Review: 'David Lynch' Revised & Updated Edition

Break the code, solve the crime. One thing that draws a lot of viewers to the films of David Lynch is Lynch's refusal to express his intentions on the surface. In an age when every film's message must be explicitly stated for an audience with the attention span of a puppy, David Lynch's dogged refusal to ever play that dull game is especially thrilling. 

It also means that theories about what, say, that blue box in Mulholland Dr. means are more plentiful than donuts in Agent Cooper's mouth. Whether they be glib brain farts or endless exegeses, explanations of what Lynch really meant are everywhere. To the late filmmaker's credit, he rarely validated any, but also rarely outright said any were wrong either.

Review: 'David Lynch: His Work, His World'

Over the course of a lovely but tiring seventeen years of Psychobabbling I've scaled way back on writing anything but reviews here. So I allowed a big, awful milestone to pass without much more than changing the banner at the top of this page. I'm talking about the death of David Lynch, my favorite artist, one who was so versatile, open, and willing to tap into dreams and nightmares, so old-fashioned hardworking, that he has been nothing short of the biggest creative inspiration in my own life. 

I got my start as a writer when my article on the role of dream worlds in Lynch's work was published in the final issue of the Twin Peaks fanzine Wrapped in Plastic way back in 2005. Although I've since published a couple of books, and even got to work on one of them with one of my top music heroes, Dave Davies, the biggest thrill of my career was seeing my name on the cover of Wrapped in Plastic beneath those of Peaks co-creator Mark Frost, star Catherine Coulson, writer Bob Engels, editor Mary Sweeney, and David Lynch. 

Review: 'Inland Empire' Blu-ray

Whether they were loved (Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet) or loathed (Dune), David Lynch's films always had a rich, textured quality that made them more like worlds to inhabit than stories to watch on a screen. Even his first foray into network television, Twin Peaks, looked unusually deep and cinematic for an age of flat video images and 25-inch screens. 

Review: 'BFI Film Classics: Eraserhead'

For her entry in the British Film Institute's series of paperback monographs, Claire Henry has selected Eraserhead, a quintessential cult classic perennially ripe for analysis. Henry supplies the analysis but in a much more measured way than overzealous film professors usually bring to David Lynch's Rorschach Test. Aside from opining that the picture is most convincingly an expression of paternal fears (an opinion I personally share), she mostly collates the theories of other scholars to show how ripe the film is for all kinds of theories, and, either intentionally or unintentionally, to show how those theories cancel each other out to a certain degree. Because Eraserhead is better to experience, to live in, than to overthink, and Lynch is nothing if not an intuitive rather than intellectual filmmaker. 

Review: 'Dune' Blu-ray

Dune was the one major outlier when I first fell in love with the films of David Lynch. I hated it. Although I could not honestly say I completely understood Eraserhead (even though I totally said that), complete comprehension didn't matter when it came to such a purely experimental piece. That I didn't understand the byzantine plot of Dune mattered more since it had the bones of a completely conventional film. It is a space opera like Star Wars. It has a hero's journey. There are clearly defined good guys and bad guys and laser guns and made-up planets and giant monsters. Perhaps I was also offended that an ARTIST such as Lynch had played on the blockbuster field at all. That Lynch, himself, had completely disowned the film because producer Dino De Laurentiis insisted on a rather ruthless edit justified my serious Dune aversion and made me feel I didn't need to work to love it as much as I loved Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Fire Walk with Me, and every other non-Dune picture Lynch made.

And yet, I still returned to Dune every few years. And it got a little better each time I watched it, while certain other Lynch movies (The Elephant Man, Lost Highway) drop in my estimation each time I revisit them. After multiple viewings—and still never having read the entirety of the Frank Herbert novel on which the film is based—Dune's plot seems so lucid I feel like a dum-dum for not understanding it upon my first viewing. While it seemed to sorely lack Lynch's experimental verve all those years ago, I now can't understand how I didn't always recognize how far-out Dune is, with its disconcertingly fascistic hero and disgusting, pustule-plagued villain, who at one point, tries to force a captive to milk a cat duct-taped to a rat. I mean, did Lynch ever even devise anything weirder than that?

