Spoilers for Eraserhead (1977)
Eraserhead’s legendary cult status belies how complex and personal the film is to its creator David Lynch. Lynch’s first feature film would find success as a midnight movie and has since been categorised (wrongly, in my opinion) as a cult body horror picture. I say wrongly because while there are certainly disturbing moments within the picture, Eraserhead is far less about distortions to our physical selves and more about our inability to control things around us.
Lynch regular Jack Nance plays Henry Spencer, a shy and ineffectual young man who lives in an industrial wasteland. His girlfriend, Mary (Charlotte Stewart), invites him to dinner with her parents, where he is told that Mary has not only gotten pregnant by him but has already given birth.
It’s Henry’s baby that is so often cited as the reason Eraserhead is a body horror film. Swaddled tightly in a blanket, we only ever see its head until the final moments of the film – a twisted image of the sperm-like creatures that have haunted Henry’s nightmares since the beginning of the film.
The baby is sickly and cries all the time, forcing Mary back to her parents and leaving Henry as the sole caregiver. When he finally unwraps the blanket, he discovers that the child has no skin and stabs the exposed organs to end its suffering, as well as his own.
The final moments are a summation of the main themes of Eraserhead – mainly Henry’s inaction and a fear of fatherhood. This is highlighted by Lynch returning to The Man in the Planet (Jack Fisk) when Henry kills the child. The Man in the Planet is one of the first images of the film, pulling levers that seemingly lead to the various events in the film.
When he pulls the lever, we see the first of those sperm-like creatures, suggesting that this is the moment that Mary becomes impregnated. Yet, when Henry finally acts at the end of the film, the mechanisms operated by The Man in the Planet short out, taking that control away from a higher power and putting it in Henry’s hands.
It's suggested throughout the film that his inactivity is caused by a general nervousness, especially around sex. Fatherhood (i.e., the consequences of sex) plays heavily on Henry’s mind and if we look through different plot points of the film, it’s not hard to draw links between the very normal fears that someone may have about fatherhood and the more extreme events within the film.
First, the sperm-like creatures. These appear at multiple points from the very start. There is the first one that causes all the trouble, then multiple appear while Henry and Mary are in bed together. Having already had one premature, deformed child, Henry’s first response is to destroy the creatures before they get to Mary. This is emphasised again by the Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near), who gives off a ‘girl next door’ vibe but then crushes the sperms under her feet. As well as being Henry’s idealised vision of a partner, he also represents a future where birth control, or perhaps even a vasectomy stops any chance of children.
But what of the child itself? It would be fair to say that Henry rapidly runs through the various fears that all potential parents face. There is the initial shock that Mary is pregnant. As it’s made clear that he and Mary do not have a particularly fulfilling relationship, it would be fair to say that this would be a fear of anyone who has perhaps had a one-night-stand – that they would discover they are about to become a parent with someone where there are no feelings involved. It’s followed by the reveal that the baby has been born premature. Given the various health issues that come from premature births, this would always play on the minds of potential parents.
Another common fear is that the child will be sickly or unwell. Will have no quality of life. This is taken to an extreme in Eraserhead, where the child not only appears inhuman (resembling the sperm-like creatures that caused this mess) but has little hope of survival due to its condition. There are also the general stresses of parenthood. Mary leaves because she cannot stand the constant crying, and so Henry is left a single parent, unable to continue his own life while lumbered with a child he did not want.
Then there’s the hellscape in which Lynch sets the story. Henry lives in squalor, surrounded by dirt and vegetation in his apartment, which is situated in a dilapidated industrial estate. Parents want the best life possible for their children, for them to have a better future than previous generations. Henry is not in a situation to provide that, even if the child were healthy.
When you look at Lynch’s background, none of this feels like too much of a stretch. He was just 22 when his first wife Peggy Reavey gave birth to Jennifer Lynch in 1967, and Reavey has gone on record saying that both were reluctant parents. Lynch would further say that their first house, located in Fairmont, Philadelphia, was in a dangerous neighbourhood. Therefore, it’s not hard to think of the various parental woes and disturbing landscapes in Eraserhead as nightmarish representations of his own experiences.
Describing Eraserhead as nightmarish may verge on the cliched, but it’s a very appropriate word. For starters, I think that the moment when Henry takes control back from The Man in the Planet shows that Eraserhead is a dream. A culmination of all of Henry’s neuroses that eventually kickstart him into action. The fears of fatherhood are prompted by the fact that he has not seen Mary in some time, likely since their first sexual encounter.
Assuming that the relationship is over, he allows himself to imagine that she has become pregnant and this spirals as the various negative possibilities are piled onto this simple premise. Henry essentially shocks himself into pursuing a more fulfilling life, forcing his way through all the potential pitfalls and deciding to take control back.
Writer/director: David Lynch
Starring: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jack Fisk, Laurel Near