Line #13 YMMV/ERaserhead


1	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
2	** Is Henry a put-upon man, a neurotic womanizer, or, indeed, completely insane? Did Henry kill his child out of disgust/hatred? Or was he trying to put the child out of its misery?
3	** Is the Lady in the Radiator as real as the Baby or is she just an abstraction of Henry's fantasies? If she is an abstraction, what exactly does she [[RuleOfSymbolism represent]]? Some have suggested that she is a figure of hope while others believe she is Henry's wish to commit suicide.
4	** The Man in the Planet's role is also subject to various interpretations. It's hinted that he is responsible for the Baby's appearance and birth and that he can manipulate a planet, which may or may not be Earth, but the film overall is vague about his identity and purpose. It's possible that he is some sort of deity or perhaps just another figment of Henry's imagination.
5	** Bogleech offers a [[https://bogleech.com/cinema/mm14-eraserhead very sympathetic interpretation]] of the Baby, in which (weird cackling aside) it's really just a victim of the bleak, toxic world that spawned it.
6	* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: Not that the ''rest'' of the film makes much sense...
7	** The family dinner scene has bizarre events, most notoriously the bleeding chicken.
8	** In what appears to be a hallucination, a machine uses Henry's decapitated head to create pencils.
9	** The twenty or so minutes of deleted scenes from the original print (now lost) were supposedly cut for being ''too much'' BLAM...
10	* EnsembleDarkHorse:
11	** The Baby is one due to the SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome. Its special effects have aged rather well and to this day, viewers describe it as disturbingly realistic.
12	** The Lady in the Radiator is popular due to her creepy singing appearance.
13	* EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory: The main plot is a metaphor about a man who is not ready for marriage or fatherhood, but some parts of the film are more ambiguous, such as the ending, the Man in the Planet, and the Lady in the Radiator.
14	* HilariousInHindsight: The Baby somewhat resembles [[Film/ETTheExtraterrestrial E.T.]]
15	* IAmNotShazam: There is nobody named "Eraserhead" in this movie. Despite what you might think, the title doesn't refer to Henry's haircut, [[spoiler: it refers to a scene in the movie where somebody makes pencils out of his severed head]]. It MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext.
16	* NauseaFuel: The Baby is likely to make you feel squeamish, especially in the scene where it gets sick and when Henry kills it.
17	* SignatureScene: For many viewers, the scene that sticks out the most is the Lady in the Radiator singing "In Heaven (Everything is Fine)".
18	* {{Squick}}: See NightmareFuel and add the worms (quite possibly giant sperm) that are everywhere.
19	** They may ''symbolize'' giant sperm, but they ''are'' umbilical cords swiped out of a hospital dumpster. One assistant stepped on one accidentally and was so disgusted that she quit the whole production.
20	** Another interpretation is that the worms are developing fetuses of monster-children much like the baby Henry and Mary already produced.
21	** And the chicken on Henry's plate that appears to be, um, [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything menstruating.]]
22	* TearJerker: Henry does his best to take care of the Baby, but it's clearly suffering in spite of his efforts, and wouldn't live for long even if Henry never picked up those scissors.
23	* UglyCute:
24	** The Baby is basically a logical extreme of the things that make newborn babies cute, with a wrinkly head and unmoving body that’s swaddled up in cloth. That being said, it can still be seen as cute to the watcher.
25	** The Lady in the Radiator isn't too ugly since her main deformities are her oddly-shaped cheeks. Some reviewers have even described her as a twisted reflection of Creator/MarilynMonroe.
26	* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: Virtually everything, but especially The Baby. To this day, we ''still'' don't know exactly how it was made.
27	* TheWoobie: There are some characters in the film that you'd simply have to pity.
28	** Henry deserves sympathy for being left by Mary X to raise the Baby alone.
29	** The Baby itself has a difficult existence [[spoiler:and ends up killed by its father]].

Context YMMV / ERaserhead