Plot info:

Henry Spencer is a normal guy with an over-active sex drive. Actually, it probably is only average, but it is more than it should be. One day he gets a message that Mary called. Mary? He hasn't talked to her for six months. He thought they broke up, after... sex. Unprotected sex, premarital sex, lust getting the best of them. What is she up to? She wants to meet him for dinner at her parents' house. He agrees.

He uncomfortably sits with Mrs. X and explains his life and what he does for a living. Satisfied, she invites him to the table for dinner. He barely carves the chicken before Mary relieves herself from the table letting out shouts of tears. Henry gets up and is immediately confronted by Mrs. X. She makes him feel awkward and asks him about his sex life. She questions him about his involvement with Mary. She explains that there was a baby conceived six months prior to their engagement. How? It was premature, but it was a baby just the same. It resides at the hospital, and Mrs. X says that he can claim it after he and Mary are properly married.

What a burden this is! The baby is a deformed freak, tightly bound in white caste. Henry's life becomes an inescapable hell. He is trapped with a wife he doesn't love and a baby not even a mother could love. With "The Man in the Planet" on one shoulder and "The Lady in the Radiator" on the other, he is torn between good and evil, right and wrong. How can he relieve himself of this encumbrance? How can he step into the blindingly pure white light?

About the movie:

David Lynch's first full-length movie  took  ages to shoot - 5 years. Slowly gaining a small group of devoted followers, Eraserhead entered "regular" cinemas after the release of Fire Walk With Me, including a "refreshed" soundtrack i.e. after being digitally remastered. 

 Many symbols appearing here will occur later on in many of Lynch's works: 

the idea of parallel worlds, 

highly contrasted  female  figures (black and blonde), 

the use of certain patterns (the carpet), 

the threat of anything related to birth or intercourse, losing your head (Henry and the torn photography of Mary X), 

photographs as  fetishes and false representations of real human beings (the 2 images of Renee  / Alice, Laura Palmer, Jeffrey's misleading pics of the 'well-dressed man' in Blue Velvet, the 'this would look nice on your wall'-picture of Mrs. Chalfont is a 'three-dimensional' picture the connection between food/drinking and sexuality (the 'ecstatic' chicken), 'Here's to your fuck' (Frank Booth), 'Cone - I like to lick' (Audrey Horne), the vampiresque / sexually aggressive Baron Harkonnen, "Agent Cooper loooves coffee"- "Audrey!", the 'freshly squeezed" grapefruits when Agent Cooper eyes Audrey, 'How would you like to take me to dinner?' (Lost Highway) most of Lynch's protagonists are like Henry 'on vacation': The Elephant Man starts with John Merrick losing his 'profession' as an exhibited freak, Jeffrey leaves college, Alvin Straight doesn't work anymore, Sailor Ripley is a man-slaughterer breaking parole the 'dreamy quality', his works rather rely on visual and aural aspects than dialogue and explanations, (so one might replace 'dreamy' by 'filmic' in comparison with most mainstream movies) the protagonists don't 'act' but rather react to absurd, dangerous situations into which they are thrown in the use of 'onscreen'-music (Lady in the Radiator, Julee Cruise, Fred Madison, Love Me Tender, In Dreams, ...)

Great Movies

Home