Old School Review: Eraserhead

Long, long time ago.  I left the series of small towns I grew up in (One literally hidden in a crack in the Earth) and went to college.  There I found a group of friends who shared my love of movies.  In those days, not everyone (specially college students) owned VCRs so video stores made a lot of money renting out VCRs.  In a fit of brilliance I saved some cash and bought one of these dinosaurs.  It was encased in an inch of invulnerable plastic and we called it "The ViCaR," and it was my invitation to parties everywhere.

One night "D" and "J" and I, decided since it was just us three to be daring.  So we went to the ill regarded stoner video store at the edge of town and went into the stacks.  There on a metal shelf caked with grime was a copy of "Eraserhead."  We've all heard SOMETHING about the film and we had just seen Dune so we were excited.

We each brought our favorite mind altering substances.  I believe "J" had Jagermeister and "D" had chocolate and I had Pabst Blue Ribbon.  We popped that thing into the Vicar and turned it.  Soon we realized we were in for something different.  We couldn't tear our eyes from the screen, perhaps because we were afraid the film was going to jump us.

At the end, we couldn't decide on much.  We weren't sure we liked the film.  We had very little idea about what the film was about.  We were full of questions:  "Was that God many the wheel?"  "Was the baby a symbol of mortality of the hero?"  "What the heck was the baby made of?  Calves liver?"  "What the HELL was up with the singing chipmonk lady behind the radiator?"  We had no answers, but in the end after much discussion we agreed that we had seen something unique and special.  Unique and special and unbelievably weird and sick. 

We decided we did indeed liked the film.