Eraserhead is a 1977 American
surrealistSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
film and the first feature film of
David LynchDavid Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
, who wrote, produced and directed. Lynch began working on the film at the
AFI ConservatoryThe AFI Conservatory is a division of the American Film Institute founded in 1969, located in Hollywood's Griffith Park. The school is the only existing Master of Fine Arts conservatory in advanced film education...
, which gave him a $10,000 grant to make the film after he had begun working there following his 1971 move to
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. The grant was not sufficient to complete the film and, as a result, Lynch worked on
Eraserhead intermittently, using money from odd jobs and from friends and family, including boyhood friend
Jack FiskJack Fisk is an American movie industry professional, frequently working as either a production designer or art director on Hollywood movies.Fisk met Sissy Spacek when working on Terrence Malick's 1973 movie Badlands...
, a production designer and the husband of actress
Sissy SpacekSissy Spacek is an American actress and singer. She came to international prominence for her for role as Carrie White in Brian De Palma's 1976 horror film Carrie for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination...
, until its 1977 release.
Eraserhead polarized and baffled many critics and film-goers, but has become a
cult classicCult Classic is a Blue Öyster Cult studio recording released in 1994, containing remakes of many of the band's previous hits.-Track listing:# " The Reaper" - 5:05# "E.T.I...
. In 2004, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Library of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
and selected for preservation in the
National Film RegistryThe National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
. Lynch has called it a "dream of dark and troubling things" and his "most spiritual movie."
Plot
Eraserhead is set in the heart of an industrial center in a nameless city, rife with urban decay. Henry Spencer (
Jack NanceMarvin John Nance , known professionally as Jack Nance and occasionally credited as John Nance, was an American actor of stage and screen, primarily starring in offbeat or avant-garde productions...
) is a printer who is "on vacation" for the duration of the story. The film begins with the mysterious "Man in the Planet" (
Jack FiskJack Fisk is an American movie industry professional, frequently working as either a production designer or art director on Hollywood movies.Fisk met Sissy Spacek when working on Terrence Malick's 1973 movie Badlands...
) manipulating large mechanical levers while looking out of his window. As he does so, a ghostly
flagellateFlagellates are organisms with one or more whip-like organelles called flagella. Some cells in animals may be flagellate, for instance the spermatozoa of most phyla. Flowering plants do not produce flagellate cells, but ferns, mosses, green algae, some gymnosperms and other closely related plants...
-like creature emerges from the mouth of Henry, floating in space. The creature eventually flies away amidst images of rock formations, a circular opening, and bubbling fluid.
In the industrial center, Henry stumbles through the seemingly-unpopulated industrial wasteland to his apartment building with a bag of groceries. On his way in, a neighbor he is not familiar with, the "Beautiful Girl Across the Hall" (Judith Anna Roberts), tells him that his estranged girlfriend Mary X (
Charlotte StewartCharlotte Stewart is an American film and television actress.She is most famous for her role as the schoolmarm 'Miss Beadle' on Little House on the Prairie and her work with director David Lynch....
) has invited him to dinner with her and her family. In Henry's one room apartment, a sharp, distorted hissing noise (presumably the radiator) is continuously heard, large clumps of cut grass lie on the floor, a dead tree sapling planted in a pile of dirt sits directly on his nightstand, and a framed picture of a nuclear explosion hangs on the wall. The only window in his apartment faces the brick wall of another building.
That evening, Henry arrives at Mary's home, as invited. Henry is disturbed by the awkward conversation forced by Mary's mother (
Jeanne BatesJeanne Bates was an American radio, film and television actress. She signed a contract with Columbia Pictures in 1942 which began her career in films both in bit parts and larger roles.-Career:...
) as well as a strange fit Mary has; her mother reacts to it by furiously brushing her daughter's hair. At the dinner table, he is puzzled by an emotional outburst by Mary's mother, the banal, disconnected conversation offered by her father (Allen Joseph), and a miniature "man-made" roasted chicken he is given to carve, which kicks on his plate and gushes a dark liquid at the fork's touch. The dinner conversation at Mary's house is strained and awkward. Henry is later cornered by Mary's mother, who attempts to kiss him before telling him that Mary has just given birth extremely prematurely. A tearful Mary insists that it's unknown whether what she gave birth to was actually a baby, but her mother insists that it
is a baby and that Henry is obliged to marry her.
