Dundead Halloween: Eraserhead

This screening will be introduced by Michael Coull, Dundead festival programmer. 
 

David Lynch is one of American cinema’s greatest iconoclasts, having been around the block enough times in his almost 50-year career to have weathered both ecstatic critical praise and condemnation (sometimes for the same film). He has changed the face of what is possible in American television (twice). Now, aged 78, he seems content to spend his time painting, sculpting and making music.

But Eraserhead, his debut feature, remains one of the most distinctive debuts ever made by an American filmmaker. Lynch’s longtime  preoccupation with peeling back the linoleum-covered veneer of American post-war optimism arrived almost fully-formed in this confounding, mysterious and melancholic film. 

Shot in black and white over a course of four years with a small crew, Eraserhead tells the Kafkaesque tale of Henry Spencer (the first of many collaborations between Lynch and actor Jack Nance), who has to care for his strange, monstrous baby.

Lynch is one of those rare directors who not only has his own descriptor (Lynchian) but has also become an icon himself, with his cheerful, chain-smoking avuncular persona often being contrasted with the darkness he so often conjures in his work. Eraserhead is a fascinating, enigmatic and visionary American nightmare.

Get yourself a pass and see all of our Dundead Halloween films for £38.40.