ERASERHEAD

Director: David Lynch

Starring: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Laurel Near,  Allen Joseph, Jeanne Bates

Lynch’s first commercially released film is also his bleakest, and least accessible, playing like some freakish student film. It’s also very compelling, if you happen to be on its wavelength, and contains some of cinema’s most strikingly surreal imagery.

Universal’s Region 2 DVD, apparently the first version to be released anywhere in the world, presents the film in full-frame ratio, which doesn’t ring entirely true. The image is soft, as you might expect from a film that only cost $10,000, but pretty clean, and relatively stable. The sound is 2.0 stereo (at 192kbps), (the film was remixed for a theatrical re-release a couple of years ago), and, although not as elaborate as you might expect given Lynch’s typically dense use of sound, generally tight and focused. The film is supported by a 40” trailer, a couple of pages of Lynch biography and a filmography that – once again – has been lifted wholesale and without credit from the Internet Movie Database.

David Lynch's own site offers members a re-mastered version of the film on an exclusive boutique disc, and a re-mastered widescreen, 16:9-enhanced "Complete Edition" is available in Japan.