Mary and the baby move into Henry's one-room apartment. The baby is hideously deformed and very inhuman-like: its face resembles a large snout with slit nostrils, a long, pencil-thin neck, eyes on the sides of its head, no ears, glossy skin and a limbless body wrapped in bandages. Henry and Mary constantly struggle with caring for the baby as it refuses to eat and continually whines throughout the night.
One night, a hysterical Mary temporarily leaves for home due to her inability to sleep with the constantly-whining baby in the room. She demands that Henry take good care of the baby. After the baby falls silent, Henry checks its temperature. Looking away briefly to read the thermometer, Henry looks back at the baby to find that it is covered with sores and gasping for breath. Left to care for the baby by himself, Henry becomes involved in a series of strange events (many of which have little to no explanation to how or why they happen). These include bizarre encounters with the "Lady in the Radiator" (
Laurel NearLaurel Near played the role of The Lady in the Radiator in 1977's Eraserhead. In this cult film she performed the song "In Heaven". Laurel Near sang in a trio with her two sisters Timi and Holly Near. The latter was a good friend of Catherine E. Coulson. Laurel is now a mother of 3 children and...
); visions of the Man in the Planet, and a sexual liaison with the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall. The Lady in the Radiator is a miniature woman with grotesquely distended cheeks who appears in his radiator, performing dance routines and singing on a miniature stage. Henry has a dream where his head pops off and his baby's head comes up from between his shoulders, replacing it. Henry's head sinks into a growing pool of blood on a tile floor, falls from the sky, and, finally, lands on an empty street in the industrial wasteland and cracks open. A young boy finds Henry's broken head and takes it to a pencil factory, where the head is taken to a back room, and his brain is determined to be a serviceable material for pencil erasers. The boy is paid for bringing in Henry's head, and the Pencil Machine Operator sweeps the eraser shavings off the desk and sends them billowing into the air.
After waking from this dream, Henry seeks out the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall, but discovers that she is not home. The baby begins to cackle mockingly, and, shortly thereafter, Henry opens his door and sees the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall bringing another man back to her apartment. She looks at Henry, but is frightened by a vision of Henry's head transforming into that of the baby. A disappointed Henry goes back into his apartment. Upon hearing the baby whine, he retrieves a pair of scissors. He hesitates, then cautiously cuts open the bandages wrapped around the baby's body. Henry finds that the bandages were the only thing containing the baby's internal organs; its body splits open and the vital organs are exposed. As the baby gasps in pain, a horrified Henry stabs its organs with the scissors. Rather than dying, however, the baby continues to convulse in pain, and Henry turns away in disgust. Large amounts of liquid gush forth from the organs, followed by huge quantities of a foamy substance that completely covers the baby's body. Henry watches in horror as the apartment’s electricity suddenly overloads, causing the lights to flicker on and off. The baby's neck extends to an extraordinary length, causing it to strongly resemble the flagellate creatures seen at the beginning the film. A giant apparition of its head then materializes in the apartment and approaches Henry. The lights burn out, and the head is replaced by a strange "planet". The side of the hollow planet bursts open, and through the hole, the Man in the Planet is seen struggling with a series of levers, with sparks shooting from them, burning his face. The last scene features Henry being embraced by the Lady in the Radiator. They are bathed in white light,
white noiseWhite noise is a random signal with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal contains equal power within a fixed bandwidth at any center frequency...
builds to a crescendo, then stops as the screen goes black.
Cast
- Jack Nance
Marvin John Nance , known professionally as Jack Nance and occasionally credited as John Nance, was an American actor of stage and screen, primarily starring in offbeat or avant-garde productions...
as Henry Spencer, a vacationing printer who lives alone in a small apartment. His only forms of entertainment are a record player and a fetish for dirt, plants, and worms. Henry is taciturn, but uses short, emotional outbursts when he does speak.
- Charlotte Stewart
Charlotte Stewart is an American film and television actress.She is most famous for her role as the schoolmarm 'Miss Beadle' on Little House on the Prairie and her work with director David Lynch....
as Mary X, Henry's girlfriend, though he has not seen her for some time when the story begins. She lives with her parents and catatonic grandmother until she marries Henry and moves in with him for a short time.
- Allen Joseph and Jeanne Bates
Jeanne Bates was an American radio, film and television actress. She signed a contract with Columbia Pictures in 1942 which began her career in films both in bit parts and larger roles.-Career:...
as Mr. and Mrs. X, Mary's parents. Mr. X is a pipe-fitter who boasts loudly to Henry about his role in plumbing the neighborhood and is seemingly oblivious to the emotional situation surrounding Mary's strange pregnancy and childbirth. Mrs. X, however, experiences frequent outbursts while Henry is visiting their home and eventually demands accountability of Henry.
