Eraserhead (1977)
Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child. (NR, 89 min.)
Showtimes
Wednesday, October 18, 2023
7:00 PM
A dream of dark and troubling things . . .
David Lynch’s 1977 debut feature, Eraserhead, is both a lasting cult sensation and a work of extraordinary craft and beauty. With its mesmerizing black-and-white photography by Frederick Elmes and Herbert Cardwell, evocative sound design, and unforgettably enigmatic performance by Jack Nance, this visionary nocturnal odyssey continues to haunt American cinema like no other film.
[Janus]
Starring: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph
Director: David Lynch
Genre(s): Horror, Fantasy
"Lynch's remarkable first feature is a true original."
— Tom Huddleston, Time Out
"Eraserhead is a singular work of the imagination, a harrowing, heartbreaking plunge into the darkest recesses of the soul."
— Tom Huddleston, Time Out
"David Lynch's remarkable first film, made in 1976, still looks like a minor masterpiece, mixing Gothic horror, surrealism and darkly expressionist mise-en-scne."
— Derek Malcolm, London Evening Standard
"It's beautiful and strange, with its profoundly disturbing ambient sound design of industrial groaning, as if filmed inside some collapsing factory or gigantic dying organism."
— Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
"Gothically shot in black and white and numerous shots that have influenced the next generation of directors, this is a classic, no matter how comfortable it is to watch."
— Steve Beard, Empire
"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."
— Wendy Ide, Times (UK)
"Eraserhead is an extraordinarily raw film that’s not so much an announcement of its filmmaker’s obsessions, but a complete, intimate, and heartbreaking fulfillment of them."
— Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine
"What makes Eraserhead great-and still, perhaps the best of all Lynch's films? Intensity. Nightmare clarity. And perhaps also it's the single-mindedness of its vision; Lynch's complete control over this material, where, working on a shoestring, he served as director, producer, writer, editor and sound designer."
— Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
"Here was a film that took elements that one might have encountered in other movies in the past—black humor, gore, surrealism, erotic imagery, gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and oddball performances—and presented them in such a unique and deeply personal manner that the end result was something that literally looked, sounded and felt like nothing that had ever come before it."
— Peter Sobczynski, RogerEbert.com
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