Critics reviews

You could describe Eraserhead shot for shot to someone, and then when they sit down to watch it, the irrational terror would be undiminished: Lynch is a master of ideas that don't "make sense" but somehow strike directly into the subconscious... What's even more surprising... is the film's utter control of technique, the perfect completeness of its imaginary universe, the moments of bizarre humor, and the way that even though its setting is through the looking glass, it feels uniquely American.

Lynch strikes such a balance between the two types of anxious feeling—between the brash and the banal—that one might be revulsed with equal force by a bedpost as by a syruping, wailing fetus. It's a technique, that uncanny way the drab objects of quotidian life might suddenly play as fantastical on screen.

One of the few sui generis movies of the last few decades, it adheres to no known conventions and never settles on a tone, poised between humor and horror, combining queasy fascination and ecstatic disgust. It faintly resembles a silent comedy at times, a splatter flick at others.

While it's certainly possible to find metaphors in Eraserhead's bizarre imagery, the film works on such an intensely visceral level that attempts to analyze it seem counterproductive. Can any words evoke the flesh-crawling queasiness of Henry's visit to Mary's parents' house, in which he sits uncomfortably on the couch exchanging forced pleasantries with Mom while some ungodly squeaking/squelching noise threatens to drown out the dialogue?

The images are so alien and frightening, yet so rapturously beautiful, that you feel as if you're glimpsing the primal id of cinema. There are obvious inspirations informing Eraserhead, but it's clearly the work of an original and almost spookily confident talent.

Watching ERASERHEAD now feels like wandering through a nightmare more than ever, due in part to its central conceit and the expected barrage of disturbing events and images that it entails—distended faces, animal carcasses, etc.—but even the film's few familiar features add to this dreamlike quality.

Assured and mesmerizing, his black-and-white debut feature is as visceral and vivid an experience as a weird nightmare you had last night... "Eraserhead," like the director's best films, has an unnerving way of bypassing reason and infiltrating the unconscious. Even his more familiar images and stories envelope the viewer in primal mysteries because his approach to surrealist juxtaposition is grounded in a mastery of texture and tone.

One thing is clear on third viewing: the genius ofEraserhead as sculpture. What a masterpiece of texture, a feat of artisanal attention, an ingenious assemblage of damp, dust, rock, wood, hair, flesh, metal, ooze. The immaculate restoration brings all this to new light.

...The film has remained relevant owing to its influential and innovative treatment of familiar subjects, brought together in an absurd and surreal amalgamation that challenges viewers' expectations and sensibilities regarding narrative and visual form. An important example of innovative and daring filmmaking, Eraserhead remains brilliant to some, indecipherable to others, and always, it seems, provocative.

...Lynch's portentously deliberate style suggests Bresson or Straub directing a film for Larry (It's Alive!) Cohen. Though its special effects are impressively nauseating, Eraserhead... is far too arty for 42nd Street; and so here it is, until mid-November, looking for a cult. Eraserhead's not a movie I'd drop acid for, although I would consider it a revolutionary act if someone dropped a reel of it into the middle of Star Wars.