ERASERHEAD

US, 1978, 88 minutes, Black and white.
John Nance.
Directed by David Lynch.

Eraserhead is a small-budget experimental horror film, made in black and white. However it shows imagination in its use of horror and monster conventions as well as technical skill in its stark black and white photography, its imaginative use of soundtrack, its close-ups and its special effects. It was written, produced, edited and directed by David Lynch and became a cult movie when released in the United States in 1978. It was seen at many midnight shows and this kind of popularity followed it throughout the world. on the level of technical experimental filmmaking, it is an excellent example of what can be done with limited resources.

As a thematic presentation of the horrors of living on Earth, it uses a lot of the horror conventions but uses the counterpoint of realistic situations with which audiences can identify and the type of dialogue popular in Harold Pinter's plays - ordinary commonplace words filled with sinister meaning. The black and white photography and the locations for the characters are reminiscent of a contemporary American Kafka setting. The use of sounds and continual noises in the background is also quite striking and disturbing. Eraserhead can be dismissed as an oddball experiment. It can, however, be appreciated for an imaginative and inventive fable of living in the 20th century.

1. The reputation of the film as a successful experimental film, a film for study of cinema techniques and the presentation of genre themes? Its becoming a cult film in the United States? Entertainment value, its exploration of themes?

2. The qualities and styles of the black and white photography? Composition, light and shadow? Darkness? How much of the mood was communicated by the use of black and white? The importance of the close-ups, long sequences for characters and situations? Dream , subjective shots? The special effects especially in the opening, the monstrous child, the dreams? The locations: the cosmic tones of beginning and end, the stage and the dream sequences, heaven: the American slums, the domestic locations? The importance of the editing for effects?

3. The contribution of sound, electronic noise, the constant presence of noise? Machinery, laughing and crying (e.g. from the child), the organ music, the songs and the lyrics? The importance of sound as a factor for atmosphere, communication of themes?

4. The film as a fable of contemporary life? One critic asked, "Is there life after birth?" Is this an apt question for the themes of the film? The opening with Henry and his prone floating in space? The cosmic overtones of the beginning? Conception and birth images? Sperm, wells, the coming to birth out of dark tunnels? The comic aspects of the fable of life - the presentation of the ridiculous? The contrast between the cosmic Henry being born and suddenly arriving in an American depressed area? The ordinariness of Henry in his life in the world? The significance of the man-figure out in space wielding machinery? The overtones of the demiurge creator? His appearance at beginning and end?

5. The song and the lyrics about heaven? Henry and his arrival at the end in heaven with the angelic, ironic, woman meeting him? The end of life in this world? The final sequences giving meaning to the rest of the film?

6. The choice of basic domestic sequences - the Harold Pinter-like dialogue, the choice of ordinary characters and being presented in banal situations, domestic places and situations? The close-ups on each of the characters and the magnifying of their ordinary behaviour - within the cosmic framework? The effect on the audience of the cosmic and the banal? Henry and his arrival, his apartment and the lift, the girl in the opposite apartment, the visit to Mary, the conversation with her mother, Mary's fit, Bill and his arrival home and his grin, the preparations for the meal, the cutting of the small chicken and the blood coming out, people leaving the table. Bill and his explanation of himself as plumber and his fixed grin., the mother and her work in the kitchen, grandmother and her immobility and the cigarette in her mouth? Mary's pregnancy and the mother's interrogation? The irony and significance behind these ordinary situations by such treatment?

7. The transition to the birth of the monstrous child? The pregnancy, the ludicrous aspects of its birth? The mutant monster and its being fed by Mary, the parents trying to sleep and the baby crying, its illness and the close-ups of its skin and pockmarks? The bay watching Mary's leaving, the dream and the reality of the girl across the apartment and the interlude with Henry? The mutant crying, the ironic laughs? The picture of the child as the monster -a comment on how parents actually see their children? The monster and its final growth almost to devour Henry as parent? The comment on families by this ironic symbol?

8. The humour and irony of Mary and her sleeplessness, her wanting the child to shut up, her leaving, the humorous sequence of her getting the case from under the bed and shaking it? Her giving birth in dreams to the mutant sperms? The contrast of the girl across the corridor, the seduction sequence, the bath and the drowning? The later irony of her taking another man and Henry watching through the keyhole?

9. The mutant as child - how others see children? Its place in the nightmare sequence? Henry and his head coming off and the mutant growing? The child growing into the image of the parent? Its place at the end in Henry's suit?

10. The details of Henry's room, the focus on the heater, the stage? Why he put the worm in the box? The spotlight on the stage, the later return of the woman with the false cheeks and her coy dancing and squashing the worms? Squashing sperms? Her final song about heaven and her greeting of Henry? The humour and satire in the visuals of the coy blonde baby doll and her singing?

11. Henry's nightmare - his death, the head falling out the window, the boy finding it and the tramp wanting it, the selling of the head and the man and his assistant in the shop, the man testing the head and its being used for pencils and erasers, the scattering of the pieces of the eraser? The significance of the title and the symbol of Eraserhead?

12. The significance of children and death?

13. The use of horror conventions in an imaginative kind of way? Audience appeal in horror conventions - the growth and opening of the mutant child and its ugly ooze and its being suffocated by the ooze? Science fiction and the cosmic overtones, the mutant? Contemporary life seen in terms of horror and science fiction as well as the banal soap opera conventions?

14. Henry as everyman - the ordinary man. his face and head. hair? His shy Runner? His suit and his clothes? His direct manner of speech? His accepted behaviour, his odd behaviour? His dreams - images of the shadow?

15. The film as an original and intelligent fable of contemporary life in the nightmare Kafka vein? The impact of its images and the emotional logic of its images?