Of the newborn which stars second to the titular Eraserhead, Jack Nance (who would later die with a crescent moon-shaped bruise around his eye): The most unlikely theory is that the entity was man-made, perhaps crafted with Play-Doh or papier-mâché and what can only be described as “movie magic” to match real skin and organs. A more realistic idea casts the baby as a dead animal. It is oft posited that filmmaker David Lynch wrapped an embalmed calf fetus in swaddling cloth. However, one might Google Image cow miscarriages to find their snouts are much more pronounced. With its flat front cranium, the baby’s visage instead matched the head of a rabbit, but one would need a similarly smooth brain to miss its lack of bunny ears. Complicating the mystery of what the baby was are two related questions: How did it move and how did it cry? There is only one solution to all three: Up until the filming of Eraserhead‘s climax, in which the baby is gutted, beating, bleeding innards exposed, the child was a living being. What remains to be explained is the baby’s conception, and both potential explanations involve the method acting of Charlotte Stewart, who played the child’s mother. It must be taken into account that, strangely enough, human sperm cannot produce offspring that resembles sperm. That leaves an immaculate conception on the table. Perhaps Lynch, a longtime proponent of the occult practice of Transcendental Meditation, used Aleister Crowley’s Moonchild as a guide and locked Stewart in his secret garden for nine months while he channeled his Will through the lunar cycles, which are Heaven, Hell, and Heaven-in-Hell, the Great Menstruation, bypassing insemination by dealing directly with the Triple Goddesses. While Lynch’s familiarity with Crowley’s novel was later verified by the presence of the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks, one must not ignore Moonchild‘s own derivation from the once-Biblical Book of Enoch, which presents an extraterrestrial race of angels that descends upon Earth for the express purpose of making love to human women, who then give birth to inhumans known as Nephilim. Ufologists posit this and similar ancient tales as early examples of the universal alien abduction scenario. Did Stewart sleep with a horny little grey? If so, then she knows that thing wasn’t a baby.
— Luke U., also known as Milwaukee’s Worst, is a disillusioned MFA student in poetry. His interests lie in apocalyptic Christianity and the American unknown.
APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL 