Eraserhead

In Brief: In honor of the return of David Lynch's Twin Peaks, the Asheville Film Society will be celebrating with the writer/director's first feature, Eraserhead. The film had a difficult birth, with principal photography taking years and audience reactions icy prior to its resurrection as a midnight movie on the cult arthouse circuit. A surrealist masterpiece exploring masculinity, fatherhood and spirituality through a lens that is pure Lynch, Eraserhead is unquestionably one of the strangest and most powerful films ever made — simultaneously beautiful and repulsive, ecstatic and nihilistic. This was my second-date "test" movie for years, which may go a long way to explaining why I'm single. At any rate, it's an example of a true auteur at work and still easily ranks amongst Lynch's best films, with much of the distinctive aesthetic that would come to define his subsequent oeuvre already in place. If you've never seen it on the big screen, you haven't really seen it — bring a date at your own risk.