Eraserhead

Eraserhead (1977) is David Lynch's debut feature, a surreal horror film you can watch online on iFILM. A black-and-white nightmare about a man trapped in an industrial wasteland of steam, hum and shadow.

Henry Spencer lives alone in a cramped room inside a dead factory town. When his girlfriend gives birth, he becomes the father of something that barely resembles a baby — bandaged, endlessly wailing, impossible to soothe. A dinner with her parents goes wrong. The quiet of his apartment vanishes. And a woman with swollen cheeks sings to him from behind the radiator. Dream and waking life are never split apart here. Jack Nance, with that towering hair, became one of the most recognizable faces in art cinema.

Lynch shot the picture over five years in fits and starts on almost no money, building the soundscape himself from factory drone and infant cries — noise that presses harder than any score. The premiere passed almost unnoticed, then the film found a second life on the midnight circuit and turned cult; Kubrick and Fincher both pointed to it. If you want a movie that refuses to explain itself and plays like a bad dream, stream Eraserhead (1977) online on iFILM.