Eraserhead

I think this is David Lynch’s idea of a romantic comedy. Shot in stark black and white and sounding like it was filmed underwater or near a busy factory, we follow the bizarrely coiffed Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) through the trials and tribulations of an average young man – meeting his girlfriends parents for dinner, encountering a beautiful woman living in the same apartment building, watching a woman with hideously deformed cheeks dancing deliriously on stage, you know, the usual.

Coming across like a 90-minute montage of nightmares I would not advise watching this before bed. Henry and his partner’s baby has the appearance of a mechanised cow foetus (possibly because undenied rumours suggest this was what was used), the aforementioned dinner sequence involves a tiny roast chicken still moving, bubbling and bleeding on the plate, and a scene where Henry cuts open the deformed baby has it becoming a bile volcano, one of the most horrific images I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure what happened to Lynch growing up, but I damn well hope it doesn’t happen to me.

Choose life 2/10