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Saturday, January 28, 2006

Amazon recommended WHAT?!?

Lately I've been on Amazon.com a lot, either for casual browsing or placing some orders. Last month I used it to get the King Kong DVD and a really good book, also about King Kong. The Batman Begins 2-disc DVD that Lisa got me for Christmas also came in that order. She's looked on Amazon for materials to use in the music classes that she teaches, and in the past few days I had them ship some books to a friend going through a difficult situation right now. All things considered, we haven't used Amazon to look for anything really... unusual.

So tonight I go back to the Amazon homepage and was startled - before starting laughing - to see that it had this DVD "Recommended for you":

David Lynch's 1977 movie Eraserhead. I heard about this years ago (back when I was a fan of Lynch's Twin Peaks show) but have never seen it. Or done anything remotely near looking for it. I've no idea why the heck Amazon though this is something that would satisfy some dire need or burning curiosity of mine. Here's the plot synopsis that Amazon gives for it:
"Is it a nightmare or an actual view of a post-apocalyptic world? Set in an industrial town in which giant machines are constantly working, spewing smoke, and making noise that is inescapable, Henry Spencer lives in a building that, like all the others, appears to be abandoned. The lights flicker on and off, he has bowls of water in his dresser drawers, and for his only diversion he watches and listens to the Lady in the Radiator sing about finding happiness in heaven. Henry has a girlfriend, Mary X, who has frequent spastic fits. Mary gives birth to Henry's child, a frightening looking mutant, which leads to the injection of all sorts of sexual imagery into the depressive and chaotic mix."
HOW does Amazon think I wanna see this after only looking for some classic music CDs and a couple of Star Wars books?!

But I like Lynch's style (based on what I've seen of his anyway) and have a thing for black and white movies, and that DVD cover looks pretty darned whacked not to at least look into it sometime, maybe on Netflix. Maybe I will sooner or later. Anyway, I just thought it was pretty funny that Amazon would recommend something like that, considering we haven't done anything (that I know of) that would trigger that kind of connection from Eraserhead to what we usually look for on their site.

3 comments:

Brandon said...

I found Eraserhead to be just plain disturbing. The scenes with the baby (that resembles some type of horse fetus) were unsettling. I really got nothing out of it whatsoever. Of course, I'm not the biggest Lynch fan to begin with.

Watch at your own peril.

Chris Knight said...

Hey Brandon, did you know that Lynch was offered the chance by George Lucas to direct Return of the Jedi? But he turned that down so that he could direct Dune instead. Makes you wonder what a Lynch-made Star Wars movie would have been like.

After doing some more looking into it, I don't know if I could watch Eraserhead either. I found a picture of the "baby" and it was one of the sickest things I've ever seen relating to a movie.

I notice that Henry AKA "Eraserhead" is played by Jack Nance. As long as I live I'll never forget those immortal words he uttered on the first episode of Twin Peaks: "She's DEAD, wrapped in PLASTIC!"

Roch101 said...

Yeah, "Eraserhead" is disturbing, but facinating too both in tone and style. I'd recommend it.