- Judith Anna Roberts as the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall, who lives in the apartment across from Henry's and delivers the telephone message inviting Henry to dinner at Mary X's house at the beginning of the story. She serves as an object of desire for Henry.
- Laurel Near
Laurel Near played the role of The Lady in the Radiator in 1977's Eraserhead. In this cult film she performed the song "In Heaven". Laurel Near sang in a trio with her two sisters Timi and Holly Near. The latter was a good friend of Catherine E. Coulson. Laurel is now a mother of 3 children and...
as the Lady in the Radiator, appears to Henry in several visions. She has extremely bloated cheeks and performs song and dance routines on a checkered tile stage. In one such routine she stomps on strange flagellate creatures that fall onto her stage while she is dancing.
- Jack Fisk
Jack Fisk is an American movie industry professional, frequently working as either a production designer or art director on Hollywood movies.Fisk met Sissy Spacek when working on Terrence Malick's 1973 movie Badlands...
as the Man in the Planet, seen manipulating mechanical levers while observing Henry through a window at the beginning of the film, appearing to introduce an amphibious being into the world. He is apparently responsible for the bizarre events that occur throughout the film, although it is unknown why. Later in the film, after Henry kills the baby, the Man in the Planet appears again, this time struggling with the levers.
- Darwin Joston
Francis Darwin Solomon was an American actor known professionally as Darwin Joston...
as Paul, the desk clerk at the pencil factory.
- T. Max Graham
Neil Graham Moran , known professionally as T. Max Graham, was an American actor. He played the owner of the pencil factory in David Lynch's film Eraserhead.-Selected filmography:* Eraserhead...
as The Boss, the owner of the pencil factory.
- Hal Landon Jr. as Pencil Machine Operator
Production history
Eraserhead developed from
Gardenback, a script about adultery that Lynch wrote during his first year at the Centre for Advanced Film Studies at the
American Film InstituteThe American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
in
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. The script for
Eraserhead was only 21 pages long. Because of the film's unusual plot and Lynch's minimal directorial experience, no film studio backed the project. Lynch eventually won a grant from AFI, and shot most of the film at
Greystone MansionGreystone Mansion, also known as the Doheny Mansion, is a Tudor-style mansion on a landscaped estate with distinctive formal English gardens, located in Beverly Hills, California, United States. The architect Gordon Kaufmann designed the residence and ancillary structures, with construction...
in Beverly Hills, which was at the time the Institute's headquarters. During the film's production, Lynch began experimenting with an audio technique consisting of reciting lines which were spoken phonetically backwards, and playing this recording in reverse. Although the technique did not see use in
Eraserhead, Lynch later returned to it for his 1990 television series
Twin PeaksTwin Peaks is an American television serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The series follows the investigation headed by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper , of the murder of a popular teenager and homecoming queen, Laura Palmer...
.
Aside from the AFI grant, the film was financed by friends and family, including actress
Sissy SpacekSissy Spacek is an American actress and singer. She came to international prominence for her for role as Carrie White in Brian De Palma's 1976 horror film Carrie for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination...
, wife of Lynch's childhood friend
Jack FiskJack Fisk is an American movie industry professional, frequently working as either a production designer or art director on Hollywood movies.Fisk met Sissy Spacek when working on Terrence Malick's 1973 movie Badlands...
. Because of the lack of reliable funds,
Eraserhead was filmed intermittently from 1971 to 1976, with sets disassembled and reassembled several times.
Release
Ben BarenholtzBen Barenholtz is an independent film exhibitor, distributor and producer.In the late 1960s, he opened the Elgin Cinema in New York City, which became a prominent arthouse theatre. He relaunched the films of Buster Keaton and D. W. Griffith, as well as a variety of independent films by new American...
, the founder of Libra Films, watched the film a few weeks after its
FilmexFilmex was an annual Los Angeles film festival held in the 1970s and early 1980s. It was the predecessor of the American Film Institute's Los Angeles International Film Festival...
opening, and before the film was at its midway point, had decided it was a "film of the future". By that summer (1977), Lynch and his wife had arrived in New York and were staying at Barenholtz's apartment; Lynch then spent two months working with a lab to get a print of the film ready for its New York opening. The film opened in fall 1977 at the Cinema Village for a midnight show, and eventually "became a hit on the
horrorHorror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
circuit in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and
LondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
."
