The road to Halloween is paved with good films. Wherein we countdown to the spirited season with a hundred doses of horror. 22 days to go.
David Lynch’s first film, Eraserhead, is still amongst his best. Its empty industrial world has an immediacy driven by the powerful, magnetic sound design. It’s primacy is stated early on when Henry steps into a puddle, but we cannot hear it under the all consuming hum. By the end of the film, you’ve forgotten what silence sounds like, forgotten how the real world feels.
Despite its lack of plot, the script was only 22 pages, Eraserhead is more grounded in genre than any of Lynch’s other work. From its impressive practical effects, the horrifyingly fleshy baby, to it’s surprising straight-forwardness. People are more confused by the films heavy and alien tone than its meaning. The imagery has a literalness to it, though in a very Lynchian way.
It also lacks Lynch’s mischievous and obfuscating sense of humour. Even if it became tied to the film in a famous 2002 interview, where Lynch states, ‘Believe it or not, Eraserhead is my most spiritual film.’ And when asked to elaborate, he simply says, ‘No.’ Though it doesn’t completely lack self aware comedy, Mary starts to shake the bed Henry is sitting on, he’s confused and scared, she’s in some hypnotic Lynchian state. Then she pulls out her suitcase, revealing in its ironic mundanity.
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The friction between the surreal and mundane continues when Henry comes to dinner with Mary and her family. It soon erupts into chaos, but her Father keeps wearing this friendly benign smile. The projection of normalcy, playing the role of the Father. Trying to ignore the broken complexity of family.
Then, her Mother tells Henry that Mary has given birth to their ‘child’. She acts both disgusted, asking over and over if they had ‘sexual intercourse’, those words almost painful to say, and aroused, as she tries to kiss Henry. The disgust born of a jealously underneath the social norms, as she tries to live vicariously, to remain young, away from the evident death of her own Mother, through her daughter.
Mary’s Grandmother sits in the kitchen completely blank, only able to inhale and exhale a cigarette put in her mouth. But Mary’s Mother insists on her continued activity, on her being alive, as she grabs her arms, as if she is, as if she could, still mix the salad.
I remember after my Grandfather was recovering from his third heart attack, I talked about what we would do after he died. My sister interrupted, saying ‘I don’t want to think about it.’ I went silent, blank.
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Nightmarish premonitions of their child echo when Henry arrives at the family house. A dog wails as her puppy’s drink her milk, as if consuming her life force, some deeper part of her. Later, in a dream, Henry’s head is knocked off by something phallic. The baby’s head grows into that absence. His life, his everything is consumed by this strange, almost alien creature.
Alien, because it cannot be understood, all communication concentrated into endless screaming. But he is still responsible for it, especially after Mary leaves. You are responsible your child’s life, even at the cost of your own, certainly at the cost of your sleep, happiness, and sanity.
This visceral, relatable undercurrent is drawn, in part, from its autobiographical elements. Not only does Henry look, dress, and talk like David Lynch, but Lynch’s first wife also had an unexpected pregnancy, and that child, Jennifer, was also born deformed.
Though you can take the autobiography too far. As with most horror films, there is an underlying conservatism. Henry and Mary’s premature child, is born from their premature relationship. They are not married, as Mary’s Mother heavily emphasises. But to extent this to Lynch himself, to see those as his beliefs, is to to take too literally the films dream.
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Claims of Lynch’s misogyny, whilst understandable, have also been taken too far. Angela Carter said Lynch’s female characters have no inner life. To some extent, that is true here. But the film is perfectly aware. As much as it portrays a Male worldview, it is also critical of it.
From Henry cutting off Mary’s head in a photograph, to the image of nuclear explosion by his bed, the destructiveness of sexual impulse. And during the dinner scene, when blood pours from between the chicken’s legs, it horrifies Mary and her Mother. A hint at their side of the story, at the Female body horror.
Henry fears Women. Her fears their power over him, their sexuality. The ‘Beautiful Girl Across the Hall’ seduces him, finds her way into his room, into his bed, without the terror ever leaving his eyes. Lust and disgust go hand in hand. Earlier, Mary pushed Henry away from her, the product of their sexuality, their child, reveals the baseness, the grotesque animal underneath the civilised skin. Henry’s room is filled with un-potted plants, the natural pouring into the domestic.
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But Women are not just symbols of fear, they are also spaces for projection. When Henry later finds the Beautiful Girl with another man, you wonder if their encounter was just some fantasy. As they ‘made love’, they sank into a white pool in his bed, escaping from the outside world into the unspoken places of the orgasm.
In that place, we see the ‘Lady in the Radiator’ as she delicately sings, ‘In heaven, everything is fine.’ Earlier she stomped out giant sperm-like creatures. Her prosthetic cheeks make her face round, like a cartoon character, as her overly girlish movements also suggest. And when Henry finally kills the baby, or maybe himself, he falls into her arms, the world fading to white. An escape as the sound finally cuts.
But amongst all of this, Eraserhead is still alive with mystery. From the still confounding factory scene, to this ‘Lady’ herself. It is strange that Henry’s escape from this oppressively industrial world comes from someone ‘in the radiator, inside another set of industrial pipes. Perhaps the only escape from despair is within it, finding comfort in that pain. Or perhaps, there’s nothing outside of it, this is a dream you can never wake up from. Your only escape is to erase yourself, leaving nothing, but a pile of dust.