Review: 'The Women of David Lynch: A Collection of Essays'

Like almost all artists worth discussing, David Lynch is highly controversial. Some viewers praise his ability to place you in an unsettling, beautiful, transcendent, and completely realized world. Others dismiss him as a purveyor of weird for the sake of weird. He has also split viewers in terms of his treatment of women. Some feel that the way he portrays women is complex and ultimately empathetic. Many others have dismissed him as a misogynist who gets off on forcing his female characters to suffer.

This particular issue has continually resurfaced since the release of Blue Velvet 33 years ago and on through the debut of the long-awaited third season of Twin Peaks just a couple of years ago. The argument regarding Lynch’s treatment of women is so pervasive that Scott Ryan decided to devote an entire issue of his Twin Peaks ’zine The Blue Rose to the women of David Lynch. Ultimately, he has devoted an entire book to that subject. Since Ryan is a man, he is not the most qualified writer to dive into this sensitive topic, and he very wisely keeps a low profile in The Women of David Lynch. Instead he cedes control to thirteen women to explore such topics as Dorothy Valens’s role in Blue Velvet, the roles of non-white women in Twin Peaks, and the roles of all of the female characters in The Elephant Man. There are also interviews with Mädchen Amick of Twin Peaks and Charlotte Stewart of Eraserhead and Twin Peaks, which provide firsthand accounts of what it’s like to be a woman in Lynch’s world.

Most of the authors who contribute to The Women of David Lynch lean toward a more positive assessment of his treatment of women. They believe that he is generally intent on presenting a realistic idea of what it is like to be a women struggling through a patriarchal society. Understandably, the writers who tackle his treatment of non-white female characters are less forgiving, particularly Melanie McFarland, who is the only writer who is very emphatically not a fan of Lynch’s work. However, even she admits that it’s all a matter of interpretation as she cites other women writers who continue to admire Lynch’s work. Lynch is certainly an artist who demands active interpretation from those who take in his often confounding and troubling work.

As much as I love that work, I am one of those fans who is often troubled by the ideas behind his dreamy/disturbing imagery, and I found it very enlightening that many of the women of The Women of David Lynch found some of Lynch’s more controversial characters, such as Dorothy Valens and Mary X of Eraserhead, worthy of empathy and praise. I guess it does come down to interpretation, though just as a guy like Scott Ryan is not the ideal assessor of Lynch’s treatment of women, a guy like me is not the best assessor of the conclusions of the women who contribute to The Women of David Lynch. I can say that several of these writers confirmed some of my negative assessments, but some challenged them for the better, helping me to gain a more thorough appreciation for work I already loved with definite political reservations. While a couple of the more experimental essays didn’t work for me at all (one is written in the parlance of a Facebook post complete with excessive all caps and “LOLs”; another briefly reviews each of Lynch’s features from the pov of a misogynistic murderer on acid), most of these essays are accessible and enlightening, though I’m sure this particular issue will continue to be debated as long as people continue to study the work and women of David Lynch.

Review: 'David Lynch: Someone Is In My House'

David Lynch is mainly known as a creator of film and television, but that is only because film and television are the most popular visual art forms. He actually started living his art life as a painter and illustrator, and has been much, much more prolific in creating such works than film and TV over the past 55-or-so years. This is not news to fans, who have long known that Lynch only began filming in the first place because, as he said in one of his most oft-quoted statements, “I wanted to see my paintings move.”

In a sense, Lynch’s art always moved with or without celluloid. His paintings burst off the materials on which he oozes them. They are swirling, tactile. They are three-dimensional, either because Lynch applies his oils with such a heavy hand or because he actually sinks objects such as glass eyes or dead rats into them. They stare back at you. They seem to decay before your eyes. They speak. They move.

