Eraserhead

I'm watching Eraserhead in bits. So it will last longer. You know those monkey dolls that are small and sit there on their asses and smash two cymbals together and grin? Watching a David Lynch movie is like having one of those dolls only the size of a pickup truck and powered by a generator and it slams the cymbals together at tons of slamming pressure per whack and over and over and over and the banging is real loud and the large monkey creature makes a very loud monkey screech of delight the whole time, and suddenly your best friend accidentally walks between the cymbals and gets whacked senseless and before he can even fall he gets whacked again which kills him, and STILL before he can fall he gets whacked again, and he gets a bit thinner as all his guts start to pour out his skin and splash around against the slamming cymbals and instead of the cymbals making a thrilling cymbal sound they now make a kind of thudding, knocking sound, hitting your buddy, and then he keeps getting hit again and again and getting thinner, but he still doesn't have time to fall and he's just standing there looking out at you, what's left of him, and he is more or less dripping and oozing, not collapsing, to the floor, and he is slowly collecting into a pile between the sitting monkey's legs and this is all being done by a large grinning monkey doll making happy monkey screeches the whole time. Meanwhile a dog walks up and starts eating the dripping sludge you a minute ago were calling Jerry and he was calling you Joe. Meanwhile the monkey has a frozen, intense grin on its face while it's doing this and it doesn't even KNOW it's doing this. It's really really gruesome in a really ridiculous way. It's horrifying and depressing and yet strangely entertaining and wacky-fun. But you're not actually laughing. You're sort of in a staring, weird paralysis of "This is a nightmare from Clown Hell. Nothing really means anything and even madness and death are suicidally amusing, in a quaint and delightful way. But covered in greasy blood and fly-attractant by-products too, of course." And that's what a David Lynch movie is: fun for everybody; the sane and the insane, all equally getting their money's worth. He has no equal. Plus he has a very clear understanding of the difference between right and wrong. He might be the only person left alive who does. So THAT'S kind of mesmerizing. Just the astounding, alien novelty of it. He could probably make Islam quaintly delightful and High Tea in the garden chokingly menacing.