I try to write my blog entries a week or two in advance, so this is hardly the space for breaking news. But even by my standards, I’m a little embarrassed by how late the upcoming posts are arriving.

Visionary director David Lynch died on January 16 at the age of 78. A couple of weeks later, I started watching (or re-watching) his ten feature films in order with the aim of writing about them here as a tribute to the legendary filmmaker.

It took me about a month to get them all in, and by then I was knee deep in my 2024 movie coverage. I jumped into the 1976 Decades posts after that, so I’m only now getting to Lynch. My apologies to the late master.

As in my deep dives of Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson, I will write a little bit about each of Lynch’s feature films and wrap things up next week with my personal ranking of his films.

Both Andersons have released new movies since I dug into their filmographies, so I suppose I should polish those up at some point. Lynch, sadly, will not direct again, so this ranking will be definitive.

Note: Lynch was a consummate artist who wrote, painted, composed music, and crafted dozens of short films throughout his career. My exploration will cover only the ten feature length movies he directed between 1977 and 2006.

He started that run with 1977’s Eraserhead, perhaps the most iconic surrealist art film of all time. The black and white body horror movie follows a man named Henry Spencer, inhabitant of an industrial hellscape, as he starts a family with his girlfriend, Mary.

If that synopsis sounds rather normal, it’s because I’ve left out that their baby looks like a small, limbless E.T., that a deformed lady in the radiator sings cabaret, and that Henry’s disembodied head winds up in a factory where it is converted into pencil erasers. Also, a dinner with the in-laws features a cornish game hen that writhes in pain and spews blood when carved.

Is all of the disturbing weirdness a dream? A hallucination? Reality? Or is it missing the point to even ask those questions? Lynch’s films aren’t meant to be solved but experienced.

That said, the most popular reading of Eraserhead positions it as a nightmare about new fatherhood. Lynch conceived of the film after his own daughter, Jennifer, was born with severely clubbed feet that required surgery. He channeled his fear and anxiety into dozens of startling images that could only come from his brilliantly deranged imagination.

Critics at the time didn’t know what to make of Eraserhead. It was dismissed as alternately pretentious and sophomoric. That didn’t keep it from becoming a decent-sized hit (earning $7 million against a $100,000 budget) and becoming a cult classic, watched on basement VHS players by many a pothead over the years.

The critics came around eventually, identifying the movie as a touchstone for avant garde filmmaking that crosses over to some semblance of the mainstream.

Eraserhead is far from my favorite Lynch film, but I admire its audacity, its brilliant visual effects and sound design, and its dark humor. It’s a perfect start to a career like no other.