It must madden Lynch to see such massive, dimensional works shrunk down and reproduced on flat paper as they are in the new collection Someone Is in My House (a tie in with an exhibition at the Bonnefantenmuseum in the Netherlands), but as far as art books go, this is a nice one. It infuriates me when artworks are unnecessarily shrunk down for the sake of showing as much white border as possible, and this book does not commit that crime as egregiously as too many other art and photography collections do. This collection also provides a very wide look at Lynch’s varied career, not only presenting many of his paintings, but also his photographs, sculptures, film stills, and even a selection of his “Angriest Dog in the World” comic strips.

Someone Is in My House is also notable for presenting a great deal of work I’ve never seen before. One striking thing about much of this work is how it offers a completely unfiltered gaze into the abyss of his imagination. The dichotomy between Lynch’s affable, charming, sedate personality and the violence and nightmarishness of his films is familiar to anyone who has ever seen Eraserhead or Twin Peaks, but some of the material in this book may shock even the most hardcore fans of his films. Body are mutated and twisted to the extreme across his paintings and manipulated photos. Sexual violence looms queasily in works such as E.D., I Take You to My House, and Do You Want to Know What I Really Think? Works such as Change the Fuckin’ Channel Fuckface and Pete Goes to His Girlfriend’s House distill the explosive anger of Lynch’s most loathsome screen villains from Frank Booth to Fred Madison, and tempt the viewer to conclude that Lynch is only able to suppress similar anger with dedicated meditation. An early sketch depicts an al fresco bestiality orgy. The work is disturbing, sometimes repellant, though sometimes beautiful, like bits clipped from his most harrowing cinematic scenes and dipped in dark oils.

Review: 'David Lynch: The Art Life' Blu-ray Review

David Lynch the filmmaker has been the subject of such documentaries as Toby Keeler’s Pretty As a Picture and Jason S.’s Lynch 1 and Lynch 2. These films were fascinating opportunities to watch Lynch work despite his notorious reluctance to explain the meanings behind his cryptic works. Lynch has also shied away from talking about his personal life aside from a few stock stories, such as his disturbing sighting of a naked, battered woman when he was a child and the violent nightmarishness of his time in Philadelphia. These tales primarily serve as all the explanation he’ll give about the inspirations behind Blue Velvet and Eraserhead respectively.

Director Jon Nguyen and cinematographer Jason S.’s recent documentary David Lynch: The Art Life manages to finally dig deeper into the artist’s origins. Jason S. had apparently been living with Lynch since making Lynch 1 in 2007, allowing him greater access to Lynch’s work, thoughts, and trust. The fruit of this is a revealing story that goes well beyond the stock ones. We learn that Lynch was not just an “Eagle Scout,” as his Twin Peaks-era bio read in full. He also went through a phase as a Bobby Briggs-style J.D., drinking and causing trouble with a bad crowd. He has discussed his parents in stock stories about Donald Lynch’s habit of walking to work in his “ten gallon hat” every day and Edwina Lynch’s refusal to allow her son to use coloring books since she thought it stifled true creativity. In The Art Life he goes beyond those stories to discuss a dad who was deeply disturbed to witness his son’s approach to art that sometimes involves rotting plants and dead animals and a mom who encouraged her son’s creativity but withheld more physical affections. Some stories, such as one involving a neighbor named “Mr. Smith,” are too painful to tell, and he leaves them hanging and elliptical like so much of his film work.

Those films do not get much attention. Lynch’s “pre-professional” movies The Alphabet, The Grandmother, and Eraserhead are discussed briefly, leaving the focus more on his work as a painter and sculptor. His artworks can be very revealing regarding his film work, though. Those who were captivated by Twin Peaks: The Return will be thrilled to see how much of his non-filmic artwork reflects imagery from his recent 18-hour film.