Home media
Until recently, the only way to acquire
Eraserhead as a Region 1 (
North AmericaNorth America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
)
DVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
was to purchase it through Lynch's own website. The version of the film on the official Region 1 DVD was remastered for the medium by Lynch himself. Customers who ordered the film from Lynch's website received the disc packaged in a special presentation box. The DVD included a deleted scene and a 90-minute
documentaryDocumentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about the making of the film, which consists of Lynch sitting before a microphone, smoking cigarettes, and talking about his memories of making the film (almost like a director's commentary track, but with video). During the piece he also calls Catherine Coulson and they reminisce together about the making of the film. On January 10, 2006,
Eraserhead was made commercially available by Subversive Cinema. This re-release had normal DVD packaging instead of the large boxset from David Lynch's website, but the content on the disc itself was the same. The
UKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
DVD release is
region-freeDVD region codes are a digital-rights management technique designed to allow film distributors to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and price, according to the region...
, as is the
KoreaKorea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
n DVD release. On October 20, 2008, the film was re-released in Region 2 in the UK, alongside a Region 2 release of
The Short Films of David LynchThe Short Films of David Lynch is a DVD collection of the early student and commissioned film work of American filmmaker David Lynch. As such, the collection does not include Lynch's later short work, which are listed in the filmography....
. The film has been released on Region 4 in Australia on two separate occasions: firstly, in 2001, the film was released by
Umbrella EntertainmentUmbrella Entertainment is an Australian owned, independent all-rights feature film, documentary and television program distribution company that was set up in 2001 by Jeff Harrison...
however was discontinued approximately 3–4 years later. In 2009, it was re-released in a 'Special Edition' format and remastered by the same distribution company. Umbrella Entertainment was supposed to release it on the Blu-ray format on September 1, 2011, but got delayed due to reasons beyond their control. David Lynch is personally putting the final touches on this special high definition title, which is now due to come out in early 2012.
Reception
A 1977 review of
Eraserhead by
VarietyVariety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
panned the film, describing it as a "sickening bad-taste exercise" which "pulls out all gory stops in the unwatchable climax", and adding that "the mind boggles to learn that Lynch labored on this pic for five years". However, the review praised the film's production values, especially its sound production.
In a December 2007 review of a new 35mm print,
Manohla DargisManohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and...
of
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
called it an "amazing, still mysterious work" which "brings together many of the now-familiar Lynchian visual themes and narrative figures, including the naïve man, the slatternly woman, the shabby period furniture, the contorted flesh and forms, the yawning orifices and oozing, leaking fluids." In 2003,
Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
ranked the film fourteenth on their list of "The Top Cult Movies", stating that "Eraserhead is about that which can't be described". The film currently holds a 90% "Certified Fresh" rating from review aggregation website
Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, based on 41 reviews.
After seeing the film,
Mel BrooksMel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...
hired Lynch to direct
The Elephant ManThe Elephant Man is a 1980 American drama film based on the true story of Joseph Merrick , a severely deformed man in 19th century London...
in 1980.
Eraserhead was one of director
Stanley KubrickStanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's favorite films. Before beginning production on
The ShiningThe Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an...
, Kubrick screened
Eraserhead for the cast to put them into the atmosphere he wanted to convey.
George LucasGeorge Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
was a fan of the film and, after seeing it, wanted to hire Lynch to direct
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the JediStar Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi is a 1983 American epic space opera film directed by Richard Marquand and written by George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan. It is the third film released in the Star Wars saga, and the sixth in terms of the series' internal chronology...
. Lynch declined, fearing it would be less his own vision than Lucas's. The directorial duties eventually went to
Richard MarquandRichard Marquand was a Welsh film director best known for directing the 1983 blockbuster Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi.-Early life:...
.
John WatersJohn Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...
mentioned in the documentary
Midnight MoviesMidnight Movies were an indie rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 2002. Composed of Gena Olivier , Larry Schemel , and Jason Hammons , the indie rock trio quickly crafted a moody and stylish sound. They became a major face on the L.A. music scene within a year, and earned a nomination...
that he is a fan of the film and, while doing promotional interviews for his own film
Female TroubleFemale Trouble is a 1974 dark comedy film co-composed, filmed, co-edited, written, produced, and directed by John Waters starring Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, Michael Potter, Cookie Mueller, and Susan Walsh....
