guys... gals... I don't even know. There's so many things I could say, but really... what's the point? There is none... just like this movie. How about a summary of the film? Let's see. Henry (Jack Nance) lives in a run-down apartment in some industrial town and often has dreams and/or hallucinations about alien worm thingies, a woman with cancerous bulby cheeks who sings and "dances," and some kind of rock planet. Later, after trying to cut up a cooked baby chicken that starts oozing while humping the air and his girlfriend's mom has some kind of seizure orgasm, he finds out his girlfriend had a mutant baby. That baby is like the Human Torso from Freaks had sex with Jar Jar Binks and spliced their DNA with a velociraptor (and/or a shell-less turtle). It gets sicks at one point. Henry has sex with a neighbor lady in a hot tub full of milk. Tons of dreams and/or hallucinations mixed in with this. Or it's just quite possible random shit just keeps appearing. I don't know. Henry's head falls off and is replaced by the head of his mutant baby, only for his decapititated head to fall through a puddle of what I assume is blood and land on the street in a completely different location. It loses its hair and is picked up by a boy. He takes it to a store and a guy drills into it, takes something out, and plugs it into a machine that produces erasers on the backs of pencils. Oh, it was all a dream! Well, at least everything from the head falling off bit onward. His mutant baby starts laughing at him. A creepy man fondles his neighbor lady. She sees him with a mutant baby head. He de-cocoons his baby to reveal grotesque innards. Then he kills it with the scissors. But then it starts oozing copious amounts of oatmeal or something and elongates its neck. The lights flicker a lot. The baby head gets enormous. The lights finally go out, the rock planet explodes like an egg, and inside is a man with boils sharpening a blade. Cancer-cheeks chick hugs Henry as they stand in endless white. The End.Here are some interesting notes: This was David Lynch's first movie. The script was only about 20 pages long. Lynch refuses to give his own interpretation of the movie because he wants viewers to do it themselves (which I think means even he doesn't know). And it's one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite movies of all time.
Speaking of, I owe that man an apology. Five minutes into this, and I was begging for 2001: A Space Odyssey back. Don't get me wrong, there was something almost hypnotic about this movie. It was one of those train wrecks that you want to look away but just can't. By the halfway point, I was just watching out of morbid curiosity. I honestly had no idea what to expect next and, frankly, had long since given up caring (that was gone in the first few minutes). And unlike 2001, I honestly wasn't bored... just completely in a state of constant 'head-tilt-mouth-agape'.
This is pretty close to an unreviewable movie... mainly because I'm not sure I can accept it as a movie. I don't even know if I can call this movie too pretentious. It's just... weird. And I mean Salad Fingers weird (look it up), but without the bizarre humor. Maybe even moreso. The point is... I have no point. The only way I think I'll see this again is if I make someone else watch it and just watch their reaction as it goes on. My summary does it no justice. I promise.
WTF
I don't even remember half the shit you talked about. This movie is a blur of bizarre shit with a meaning buried so deep (if anywhere) that I'm not sure anyone in their right mind is meant to get. Though I did perk up when the lady in the radiator did her song, if only because I was previously familiar with the Pixies cover of it. So that was nice. It also made sense of that blog title Radiator Heaven. :)
ReplyDeleteIn heaven, everything is fine.
I *love* Lynch, he's pretty much my favourie director and even I can't really be bothered to go back to re-examine Eraserehead. It's worth a watch, once, preferably 'substance-enabled' and that's it.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of, I saw that Midnight Movies feature documentary recently, which talks about Eraserhead (along with five other films) and it's long-term impact etc. I'm not sure I'm convinced by the central argument ('all movies are midnight movies now!') but it's a very entertaining watch, especially for cinephiles/geeks - check it out.
I knew you'd give it this WTF rating. I hated every minute I sat through this terrible "movie." It popped up on some Scariest Movies of All Time list, which is why I saw it, and the only thing that truly terrifies me is that someone gave Lynch money to make this. Just barely though. Production was stalled on it for like 5 years (after they'd already begun filming) due to lack of funds.
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