David Lynch
Writing credits
David Lynch
Eraserhead is set in the heart of an industrial center rife with urban decay. Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) is a printer who is "on vacation" for the duration of the story. The film begins with the mysterious "Man in the Planet" (Jack Fisk) manipulating large mechanical levers while looking out of his window. As he does so, a ghostly flagellate-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 of the nameless city, Henry stumbles through the seemingly unpopulated wasteland to his apartment building with a bag of groceries. 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 Stewart) has invited him to dinner with her and her family. A sharp, distorted hissing noise (presumably the radiator) is continuously heard in Henry's one room apartment. Large clumps of cut grass lay 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 above it. The only window in his apartment faces a brick wall of another building in the alley across the window from his tenement building.
That evening, Henry walks through the industrial wasteland and arrives at Mary's home. Henry is disturbed by the awkward conversation forced by Mary's mother as well as a strange fit Mary has; her mother reacts to it by furiously brushing her daughter's hair. At the dinner table, Henry is puzzled by an emotional outburst by Mary's mother (Jeanne Bates), the banal, disconnected conversation offered by her father (Allen Joseph), and 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, after which Henry is 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 the hospital does not know whether it even is a baby she gave birth to; her mother insists that it is a baby and that Henry is then 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 covered in bandages. It bears a vague resemblance to the flagellate creature that came out of Henry's mouth at the beginning of the film. Henry and Mary constantly struggle with caring for the baby as it refuses to eat and continually whines throughout the night. Mary feeding her "baby". A hysterical Mary temporarily leaves for home one night due to her inability to sleep with the whining baby in Henry's apartment. She demands that the vacationing 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 Near); 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, first doing a dance routine on a stage in which she slowly shuffles back and forth and stomps on more of the flagellate creatures that fall from above, and then later singing "In Heaven".
In a dream sequence, Henry’s 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 Paul (Darwin Joston), the desk clerk, summons his ill-tempered boss to the front desk by repeatedly pushing a buzzer. The boss, angered by the summons, yells at Paul, but regains his composure when he sees what the little boy has brought. The boss and the boy carry the head to a back room where the Pencil Machine Operator takes a core sample of Henry's brain, assays it, and determines that it is a serviceable material for pencil erasers. The boy is then paid for bringing in Henry's head. The Pencil Machine Operator then sweeps the eraser shavings off the desk and sends them billowing into the air.
After waking from this dream, Henry looks out his window and sees two men fighting in the street. He then 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, momentarily sees Henry's head transform into that of the baby, and appears frightened by her vision. 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, the baby hyperventilating and whining during the cutting. Henry finds that the bandages were the only thing containing the baby's internal organs; the body already split open and the baby's vital organs are exposed. As the baby gasps in pain, Henry stabs one of its organs with the scissors. Rather than dying, the baby continues to convulse in pain, causing Henry to turn away in disgust. Large amounts of liquid gush forth from the organs, followed by huge quantities of a foamy substance that completely covers the body. The apartment’s electricity overloads, and as the lights flicker on and off, the baby's neck extends to an extraordinary length, causing it to strongly resemble the flagellate creatures seen throughout the film. A giant apparition of its head materializes in the apartment. It then becomes a strange planet. Henry is then seen with eraser shavings billowing behind his head.
The planet explodes, and through the hole in it the Man in the Planet is seen struggling with a series of levers with sparks shooting from them when he pulls them, visibly burning his face. The last scene features Henry being embraced by the Lady in the Radiator. They are bathed in white light, and white noise builds to a crescendo, then stops as the screen goes black, and the credits begin to roll.
In the industrial center of the nameless city, Henry stumbles through the seemingly unpopulated wasteland to his apartment building with a bag of groceries. 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 Stewart) has invited him to dinner with her and her family. A sharp, distorted hissing noise (presumably the radiator) is continuously heard in Henry's one room apartment. Large clumps of cut grass lay 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 above it. The only window in his apartment faces a brick wall of another building in the alley across the window from his tenement building.
That evening, Henry walks through the industrial wasteland and arrives at Mary's home. Henry is disturbed by the awkward conversation forced by Mary's mother as well as a strange fit Mary has; her mother reacts to it by furiously brushing her daughter's hair. At the dinner table, Henry is puzzled by an emotional outburst by Mary's mother (Jeanne Bates), the banal, disconnected conversation offered by her father (Allen Joseph), and 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, after which Henry is 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 the hospital does not know whether it even is a baby she gave birth to; her mother insists that it is a baby and that Henry is then 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 covered in bandages. It bears a vague resemblance to the flagellate creature that came out of Henry's mouth at the beginning of the film. Henry and Mary constantly struggle with caring for the baby as it refuses to eat and continually whines throughout the night. Mary feeding her "baby". A hysterical Mary temporarily leaves for home one night due to her inability to sleep with the whining baby in Henry's apartment. She demands that the vacationing 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 Near); 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, first doing a dance routine on a stage in which she slowly shuffles back and forth and stomps on more of the flagellate creatures that fall from above, and then later singing "In Heaven".
In a dream sequence, Henry’s 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 Paul (Darwin Joston), the desk clerk, summons his ill-tempered boss to the front desk by repeatedly pushing a buzzer. The boss, angered by the summons, yells at Paul, but regains his composure when he sees what the little boy has brought. The boss and the boy carry the head to a back room where the Pencil Machine Operator takes a core sample of Henry's brain, assays it, and determines that it is a serviceable material for pencil erasers. The boy is then paid for bringing in Henry's head. The Pencil Machine Operator then sweeps the eraser shavings off the desk and sends them billowing into the air.
After waking from this dream, Henry looks out his window and sees two men fighting in the street. He then 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, momentarily sees Henry's head transform into that of the baby, and appears frightened by her vision. 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, the baby hyperventilating and whining during the cutting. Henry finds that the bandages were the only thing containing the baby's internal organs; the body already split open and the baby's vital organs are exposed. As the baby gasps in pain, Henry stabs one of its organs with the scissors. Rather than dying, the baby continues to convulse in pain, causing Henry to turn away in disgust. Large amounts of liquid gush forth from the organs, followed by huge quantities of a foamy substance that completely covers the body. The apartment’s electricity overloads, and as the lights flicker on and off, the baby's neck extends to an extraordinary length, causing it to strongly resemble the flagellate creatures seen throughout the film. A giant apparition of its head materializes in the apartment. It then becomes a strange planet. Henry is then seen with eraser shavings billowing behind his head.
The planet explodes, and through the hole in it the Man in the Planet is seen struggling with a series of levers with sparks shooting from them when he pulls them, visibly burning his face. The last scene features Henry being embraced by the Lady in the Radiator. They are bathed in white light, and white noise builds to a crescendo, then stops as the screen goes black, and the credits begin to roll.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074486/
