Eraserhead (1977)

The original release date may be 1977 but it's well known now that David Lynch's first feature took many years to make. Provocative, disturbing and wholly unique, ERASERHEAD is finally, deservedly, getting a Blu-ray release from Criterion. 

Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) lives, works, and (we learn) loves in a grim industrial landscape, the events of which are controlled by the Man in the Planet (Jack Fisk). Invited to the family home of his girlfriend Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) Henry learns that she has given birth to a monstrous baby. He and Mary move in together but she soon leaves, unable to stand the unearthly screeches of the child. Henry dreams of a world behind his radiator, inhabited by a swollen-cheeked foetus-crushing fantasy woman who becomes the love of his life after his head is turned into pencil erasers in a dream sequence.

Like the work of David Cronenberg, all of David Lynch's films, but perhaps especially ERASERHEAD, defy description. There is no way anyone can give an impression of what this film is like without adding at the end 'Really, you just have to watch it.'

Helping to establish the cult of the midnight movie along with other pictures that could be experienced in no other way than watching, including John Waters' PINK FLAMINGOS and Jodorowsky's EL TOPO, ERASERHEAD is perhaps the most disturbing, most stimulating, most repulsive and most nightmarish of the lot. Those who did catch it at midnight showings probably didn't get a lot of sleep afterwards.

Criterion's Blu-ray transfer is of a new 4K restoration with uncompressed stereo soundtrack. Extras include new HD restorations of six Lynch short films with introductions by the director - Six Figures Getting Sick (1966), The Alphabet (1968), The Grandmother (1970), The Amputee Part I and Part II (1974) and Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (1996). There's also the 2001 Lynch-directed documentary Eraserhead Stories, plus new and archival interviews with cast and crew.

David Lynch's ERASERHEAD is out on Blu-ray from Criterion on Monday 19th October 2020