, he would mention
Eraserhead and David Lynch to reporters.
Lynch has said that the film's protagonist is "living under the influence of those things that existed for me in Philadelphia", adding that "there was a sense of dread pretty much everywhere I went. I didn't live in any good parts of Philadelphia, and so dread was my general feeling. I hated it. And, also, I loved it". Lynch also wrote a short chapter about the film in his 2006 book
Catching the Big FishCatching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity is a book by film director David Lynch.-The book:Catching the Big Fish was inspired by Lynch's experiences with Transcendental Meditation , which he began practicing in 1973...
. In that book, he wrote "
Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is". He went on to write about the difficulties he was having making sense of the way the film was "growing" and didn't know "the thing that just pulled it all together". He then reveals it was the
BibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
that provided the solution, stating "so I got out my Bible and I started reading. And one day, I read a sentence. And I closed the Bible, because that was it; that was it. And then I saw the thing as a whole. And it fulfilled this vision for me, 100 percent". Lynch states in the book that he doesn't think he will ever reveal what the vision-fulfilling Biblical verse is.
Legacy
Poet and author
Charles BukowskiHenry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
referenced the film when interviewed on the subject of
cable televisionCable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
. Bukowski said, "We got cable TV here, and the first thing we switched on happened to be
Eraserhead. I said, 'What’s this?' I didn’t know what it was. It was so great. I said, 'Oh, this cable TV has opened up a whole new world. We’re gonna be sitting in front of this thing for centuries. What next? So starting with
Eraserhead we sit here, click, click, click — nothing."
A number of rock bands take their name from the film: the 1980s
LondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
punk rockPunk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
group Erazerhead; the
Northern CaliforniaNorthern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The San Francisco Bay Area , and Sacramento as well as its metropolitan area are the main population centers...
band Eraserhead, and
The EraserheadsEraserheads, or E-Heads was a Filipino rock band of the 90s, formed by Ely Buendia, Raimund Marasigan, Buddy Zabala and Marcus Adoro. The band is one of the most successful, critically acclaimed, and significant bands in the history of OPM...
, a
rockRock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band from the
PhilippinesThe Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
. The band
Henry SpencerHenry Spencer is a Canadian computer programmer and space enthusiast. He wrote "regex", a widely-used software library for regular expressions, and co-wrote C News, a Usenet server program. He also authored The Ten Commandments for C Programmers. He is coauthor, with David Lawrence, of the book...
take their name from the main character.
Apartment 26Apartment 26 was an alternative metal band from Leamington Spa, England. They played Ozzfest in 1999 and split up in 2004.They worked with Tchad Blake, at Real World Studios, on their self-financed Music For The Massive, having scrapped "Album 1.5" after two years of production...
are named after Henry's address and they feature a
sampleIn music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
from the Lady in the Radiator's
In Heaven at the end of their song,
Heaven. The 1980s
LondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
indie rockIndie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...
band
Henry's Final DreamHenry’s Final Dream were a 1980s London indie rock band who played the college circuit and recorded two EP’s with the Eskimo Vinyl label. They took their name from the cult movie, Eraserhead ....
also owe their name to this film.
Bruce McCullochBruce Ian McCulloch is a Canadian actor, writer, comedian, and film director. McCulloch is best known for his work as a member of The Kids in the Hall, a popular Canadian comedy troupe, and as a writer for Saturday Night Live. McCulloch has also appeared on series such as Twitch City and Gilmore...
, from Canadian sketch group
The Kids in the HallThe Kids in the Hall is a Canadian sketch comedy group formed in 1984, consisting of comedians Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson. Their eponymous television show ran from 1988 to 1994 on CBC in Canada, and 1989 to 1995 on CBS and HBO in the United States...
, has recorded a song titled (and about)
Eraserhead on his album
Shame Based Man.
In Heaven"In Heaven" is a song originally part of the soundtrack to the David Lynch film Eraserhead, where it is sung by the Lady in the Radiator...
, the song sung by the Lady in the Radiator, has been covered by,
BauhausBauhaus was an English rock band formed in Northampton in 1978. The group consisted of Peter Murphy , Daniel Ash , Kevin Haskins and David J . The band was originally Bauhaus 1919 before they dropped the numerical portion within a year of formation...
,
DevoDevo is an American band formed in 1973 consisting of members from Kent and Akron, Ohio. The classic line-up of the band includes two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs and the Casales . The band had a #14 Billboard chart hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It", and has maintained a cult...
