Try as I might, it's impossible to avoid David Lynch when reviewing the 1970s generally, and the art house movie, more specifically, though it's not for want of trying. Mr. Lynch's films have long infuriated me and I've tried to look at them with an open mind. Still, I'm constantly frustrated when thinking about his body of work and while trying to assemble interesting commentary when his work holds zero appeal.

Perhaps what's most surprising about Lynchian movies, time and time again though, is how much more interesting the discussion about them is rather than the movies themselves. From The Elephant Man, his most mainstream film, through Blue Velvet, his most celebrated film, with sidesteps like Wild at Heart, his studio work with Dune and the famous foray into television with Twin Peaks, I have found Lynch's work to be inaccessible, distant and in every way difficult to enjoy.

They uniformly lack plots or characters within the tradition of older films and the connections made between themes and ideas in each of his movies bleeding into the others requires more attention than I can support. While some look upon these tendencies and name them genius, I'm left with a sense of being robbed and not getting it when it seems obvious to other people I otherwise regard quite highly.

Lynch has thus inspired a legion of fans anticipating his every film with the kind of devotion often reserved for family members and paychecks. In this regard I don't hold a similar fascination, nor do I imagine I ever will. Yet I've come across Lynchians and their slavish celebration of his person, work and occasional forays into the other plastic arts that remains a convincing argument for artists who occupy a limited, though vibrant, substrata of society's cultural lifeblood.

I believe the difficult, provocative and obtuse aspects of creation are often the fountain of true originality and revolution. I also believe there is a place for committed cultural producers, whatever their form or outlet, and I'm gladdened by the fact of how someone as uninteresting as David Lynch is to me can be lauded as one of the great filmmakers by others occupying a different place and perspective.

Be that as it may, I am aware of how Eraserhead is the anchor upon which Lynch's career has been based not only because it was his debut movie but because it is filled with some of the subjects and themes now so emblematic of his artistic stamp. A cult film of the highest order it's also unpleasant, surreal, slow moving and repulsive with a nightmare world of possibly post-apocalyptic origin and an industrial backdrop of endlessly grinding smoke stacks and clacking machines.

Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) is the lead character in this landscape of barren depression in a building all but abandoned of cheer, let alone any lively human inhabitants. His girlfriend, Mary X (Charlotte Stewart), the child of an horrific marriage between Mr. and Mrs. X (Allen Joseph and Jeanne Bates, respectively), results in the birth of Henry's monster-child that squeals in the night and otherwise inflicts discomfort on all those around it.

Meanwhile Henry fantasizes about the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall (Judith Anna Roberts), toils at his non-descript job and listens to the singing Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near) dreaming of heaven, anywhere but here. His life is filled with material objects with lives of their own, fantasies of wish fulfillment in far-off places of ill-defined location and a variety of sexual hang-ups and images that frighten Henry even while exciting him.

Because the plot is nominally important, and because the movie stands more on its images, sounds and reputation than anything else, it's to the extra-text, the events and reactions to the films, that most interests me. Opinions aside, Lynch's debut feature, like every other movie, has a history and story often times more interesting than the work produced through such a backdrop.

A sometime artist and student at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles County, Lynch was put upon with the '70s goal of creating a more personal cinema by also having to fulfill his course of study. Drafting a 20-page long script that was one-fifth the typical size of feature film scripts, he fought an on-going battle with AFI to provide financial assistance for the film he eventually produced, edited, wrote, directed and co-scored.

Also relying on a mix of sources for funding that included AFI and his circle of family and friends, Eraserhead's budget was $10,000. Given its modest resources the film was further hampered by circumstances that took some five years to see its completion. One cause of this piecemeal method was the practical impact of the film's shaky funding. Another was the crew's dependence on locations where sets were erected, taken down and re-erected over and over again to make room for other work until Lynch was able to complete principal photography. During that same five-year period, star Jack Nance kept his hair in the eraser head style so closely associated as the signature image of the film.

Edited, scored, copied and exhibited with the two taglines, "In Heaven Everything Is Fine" and, "Warning: the nightmare has not gone away," Eraserhead was immediately associated with, and written off by many as being, just another B-movie. It became a midnight movie favorite and made headway in mostly urban theaters where such fare proved highly popular with alternative audiences. Playing in this way for months and sometimes years Eraserhead also made a name for David Lynch and saw his possibly limited experimental intentions become the stuff of movie town legend.

While Eraserhead didn't set any box office records, it also failed to win, let alone find nomination for, any major awards and it failed to make an impression with the mass audience so highly regarded by commercial moviemakers. What it did manage was to tap into a sizable non-mainstream audience ready for more provocative, difficult and challenging work than was immediately available in the American scene quickly being reformed by the blockbuster mentality post-Jaws.

Just as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Annie Hall its top honor for Best Picture of the year, and as Star Wars, Saturday Night Fever and Close Encounters of the Third Kind burned up the box office with fantasies about wish fulfillment and traditional heroes, Lynch's debut movie turned such themes on end. It eschewed a plot driven narrative including sympathetic, attractive characters and relied on an aesthetics born from its poverty row budget and production circumstance.

The film also inflicts a response in its viewer rather than inviting any kind of identification. Knowing our comfort is not Lynch's goal re-centers us on the film's experimental quality and it's this emphasis that sets it apart from mainstream movies of the same period.

More remarkable still is the way Lynch has ascended the Hollywood system along with failing to mimic its patterns and still finding ways to fuel his independent visions and pursuits. In the end, this independence, this affront to popularity in favor of that which is best celebrated along the margins of society, that which becomes the midnight film in something like Eraserhead, is also what demonstrates Lynch's artistry, for good or bad.