The opportunity to watch Lynch create such works is invigorating too. They are three-dimensional pieces very much in the physical realm, and he creates them using thick, almost alive materials, grabbing and pulling them and spreading them on boards with his hands. I personally found Twin Peaks: The Return to be the most stimulating piece of art I’ve encountered since Lynch’s previous film, Inland Empire, in 2006. Watching him create is equally stimulating. So is hearing him speak. Lynch’s awkwardness and reluctance as a speaker is well known, but that somehow also makes him a mesmerizing communicator, and his is the only voice we hear in the film.

David Lynch: The Art Life comes to blu-ray from the Criterion Collection. The film looks great, making the deliberately Lynchian booth from which he speaks (Ribbon mic. Green trees. Red light) pop off the screen. Of course, it is the less pristine footage of him as a child and teenager, his parents, and behind the scenes footage of his early films that is most electrifying. This disc is oddly short on supplements for an installment in the Criterion Collection, especially considering how much outtake footage Jason S. must have accumulated over ten years, but an interview with director Jon Nguyen makes the main feature even richer and more revealing.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 215

The Date: May 2

The Movie: Eraserhead (1977)

What Is It?: It’s a baby. It’s at the hospital, and you’re the father. Actually, they’re not even sure it is a baby. They just know that it’s the darkest, deepest, funniest nightmare to come out of the original Midnight Movie movement and the deep wells of David Lynch’s mind. I know that it’s my favorite movie, period.

Why Today?: Today is Baby Day!

Farewell, Catherine Coulson

Coulson and Lynch on 
the set of Eraserhead.

Very sad news today: Catherine Coulson, the actress and camera person who became an icon for imparting enigmatic warnings while holding a baby-sized log on "Twin Peaks", has died of cancer at the age of 71. Coulson was one of the eaerliest denizens in Lynchland, helping filmmaker David Lynch make his brilliant debut Eraserhead (her official credit is "assistant camera," though she did a lot more than that, including taking part in some S&M shenanigans in a lost deleted scene). She then appeared in Lynch's short film "The Amputee", an absurdly comedic experiment with film stocks that found her writing a mundane letter while Nurse Lynch cleans her oozing leg stumps. 

However, Coulson would make her biggest impression on screen as Margaret Lanterman, better known as The Log Lady, on Lynch and Mark Frost's series "Twin Peaks". When the show became a phenomenon in 1990, the image of Coulson in her wool sweater holding her log of wisdom was nearly as pervasive in pop culture as that of Sheryl Lee's blue, plastic-wrapped face as Laura Palmer. When Lynch and Frost announced that they would be returning to "Twin Peaks" with a long-awaited third season this year, most fans probably assumed that Catherine Coulson would be lifting the log again. Sadly, that won't be the case. Today I'm sure her friends in the cast and crew have other things on their mind than the future of "Twin Peaks" anyway.

Review: The Criterion Edition of 'Eraserhead'

Eraserhead has been streaming on Hulu as a member of the Criterion Collection for two years, which means excited speculation that Criterion might give it a proper home-media release has also been circulating for years. The ultimate cult movie meets the finest video-distribution company to achieve cult status of its own. That is a relationship much happier than Henry Spencer and Mary X’s.

Review: 'David Lynch: The Factory Photographs'

It seems as though David Lynch has only recently made clear his adoration of abandoned factories, but those who’ve been watching his work from the very start will recognize this has been a long simmering fascination for the artist. Both Henry Spencer in Eraserhead and John Merrick in The Elephant Man live in factory wastelands of black and white. In Dune, the vile Baron Harkonnen resides in a factory world of pipes, ducts, and gangrenous walls. Shortly after making The Elephant Man, Lynch began taking still photos of his favorite environment and continued to through the decades, snapping their looming smoke-stacked exteriors and rusting, shadowed interiors in Poland, Germany, England, and the U.S. Many of the most evocative are collected in Prestel Publishing’s new book David Lynch: The Factory Photographs. This may sound like a willfully nichey novelty, but Lynch has a way of taking the most mundane concept and working his dark alchemy on it, chilling you deeply with ordinary objects like windows, pipes, fans, ducts, bricks, and lighting fixtures. The Factory Photographs is as purely a Lynchian work as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, or his photos of ants crawling on clay heads. And it is not just an assortment of pictures on a single subject; it is a total exploration of that subject’s place in Lynchland. There’s an extensive essay on Lynch’s use of factories across the multitudinous media he has explored, a compendium of Lynch quotes on factories, and reproductions of his factory-inspired paintings and a short interview with the artist himself about this pet topic. Like all of Lynch’s work, The Factory Photographs is something to get lost in, a place to dream.

