Time drips like old paint in Lynch's surreal experiment, that revels in all things upsetting, disorienting, dark, and mysterious.
Eraserhead (1976)
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work ![]()
Reviews Counted:40
Fresh:36
Rotten:4
Average Rating:7.9/10
Consensus: David Lynch's surreal Eraserhead uses detailed visuals and a creepy score to create a bizarre and disturbing look into a man's fear of parenthood.
Runtime: 90 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
US Box Office: $0
Synopsis: Director David Lynch's feature-film debut is a masterpiece of the macabre and grotesque. Reportedly a reaction to the news that he was about to become a father, Lynch's ERASERHEAD follows a... Director David Lynch's feature-film debut is a masterpiece of the macabre and grotesque. Reportedly a reaction to the news that he was about to become a father, Lynch's ERASERHEAD follows a sensitive young man as he struggles to cope with impending parenthood. Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) lives in a hopeless industrial landscape, lusting after the beautiful woman who lives in the apartment across the hall. After his girlfriend, Mary (Charlotte Stewart), informs him of her pregnancy, he is forced to eat dinner with her extremely odd family. The baby is eventually born, only it isn't a human baby at all; it's a deformed creature that resembles a lizard. The baby won't stop crying, a horrifyingly piercing wail that drives Mary insane. Left alone with the baby, Henry is serenaded by a woman who lives inside his radiator, and soon he decides to murder his baby in order to stop the nightmare once and for all. Five years in the making, ERASERHEAD contains all of the trademark attributes of a Lynch film--haunting visuals, an ethereal score, unsettling sound design, and, most notably, a black sense of humor--creating a world onscreen that is exhilarating, terrifying, and unique. [More]
Starring: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates, Joseph Allen
Starring: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates, Joseph Allen, Judith Roberts, Allen Joseph, Jennifer Lynch
Director: David Lynch
Director: David Lynch
Screenwriter: David Lynch
Producer: David Lynch
Composer: David Lynch, Fats Waller, Peter Ivers
Reviews for Eraserhead
David Lynch’s remarkable first film, made in 1976, still looks like a minor masterpiece, mixing Gothic horror, surrealism and darkly expressionist mise-en-scène.
David Lynch has "cleaned up" his freaky feature debut, but don't worry - it's still an amazing industrial nightmare.
David Lynch’s 1977 feature debut Eraserhead is one of those rare films that really deserves its cult status – a nightmarish, heavily symbolic story set in a postapocalyptic future.
...unwrap this baby and you will discover a whole universe of untold depths and hidden textures in which to become trapped, lost or sublimely elevated. Lynch's debut feature is freakish perfection.
Disturbing, repulsive, hilarious, frightening, sensitive and challenging.
The mind boggles to learn that Lynch labored on this pic for five years.
Some of it is disturbing, some of it is embarrassingly flat, but all of it shows a degree of technical accomplishment far beyond anything else on the midnight-show circuit.
Lynch's films exist independent of space and time, and only after twisting and turning through their labyrinthine visual corridors can we begin to piece together how they came to be in the first place.
Lynch, as he does with all his films, refuses to explain anything, although he does say that he has yet to read an interpretation that matches his.
What a masterpiece of texture, a feat of artisanal attention, an ingenious assemblage of damp, dust, rock, wood, hair, flesh, metal, ooze.
Whether there is more here than meets the horrified eye, is debatable, but 'Eraserhead' leaves no viewer cold.
Nothing more than a pretentious, incoherent and boring exercise in self-indulgent weirdness.
The discomfort we feel with the film indicates that the truths contained in Eraserhead, whatever they may be, are as surely true as they are unexamined.
A stream of subconsciousness work of art, Eraserhead is Lynch's most surreal film. Packed with grotesque physical deformity and quest for spiritual purity, the film flaunts eerie sound and brilliant imagery.
Eraserhead is a work of rare genius and real bravery; it’s a comic nightmare we all have at once and whose meanings lay just out of reach.
If you can't rejoice in David Lynch, what is there to be happy about?
Latest News for Eraserhead
September 12, 2008:
UK Critics Consensus: Pineapple Express is smoking hot; If in Eden Lake, DON’T Hug a Hoodie
This week we have the stoner action-comedy The Pineapple Express, with Seth Rogen, James Franco and new boy on the comedy block Danny McBride, plus My Little Eye writer James... More...
More Movies
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 70% 70% | Where the Wild Things Are | 03/12 |
| 83% 83% | Paranormal Activity | 03/12 |
| 89% 89% | Zombieland | 03/12 |
| 77% 77% | The Informant! | 03/12 |
| | The Strength of Water | 03/12 |
What’s Hot On RT
Other News
Sponsored Links
Around The Network
- Eraserhead at Rotten Tomatoes
Fresh Links
Featured

Tim Burton's costume designer talks to Movieline about her long collaboration with the filmmaker and Johnny Depp.

The director talks about puppetry perfection and his film, Fantastic Mr. Fox

We've got 20 copies of the hit TV series' Pilot Episode to giveaway.

Double passes up for grabs to the new comedy starring Paul Giamatti.

Get all the latest movie updates, reviews, interviews and features here.
Competitions

Enough Prequel, Original Trilogy and Family Guy DVDs to fill a space cruiser

Everything from Dr. No to Quantum of Solace could be yours.

We're giving away the 10th Anniversary Blu-ray, plus Braveheart and the Rocky collection



Top Critic

