Eraserhead
David Lynch's startling debut feature is a lasting cult sensation influenced by the writings of Franz Kafka and Nikolai Gogol. This densely packed tale has to be experienced on the big screen to be fully understood.
A love story between a pencil factory worker and his girlfriend set in a dystopian industrial wasteland, this midnight classic is anything but a romance. Mutant babies, singing women who live inside radiators, dancing roasted chickens, and a perpetually confused-looking Jack Nance (Twin Peaks) starring as Henry Spencer.
Critics and filmmakers alike have canonized Eraserhead as a touchstone in film history, and both Stanley Kubrick and H.R. Giger have cited it as their favorite film (Kubrick screened it repeatedly during the filming of The Shining to try to impart the desired tone for his film on the cast and crew). In 2004 it was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.