Ten Outstanding Performances in David Lynch Works

David Lynch a master of conjuring uncanny, dreamy atmosphere, of terrifying viewers with films that aren’t quite horror movies, of blending genres into swirling nightmares that defy pat analysis. This is the stuff of which the term “Lynchian” is made. But let’s not forget that he is also an expert conductor of actresses and actors, and he has superb taste in them despite his cheeky use of specimens like Billy Ray Cyrus every now and then. The emotional and logical demands of a David Lynch script require remarkably talented interpreters and very often result in thoroughly unique, flat-out stunning performances. Here are ten of the greatest.

1. Jack Nance as Henry Spencer in Eraserhead

Jack Nance would deserve a place on this list if for nothing but his commitment. Eraserhead famously took five years to make as Lynch kept running out of money. That meant Nance had to both remain in character for five years and wear Henry Spencer’s—ummm—distinctive hair style for five years. Nance’s work in the film is far more than that though. With a bare minimum of dialogue, he relies on his subtly expressive face and masterfully controlled body language to convey the real emotion roiling away beneath Henry’s placid surface as he contends with his monstrous, mocking baby. The slightest smile conveys a flash of fatherly pride, the upturn of eyebrows conveys his despondency with his lot in life, his restful expression at the end of the film let’s us know that he finally feels loved, and it is a most moving climax. And when Nance does speak, his choked delivery draws out the film’s humor and sadness with expert balance. Lynch regards Nance as one of the most expert actors with whom he’s ever worked and handed roles in almost all of his films to Nance until the actor’s death in 1996.

2. Freddie Jones as Bytes in The Elephant Man

20 Horror and Cult Classics That Deserve the Criterion Treatment

For thirty years, the Criterion Collection has been restoring “important classic and contemporary films” and releasing them back into the wild on laser disc, DVD, and blu-ray. As their inaugural titles—King Kong and Citizen Kane— indicated, Criterion has long had great enthusiasm for horror and cult films. Yet even with more than 700 titles under its belt, Criterion has not refurbished every horror and cult classic that deserves it. Some of the most deserving have not been well served in the blu-ray age by any of the company’s chief rivals either. So for Criterion or Twilight Time or Shout/Scream Factory or any other distribution company with a serious interest in seriously great movies, here are twenty terrifying and strange titles for your consideration.

1. The Fall of the House of Usher (1928- dir. Jean Epstein)

What is it? A masterpiece of bad dreaminess and surreal imagery. An essential French horror film, of which there are few.

Current Region 1 availability Image Entertainment’s 2001 DVD is out of print.

Why Criterion? The Fall of the House of Usher is certainly important in that it is arguably the first great feature-length Edgar Allan Poe adaptation. Its art house status is right up Criterion’s alley. Director Jean Epstein co-wrote the screenplay with Luis Buñuel at the same time he was making “Un Chien Andalou” with Salvador Dali. That short film would make a fabulous bonus feature!

2. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931- dir. Rouben Mamoulian)

What is it? The first and best sound adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s transfiguring horror classic. Released the same year as Dracula and Frankenstein, Paramount’s attempt to pounce on the monster bandwagon trounced Universal’s hits and helped complete the trio of classic monster movie tropes: vampire, creation monster, and transformation monster.