,
Miranda Sex GardenMiranda Sex Garden were a music group from London, England. Formed in 1990, they were originally a trio of madrigal singers. Their first album, Madra , was entirely a cappella, with the songs all based on traditional English verse...
,
TuxedomoonTuxedomoon is an experimental post-punk/New Wave group formed in San Francisco, California, consisting of core members Blaine L. Reininger, Steven Brown and Peter Principle....
, The Danse Society, Pankow,
PixiesThe Pixies are an American alternative rock band formed in Boston, Massachusetts in 1986. The group consists of Black Francis , Joey Santiago , Kim Deal , and David Lovering . While the Pixies found only modest success in their home country, they were significantly more successful in the United...
,
Desolation YesDesolation Yes! are a Scottish/Slovakian experimental music band, formed in Glasgow, in 2004. They are currently with Neon Tetra Records and their debut double A-side single Templeton/Instinct was released on 10 December 2007. Future Pop was released as a free download on Monday 29 September 2008...
,
Bang GangBang Gang is a melodic pop band from Iceland founded by songwriter/producer Bardi Johannsson . The band was formed in 1996, in Johannsson’s hometown of Reykjavik...
,
Zola JesusZola Jesus is the stage name of Russian American singer/songwriter Nika Roza Danilova . Having released three EPs and two full-length albums, combining industrial, classical, electronic, goth and experimental rock influences, she received generally good reviews and was regarded as one of the names...
and
Forgotten SunriseForgotten Sunrise is an Estonian industrial rock band founded in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Their sound has been compared to a mixture of Dead Can Dance, David Lynch, Katatonia, Celtic Frost and Clock DVA.-1992–1994:...
.
Indie rockIndie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...
ers
Modest MouseModest Mouse is an American indie rock band formed in 1993 in Issaquah, Washington, by singer/lyricist/guitarist Isaac Brock, drummer Jeremiah Green, and bassist Eric Judy. They are based in Portland, Oregon. Since their 1996 debut album, This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think...
borrowed lines from
In Heaven for
Workin' on Leavin' the Livin, as did the
anarcho-punkAnarcho-punk is punk rock that promotes anarchism. The term anarcho-punk is sometimes applied exclusively to bands that were part of the original anarcho-punk movement in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
band
Rubella BalletRubella Ballet are a punk rock band formed in autumn, 1979, who released several albums before splitting up in 1991. They reformed in 2000.-History:...
for their song
Slant and Slide. The
Dead KennedysDead Kennedys are an American punk rock band formed in San Francisco, California in 1978. The band became part of the American hardcore punk movement of the early 1980s. They gained a large underground fanbase in the international punk music scene....
reference the film in the song
Too Drunk to Fuck in the line "You bawl like the baby in Eraserhead". An Eraserhead T-Shirt was available from the band's label
Alternative TentaclesAlternative Tentacles is an independent record label originally based in San Francisco, California and was established in 1979. It was originally used as the label name by the Dead Kennedys for the self-produced single "California Über Alles", and after realizing the potential for an independent...
for some years, and even the official soundtrack.
Eraserhead, along with five other low-budget films from the 1960s and 1970s (
The Rocky Horror Picture ShowThe Rocky Horror Picture Show is the 1975 film adaptation of the British rock musical stageplay, The Rocky Horror Show, written by Richard O'Brien. The film is a parody of B-movie, science fiction and horror films of the late 1940s through early 1970s. Director Jim Sharman collaborated on the...
,
Pink FlamingosPink Flamingos is a 1972 transgressive black comedy film written, produced, composed, shot, edited, and directed by John Waters. When the film was initially released, it caused a huge degree of controversy and thus became one of the most notorious cult films ever made. It made an underground star...
,
El TopoEl Topo is a 1970 Spanish language allegorical, cult western movie and underground film, directed by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky...
,
The Harder They ComeThe Harder They Come is a 1972 Jamaican crime film directed by Perry Henzell.The film stars reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, who plays Ivanhoe Martin, a character based on Rhyging, a real-life Jamaican criminal who achieved fame in the 1940s...
and
Night of the Living DeadNight of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film and cult film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it...
), was the subject of a 2005 documentary,
Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the MainstreamMidnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream is a 2005 documentary written and directed by Stuart Samuels, based on his book on the subject....
. Lynch was interviewed for the documentary.
External links
- Eraserhead wiki at Wikia
Wikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki...
- Eraserhead interviews & article