Filmed intermittently over the course of a five-year period, David Lynch's radical feature debut stars Jack Nance as Henry Spencer, a man living in an unnamed industrial wasteland. Upon learning that a past romance has resulted in an impending pregnancy, Henry agrees to wed mother-to-be Mary (Charlotte Stewart) and moves her into his tiny, squalid flat. Their baby is born hideously mutated, a strange, reptilian creature whose piercing cries never cease. Mary soon flees in horror and disgust, leaving Henry to fall prey to the seduction of the girl across the hall (Judith Anna Roberts). An intensely visceral nightmare, Eraserhead marches to the beat of its own slow, surreal rhythm: Henry's world is a cancerous dreamscape, a place where sins manifest themselves as bizarre creatures and worlds exist within worlds. Interpreting the film along the lines of Lynch's claims that it's the product of his own fears of fatherhood may make Eraserhead easier to digest on a narrative level, if need be.
~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide