Eraserhead

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” wrote Tolstoy – and then there is Eraserhead. Quoted almost as often as the opening of Anna Karenina is the nugget that David Lynch made his first, horrified feature in response to his status as a new father. But the monstrous baby is only part of a wider freakout. The whole family structure is a nightmare – on display in the dinner scene where Jack Nance’s woebegone Henry meets his prospective in-laws. Danny Leigh