Eraserhead (1976)

David Lynch’s nightmarish city scapes and twisted viewpoint have never been more warped than in “Eraserhead,” his mid-1970s freakish debut masterpiece. I can’t describe the story, but it follows a frizzy haired loner (Jack Nance) who lives in an apartment right out of a Depression-era nightmare, as far from Wyeth America as one can get. He has a sort-of girlfriend (Charlotte Stewart), who turns up pregnant and delivers … a fetus. Not a baby. But a monstrous, twisted, writhing and screaming fetus that looks more animal than human. Like a Pollack painting, this mind fuck is endlessly debatable. Certainly alienation, probably fear of fatherhood and marriage. I love Lynch’s madness, and this is one of his most bizarre films. All his trademarks are here: curtains, stages where actors sing and perform, angels and demons (that fetus, the monstrous man - the fetus grown up?). Black and white beauty. I’ll say this, nothing in a Lynch film is more poetic than the Woman in the Radiator (!!!) singing, “In heaven, everything is fine.” Brilliant. Warped. Godlike. Unexplainable. One of my favorites. So sad Nance was murdered. A+