Why Criterion? Beautifully filmed, beautifully acted, and still really disturbing, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is important in that it is the first horror film to score an Oscar (Frederic March shared the best actor award with Wallace Beery). Obviously, it’s a classic for its quality too, though its underdog status next to the ubiquitous Dracula and Frankenstein makes it a perfect candidate for Criterion. MGM certainly doesn’t seem in any rush to restore this one and get it back on the streets.

3. The Old Dark House (1932- dir. James Whale)

What is it? James Whale’s second horror film is an alternately funny and frightening flick with a superb ensemble cast featuring Charles Laughton, Boris Karloff, Lilian Bond, Ernest Thesiger, Gloria Stuart, and Eva Moore.

Why Criterion? Well, Kino can do this one if they like, but if not, Criterion should swoop in and give it the business. Either way I’d be happy.

4. The Black Cat (1934- dir. Edgar G. Ulmer)

What is it? An adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe in name only, Edgar Ulmer’s demented art-deco pairing of Karloff and Lugosi is one of the most deliciously weird entries in the Universal horror canon.

Why Criterion? Well, Universal still has enough interest in this essential title— chosen ahead of The Mummy, the 1943 version of The Phantom of the Opera, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon by a panel of critics for inclusion in The 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die—to rerelease it in 2012, but its failure to refurbish the film for blu-ray is enough indication that an intervention is in order.

5. Mad Love (1935- dir. Karl Freund)

Newly Unearthed David Lynch Video Interview from 1979!

In 1979, Tom Christie was a student at UCLA. On assignment for his television production class he interviewed a young cinematographer named Frederick Elmes and a young filmmaker named David Lynch. Lynch had just released his first feature: a little romantic comedy called Eraserhead. 34 years later, Christie has posted his interview on a little romantic comedy called The Internet, and it is an utterly fascinating time capsule. This is a rare and valuable opportunity to see Lynch discussing his most perfect film upon its release, giving a few tantalizing insights on its making and meaning, and reacting to a few reactions from critics. We also see the wildly varying reactions of an audience exiting a midnight screening at the Nuart cinema. Some find Lynch "inane." Others admit to having already seen Eraserhead eight times. Elmes says a couple of things too.

This is completely necessary viewing for Lynch fans and can be watched here.

Monsterology: Babies

In this ongoing feature on Psychobabble, we’ve been looking at the history of Horror’s archetypal monsters.

Last September, my wife, Elise, and I received the terrifying news. We were told that in nine months, a creature would be bursting out of Elise’s body to menace us for the next eighteen years… perhaps more if it decides not to go away to college. How could this be? Elise hadn’t been exposed to any alien eggs. She hadn’t been visited by Satan after taking a dose of drugged chocolate mousse. At least I don’t think she had. We don’t spend every minute of the day together, you know.

As many, many years of devouring horror movies has taught me, Elise’s pregnancy could have happened any number of ways. After all, a lot of monstrous babies have crawled across the screen. Yet the monster baby is a relatively recent phenomenon. While monstrous children peaked in the early sixties amidst “juvenile delinquency” hysteria with items such as Village of the Damned and the “It’s a Good Life” episode of “The Twilight Zone,” it was not until 1968 that Roman Polanski explicitly monsterized the first stage of life. I say “explicitly” because one could argue that the monster baby was delivered during the haunted summer of 1816 when Mary Shelley conceived Frankenstein. Though we are privy to the Monster’s sketchily described birth in the book, he spends most of it in a state of rebellious and ornery adolescence, pissed off at his inattentive doctor daddy. And we certainly never witness him as a bald little diaper-wearing thing.

