What the Hell Was That is a new series where I will start reviewing things that I deem as weird, off-kilter, unnerving, etc. This could mean movies, shows, paintings, albums, experiences, you name it. Any suggestions? Send them my way.
When reading culinary criticism or hearing random TikTokers discuss some new-fangled recipe, good food is oftentimes described as being “greater than the sum of its parts.” This means that the recipe transcends the limitations of the individual ingredients, that the greatness of the collective product far outpaces the merits of the individual ingredient.
A BLT, for example, is merely a product that is the sum of its parts: simple, satisfying, delicious. Whereas something like a Caesar salad, with an odd combination of emulsified egg yolks, Worcestershire sauce, whole anchovies, lemon juice, and parmesan cheese, somehow transcends the individual characteristics of each ingredient to make something that is both rich and light, complex and simple, and great.
On paper, David Lynch’s 1977 film Eraserhead seems like something that is merely the sum of its parts. It reads like a derivative B-movie horror flick, drawing inspiration from silent classics like George Méliès’ Le voyage dans la lune, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and more surreal films like Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and Luis Buñuel’s oeuvre.
The plot is quite simple: Henry, an emotionless everyman printer with an unchanging expression on his face and an insane haircut, (played by Jack Nance) gets his girlfriend, Mary X, (Charlotte Stewart) pregnant and she gives birth to a mutant that cries all day and night. The film largely takes place in Henry’s cramped apartment, is shot in black and white, and is dimly lit. The acting feels as stilted as Henry’s stiff gait; the sound production is discordant; and everything is a bit off-kilter.
All that is true and does not seem outside the Overton Window for the low-budget horror genre. But Eraserhead is so much more than just those attributes. Lynch’s influences are clear, but he masterfully melds the surrealism of Buñuel, the campy features of Ed Wood, and the cinematography of Bergman to create a movie-watching experience unmatched by any other movie released before or after.
Watching Eraserhead feels like following Alice through the looking glass, only to discover that the commies dropped the Big One on Wonderland, turning it into a post-apocalyptic hellscape. The sound production feels like a György Ligeti—a Hungarian avant-garde composer famous for his music featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey—production, had he been forever trapped in a horrendous acid trip. Visually, the black and white and near absence of lighting casts a murky, insidious shadow over the whole film, highlighting the distortion and claustrophobia.
Possibly the most unnerving aspect of the movie is the set and the costumes which create a supremely disorienting feeling. What the hell is up with Henry’s tight-fitting suit and afro-cum-bouffant? Why are the only decorations in the apartment a dead plant sitting on his nightstand without a flower pot and a small, almost unnoticeable photo of a mushroom cloud? Why does the cornish hen-sized chicken being eaten for dinner start to violently convulse and bleed when being cut? Why is the mutant infant wrapped in that weird swaddle and what kind of doctor let the parents take the severely deformed baby home? What is that deformed alien figure (Jack Fisk) doing when he pulls those levers? Why is there a woman with massive cheeks living in the radiator (Laurel Near)? Why is she smashing all those spermatozoa? Why does the baby look like a spermatozoon? What is this movie’s preoccupation with fucking sperm?
What does all of this mean? Is there a deeper meaning to all of this weirdness or is this just symbolism devoid of anything symbolic, merely a visual manifestation of macabre? One could intellectually take a fine-toothed comb through this work with the fastidiousness of a Straussian and still not be able to fully extrapolate any sort of coherent meaning behind Eraserhead.
And this is the beauty behind this movie: It is an incomprehensibly weird, excessively effective horror film that is both terrifying and anxiety-inducing. It relies on tried-and-true tropes and techniques but repackages them in a way that is still fresh almost 50 years later. In short, Eraserhead—like a Caesar salad—is greater than the sum of its parts.