10 Cult Movies Filmed In Black And White

3. Eraserhead (1977)

A very unsettling, experimental debut from David Lynch, Eraserhead concerns the travails of Spencer, whose girlfriend Mary X is pregnant. They have to live together in Spencer's one bedroom apartment and care for the child which is wrapped in swaddling and resembles a weird animal and not a human baby. The 'infant' screams excessively and drives Mary X crazy. She leaves Spencer to care for the baby. He does his best and is rewarded with a rendezvous with the beautiful girl across the hall. Spencer is plagued by all sorts of weird hallucinations and visions. He goes back to the beautiful girl across the hall, but she has started taking men in. Absolutely crushed, Spencer removes the swaddling of the squealing child only to find it has no skin. Its internal organs spill everywhere and he stabs them. This weirdness crescendos to a very odd ending. Eraserhead is a classic body horror cult movie whose vivid imagery and dream like sequences have become a favourite among the film cognoscenti. The film seems to portray a terror of fatherhood and resultant babies. The 'infant' is a hideous creation and its constant screaming would drive you to the nearest vodka bottle in an attempt to drown out the squawking. It is another film that works very well as a black and white movie - enhancing the surreal and hallucinatory subject matter, lending Lynch a blank card on which to play out his demented fantasies. The whole affair is very trippy and if you are watching it for the first time, you may wonder whether someone has slipped something into your drink. It's not drugs, it's just David Lynch in his most feverishly creative state.