Review: 'The Horror Show Guide: The Ultimate Frightfest of Movies'

All right, Mike Mayo, you got me. Based on your rave review in The Horror Show Guide (and I’ll admit, the presence of Naomi Watts), I watched 45 minutes of Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering. That must be the horror guide version of a Rick Roll. I should have known better. Mayo’s taste can be a bit questionable. While he gives the thumbs up to garbage such as The Lawnmower Man, Hollow Man, and the aforementioned Corn movie, he’s pretty dismissive of many of the best movies in his book, among them Bride of Frankenstein, Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Haunting, and Eraserhead. His problem with most of these movies? They’re “dated.” Woo-ee! Does Mike Mayo love that word! There’s barely a review of a film made before 1960 in The Horror Show Guide that escapes it. Gee, a movie from the ’30s is dated? What insight! Well, I can say the same about 1992’s Lawnmower Man, but there is a big difference between its dated early-CGI effects and the “dated” effects in, say, James Whale’s The Invisible Man: Claude Rains’ disappearance remains incredibly charming and impressive, while the sub-ColecoVision frogs and sex robots in Lawnmower Man look like shit. Mayo’s not having any of that, though. The effects in The Invisible Man are “dated.” The humor in Bride of Frankenstein is “dated.” The acting in The Haunting “has aged poorly” (nice variation!).

Still, I can’t completely write off The Horror Show Guide. Mayo has seen a lot of horror movies (though not all of these are horror movies. Whatever their tenuous connections to the genre, Dolores Claiborne, Fellini Satyricon, Ed Wood, and others don’t belong in this book. I was kind of tickled that he included Passion of the Christ, though). Like any good horror guide, his book should be read with a pen and paper in hand to jot down intriguing and unfamiliar titles for future viewing. Just be sure to take his assessments with a big grain of salt, or you may get suckered into seeing something like Children of the Corn IV, or worse, steered away from something like The Haunting.

Psychobabble's 200 Essential Horror Movies: The Complete List

Click the blue links to see detailed reviews of all 150 films decade by decade.

The 1920s

1. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
2. Genuine (1920)

3. The Golem (1920)

4. The Phantom Carriage (1921)

5. Nosferatu (1922)

6. Häxan (1922)

7. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

8. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

9. Faust (1926)

10. The Cat and the Canary (1927)

11. The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)

The 1930s

12. Dracula (1931)

13. Frankenstein (1931)

14. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

20 Things You May Not Have Known About 'Eraserhead'!

I thought I heard a stranger. We've got 20 things you may not have known about the greatest cult movie ever made tonight. Strangest damn things. They're man made. Little damn things. Smaller than my fist. But they're new! Hi, I'm Psychobabble. Oh, printing's your business? Psychobabbling’s mine. For 35 years now we've watched David Lynch’s surrealist masterpiece change from a marginalized movie only fit for the midnight crowd to the celebrated hellhole it is now! I wrote every damn trivial tidbit on this list of 20 Things You May Not Have Known About Eraserhead. People think that trivial tidbits grow on lists. But they sure as hell don't! Look at my knees! Look at my knees!

1. In 1970 David Lynch wrote a screenplay called Gardenback in which the marriage of Henry and Mary is disrupted by adulterous impulses represented by an insectoid monster growing in Henry’s head. These themes of adultery and a ruinous monster born in the head, as well as a couple named Henry and Mary, would soon be reborn in his Eraserhead script.

2. An unfilmed scene in Lynch’s poetic Eraserhead script involved main character Henry Spencer receiving chunks of flesh and bone in the mail, which fuse into a toothy mouth. This sequence was reworked into a sequence in which Henry receives a small worm in his mailbox. The worm grows into a large-mouthed but toothless creature in his cabinet.

3. According to Greg Olson’s Beautiful Dark, Eraserhead was originally supposed to end with the baby growing so large that it swallows Henry, the final image being “Henry’s feet disappearing into the creature’s gaping mouth.”

Psychobabble’s 200 Essential Horror Movies Part 6: The 1970s

In this feature, Psychobabble creeps through 100 years of horror cinema to assemble a highly personal list of the genre’s 200 most monstrous works, decade by decade.

(Updated in September 2021)

93. Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly (1970- dir. Freddie Francis)