He had better get used to it though because one scene transition later and Henry and Mary are living in Henry's small apartment together with their child. This is no ordinary adorable human baby though, this little guy is some kind of alien-looking creature whose disturbing to look at and is wrapped up in a big bandage. This organism is, like any newborn baby, constantly crying at night to the point that Mary's inability to sleep leads her to leave both Henry and their child. Now it's just Henry and this child of his and being cooped up with this creature is starting to drive Henry batty as signaled by the pervasive use of surreal sequences meant to visually depict his mental turmoil.
Like most of David Lynch's works, Eraserhead makes heavy use of unorthodox narratives, with this particular motion picture being so stylized and surreal in its storytelling that it makes something already pretty nuts like mother! look like The Choice. Large stretches of the movie go by without the aid of dialogue as only stark imagery is used to carry the plot from Point A to Point B while frequent hard cuts to certain images are intentionally supposed to instill nothing short of terrified surprise from the viewer. In order to thrust the viewer into the escalatingly fractured mindset of its lead character, Lynch makes heavy use of truly unsettling imagery and it's a bold filmmaking movie that certainly pays off.
Just the very first shot of Henry and Mary's unholy offspring was enough to unnerve me, this thing is just incredibly disturbing to look at and the little moans of....pain, I guess, it's constantly uttering only make this creation all the more perturbing to gaze upon thus fulfilling the movie's goal of thoroughly discomforting the viewer. Impressive practical effects are used to bring this creature to life and it's quite impressive how polished of a production Eraserhead considering that it's highly unlikely that this avant-garde horror movie was able to garner all that high of a budget (I was unable to track down an official budget for the feature as of this writing).
The money used on the project has also clearly gone into the single suave location of the entire film, an old-timey stage where an alien woman performs a number of soothing musical numbers that are meant to be a contrast to the highly intense sequences that comprise the rest of the movie, which include a truly uncomfortable (intentionally so) dinner Henry shares with Mary X's relatives that takes the discomfort that can arise in interacting with your significant other's extended family and plopping it into the confines of David Lynch's visions of a post-apocalyptic landscape where people have grown accustomed to the horrors this perilous new world offers.
Watching these three or four actors interact with other in this dinnertime scene, I had the same thought I had when I was watching Moulin Rouge earlier this year which was "What was it like to film this?" Just like Moulin Rouge, there had never been anything quite like Eraserhead before and I'm sure the actors, while they were filming this, weren't able to comprehend what exactly this project would end up being. What did Eraserhead end up becoming exactly? Well, it's a superb debut feature film for David Lynch and a demonstration of the adherence to filtering normal human emotions through surreal tendencies that would mark his career. Eraserhead also became the reason that damn alien baby thing keeps haunting my nightmares, seriously, that's such a disturbing creature.
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