Henry resides alone in a bleak apartment surrounded by industrial gloom. When he discovers that an earlier fling with Mary X left her pregnant, he marries the expectant mother and has her move in with him. Things take a decidedly strange turn when the couple's baby turns out to be a bizarre lizard-like creature that won't stop wailing.

Eraserhead marks the beginning of Lynch's work, who left us this past January, and remains an unresolved mystery. The opening sequence invites us into an unexpected universe—one unlike our own. Against a dark background floats a rough-textured planet, upon which Henry's head dissolves and drifts like a satellite. The planet's mineral-like surface hides a grotesque man looking out a window. Henry vomits sperm, and when the grotesque man operates a machine, the sperm falls onto the planet's water. Is this a planet in space? The delusional inner world of the man vomiting semen? Or the eerie gateway of a nightmare built by the machinery of film? We 'erase our heads' and face this opening scene once again. (Kim Byeonggyu)