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Eraserhead (1977)

tomatometer

90

Average Rating: 8/10
Reviews Counted: 42
Fresh: 38 | Rotten: 4

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.

80

Average Rating: 6.5/10
Critic Reviews: 5
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 1

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.

audience

83

liked it
Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 50,708

My Rating

Movie Info

Filmed intermittently over the course of a five-year period, David Lynch's radical feature debut stars Jack Nance as Henry Spencer, a man living in an unnamed industrial wasteland. Upon learning that a past romance has resulted in an impending pregnancy, Henry agrees to wed mother-to-be Mary (Charlotte Stewart) and moves her into his tiny, squalid flat. Their baby is born hideously mutated, a strange, reptilian creature whose piercing cries never cease. Mary soon flees in horror and disgust,

R, 1 hr. 40 min.

Drama, Horror, Special Interest

David Lynch

Jun 7, 2005

Libra Films

Cast

All Critics (42) | Top Critics (5) | Fresh (42) | Rotten (4) | DVD (15)

The mind boggles to learn that Lynch labored on this pic for five years.

September 25, 2007 Full Review Source: Variety | Comments (6)
Variety
Top Critic IconTop Critic

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.

September 25, 2007 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comment
Chicago Reader
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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.

January 17, 2007 Full Review Source: New York Post | Comment
New York Post
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What a masterpiece of texture, a feat of artisanal attention, an ingenious assemblage of damp, dust, rock, wood, hair, flesh, metal, ooze.

January 17, 2007 Full Review Source: Village Voice | Comment
Village Voice
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It represented a monumental shift in how movies are seen and digested -- one that raised the level of aptitude and film literacy throughout the world.

June 14, 2003 Comment
Hollywood Reporter
Top Critic IconTop Critic

As pure cinema, Eraserhead is in a universe all its own, writing and obeying its own oblique rules.

July 14, 2011 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | Comment
eFilmCritic.com

Time drips like old paint in Lynch's surreal experiment, that revels in all things upsetting, disorienting, dark, and mysterious.

April 12, 2009 Full Review Source: ColeSmithey.com | Comment
ColeSmithey.com

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.

September 12, 2008 Full Review Source: This is London | Comment
This is London

David Lynch has "cleaned up" his freaky feature debut, but don't worry - it's still an amazing industrial nightmare.

September 12, 2008 Full Review Source: Daily Telegraph | Comment
Daily Telegraph

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.

September 12, 2008 Full Review Source: Times [UK] | Comment
Times [UK]

...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.

September 3, 2008 Full Review Source: Film4 | Comment

Disturbing, repulsive, hilarious, frightening, sensitive and challenging.

September 25, 2007 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide | Comment
TV Guide's Movie Guide

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.

July 3, 2007 Full Review Source: Projection Booth | Comment
Projection Booth

Whether there is more here than meets the horrified eye, is debatable, but 'Eraserhead' leaves no viewer cold.

January 8, 2007 Full Review Source: ReelTalk Movie Reviews | Comment
ReelTalk Movie Reviews

Nothing more than a pretentious, incoherent and boring exercise in self-indulgent weirdness.

September 2, 2006 Comments (14)
FulvueDrive-in.com

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.

June 28, 2006 Full Review Source: Film Freak Central | Comment
Film Freak Central

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.

April 27, 2006 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | Comment

David Lynch's first feature and, arguably, his best.

February 9, 2006 Full Review Source: Film Threat | Comment
Film Threat
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Eraserhead

A bizarre surrealist film by one of my favorite directors, David Lynch, is what Eraserhead is. My take on this film the first time I saw it was that it was strange and cool. My second take said the same thing, just with the scary factor removed... but on my third take, I decided to make a change. I imagined my self in

June 25, 2011
Tyler Kirk

Super Reviewer

Its not scary but different. I didn't love it or hate it, I just thought it was something that separates itself from the crowd. In the end, I have no idea what its about but I want to see more Lynch!

October 25, 2011
paul o.
paul oh

Super Reviewer

    1. Lady In Radiator: In Heaven, everything is fine. In Heaven, everything is fine. You've got your good things. And I've got mine.
    – Submitted by Rocky F (48 days ago)
    1. Mrs. X: So Henry, what do you do?
    2. Henry Spencer: Oh, I'm on vacation.
    – Submitted by Paul S (8 months ago)
    1. Mary X: You wouldn't mind marrying me, would you Henry?
    2. Henry Spencer: Well... No.
    – Submitted by Chris P (9 months ago)
    1. Lady In Radiator: n Heaven, everything is fine. In Heaven, everything is fine. You've got your good things. And I've got mine.
    – Submitted by Chris P (9 months ago)

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