Why eraserhead disband

Thankfully, this is a drum that should continue to make noise for decades to come. Significantly, even though this Blu-ray is filled with bonus materials that tell the story of how the film came to be, it nevertheless manages to leave its deepest mysteries—from what it is all "supposed to mean" to the exact mechanics behind the presentation of the baby—as perplexing as ever.

When "Eraserhead" premiered in , it received largely poor reviews and minuscule returns at the box office and might have drifted off into obscurity were it not for the efforts of distributor Ben Barenholtz, whose championing of Alejandro Jodorowsky's " El Topo " a few years earlier made it a cult sensation through regular screenings on the then-developing midnight movie circuit. Based on little more than a gut feeling, Barenholtz took the film on, and, even after its initial playdates met with little success, he continued to have faith in it and convinced a theater owner in New York to keep it on until it eventually developed a loyal fan base that kept it playing for the next few years and made it one of the most in famous of all cult movies.

Much like the image of Harold Lloyd dangling from the clock, even people who haven't seen the film certainly recognize the iconic image of Henry and his inimitable hairdo. Today, this would be all but unheard of—even if the midnight movie scene existed as it once did, a film of this sort would almost certainly be relegated to a couple of underground festivals and even if a distributor were to take a chance on booking it commercially, it is unlikely they would have the patience to give it a chance to attract viewers before yanking it in order to play something with a better chance of attracting audiences.

As a result, watching "Eraserhead" today can be a somewhat melancholic experience in this regard for those who once experienced it in its after-hours glory and realize that the time when something like this could thrive has long since passed.

This is ironic considering that the film is one of the few midnight movies that actually plays well at home—provided that your home system is set up properly and the Blu-ray offers up a calibration test to help with that —as it is arguably only one that does not exactly lend itself to the collective moviegoing experience in the manner of such contemporaries as " The Rocky Horror Picture Show " or "Pink Flamingoes. David Lynch would, of course, go on to become one of the most controversial and acclaimed filmmakers of our time and his idiosyncratic visions would even strike chords with mainstream audience, as evidenced by the commercial success of such projects as "The Elephant Man" which he was hired for largely due to producer Mel Brooks's fascination with "Eraserhead" , "Blue Velvet," "Twin Peaks" and "Mullholland Drive.

Granted, the film may not be for everyone my mother considers the title to be a dirty word, though she did dig " Mulholland Drive " but for those who manage to find themselves on its admittedly peculiar wavelength, "Eraserhead" continues to be a stunning work that quite simply redefines what a feature film can do both to and for audiences willing to take the journey. Peter Sobczynski is a contributor to eFilmcritic.

Yano's self-titled debut album went quadruple platinum. The band embarked on a grueling tour schedule that had them crisscrossing the archipelago. As a measure of the group's mainstream acceptance, February found them performing their anti-Edsa anthem "Kumusta Na? The irony was, apparently, lost on the organizing committee.

To mark the occasion, Yano appeared on the cover of this magazine, riding a rag picker's pushcart on Edsa in front of the People Power monument. And then -- nothing. Most people assumed that the band had simply used up their 15 minutes of fame. It happened to everyone, eventually. For a few months, Yano tried to soldier on, but lead vocalist Dong Abay was conspicuously absent. Within the music community, a few dark rumors started surfacing, most of them centering on Dong Abay.

Some said the singer was in rehab, a common enough occurence in the music biz. But others hinted that he had flipped out, suffered a nervous collapse so complete that it effectively scuttled the band's career. Some years later, the Philippine Collegian lent some credence to the latter theory. In an article on "The Most Influential UP Students of the '90s," it said that many believe the singer to have gone insane.

The truth is not quite so dramatic, but no less crippling. That I just got back, that I still have jet lag. The entire episode seems like a distant, barely-remembered time. He simply stopped caring about anything, and retreated from the world into his own mind.

Warning signs began showing while Abay was still active in the band. Stressed out by the band's touring schedule, feeling the pressure for a follow-up to the first album, singing his songs in front of a live audience stopped being fun, and began to feel more like a merciless grind. I stood there before the audience, then I'd open my mouth. It wasn't fun at all," he says.

It came to a point when the rest of the band would pick him up at his place, they would do the gig, and he would go back home or to his hotel room - all without saying a word. Like a zombie. After a while, he stopped going to the gigs altogether.

The rest of the band tried to pick up the slack. For a time, Gancio or Badiang did the vocals. Yano's third album was recorded pretty much without Abay's participation. Especially when you consider, say, that Lynch became a vegetarian after making this film, and that his daughter was unplanned, and born with severely deformed feet, which required extensive surgery to repair. So much of this film is in the incredible visuals, the superlative sound design, and the sheer uncanniness Lynch builds by pairing them.

How much of the importance of this film is in the experience for you, and how much is in interpretation or analysis? Or film in general. I never got that about this movie before this most recent viewing. That said, and to bring us all the way back to the first issue you raise, I found this viewing informed from having spent a lot of time thinking about Twin Peaks lately.

The radiator world seems like a precursor to the Black Lodge in many ways. Would following that logic make the Lady In The Radiator a kind of demonic force? Maybe we should start from the end and work backward. Blue Velvet dreamed of a suburban idyll of blue skies and manicured lawns, and Twin Peaks laid out a mountain community of good neighbors and simple pleasures.

They had their sinister undercurrents, but by contrast, Eraserhead offers no such sensuality or relief from darkness. Though Spencer does get time with the alluring Beautiful Girl Across The Hall Judith Anna Roberts , even that is fraught with the wails of the mutant baby and the opening of an eerie, primordial bath around them. After starting with The Man In The Planet Jack Fisk adjusting the levers that control the universe—suggesting the gears of predetermination that mangle free will—Lynch follows Spencer as he carries a bag of groceries through a cold industrial landscape.