Eraserhead is a 1977 surreal, body horror film written and directed by David Lynch. It stars Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates, Judith Anna Roberts, Laurel Near and Jack Fisk.
In its 89 minutes Eraserhead tells the story of Henry Spencer (Jack Nance), a depressed, isolated man who after being invited to his girlfriend Mary's (Charlotte Stewart) home for dinner is informed by her mother (Jeanne Bates) that she has given birth to a baby and they have to get married.
Married and living together in Henrys small apartment, Mary is unable to cope with the horribly mutated baby's constant crying and she leaves Henry, leaving him to care for his grotesque, bangaged offspring. Henry begins to have increasingly bizarre and frightening dreams.…show more content… Lynch's use of surrealist and abstract imagery in the film is arresting and nightmarish at times, the dinner scene for example when Henry is asked to carve the chicken by Mary's father (Allen Joseph) and as soon as he begins, the chicken's legs begin to move while it oozes blood, its all very strange and unsettling, even comical.
Standing as one of lynch's finest works, it is also characteristically Lynch in that it does not have a concrete narrative, instead it relies heavily on visual metaphors and symbolism to explore its themes of sex, parenthood and loneliness.
Henry seems to have trouble in all these areas and desperately wants to escape his life and environment, he dreams of a disfigured lady (Laurel Near) in his radiator who sings and dances for him and seems to offer him an escape from the reality of caring for his deformed child.
Henrys baby, a disfigured worm like creature is a constant in Henry's life, trapping him in his apartment by its unrelenting needs and mocking him when he fails to fulfil his desire for his beautiful neighbour (Judith Anna