male narrator: Thinking about having children?
- Aah! - [screams]
narrator: You might wanna watch this first...
[crowd screaming]
- The girls hate Carrie because she's different.
[dramatic musical sting]
- She is the hero wronged by society.
[scary music]
And, society, this is what you get.
♪
- Bring them back here. Right here to me!
♪
- You say a child is a bad seed...
Everyone knows what you mean.
- Something that's supposed to be so innocent
becoming so evil.
- [screaming]
- And now it's something that can harm you.
- You don't know what's going on inside that kid.
- Leave us alone.
- Maybe they're just being a weird kid,
or maybe you're about to die.
- "Children of the Corn" is, like,
the ultimate creepy kid flick.
- We want to give you peace.
- You're just like, "Oh, these kids are [bleep]."
[laughs]
- What could be more frightening
than your child gone wrong?
- [screams]
- People without children don't realize how lucky they are.
- [screams]
[eerie music]
♪
- [screams]
narrator: The chilling children of horror
come in many forms.
- Help me.
narrator: Some are born with the seeds of evil
lurking inside them.
- [screams]
narrator: A few are good kids possessed by evil entities.
- And I'm the devil.
narrator: And then there's Carrie,
a good girl who does some very bad things.
Based on Stephen King's terrifying debut novel,
"Carrie" begins with blood and trauma.
Sissy Spacek plays a teenage girl so sheltered and naive,
that when she has her first menstruation
in a high school shower, she thinks she's dying.
- Help me! Help me!
- Have a tampon.
narrator: And her classmates brutally shame her for it.
- Hey, Norma,Carrie's on her period.
- I don't even think we're thinking about what happened,
or what's wrong with her;
we're just dis-- just repelled by her.
It's really about how mean kids can be,
and if you're different, we're gonna torture you.
You know? And you will pay for it.
girls: Put it on, put it on, put it on, put it on!
narrator: The traumatic passage into womanhood
awakens Carrie's latent psychic powers.
[horrific musical sting]
[lightbulb shatters]
Carrie's tormenters are punished for their cruelty.
Bad girl Chris is out for revenge,
while good girl Sue wants to atone for her sin.
She persuades her boyfriend to ask Carrie to the senior prom.
- If you don't have a date to the prom next Friday,
would you like to go with me?
♪
- I always saw him as conflicted,
but always very virtuous, wanting to do the right thing.
- I've been invited to the prom.
- Prom?
narrator: The abuse Carrie suffers at school
pales next to what she endures
from her hyper-religious mother.
- [screams]
- It's extraordinary to me that people were frightened by me
because it was such a--it was like a vacation for me,
and I hadn't laughed that much in a long time at myself.
The boys. Yes, the boys.
[tense music]
After the blood come the boyslike sniffing dogs.
- Really, you have in Margaret White someone who is terrified
that the world is going to
tear her daughter apart,
and almost preemptively, she starts to tear her apart
before the world gets a chance to do it.
- Mama, I'll get them. Please sit and talk to me!
[scary music]
[thunder cracks]
I'm going, Mama.
narrator: Carrie's prom shows director Brian De Palma
at his best,
balancing technical virtuosity
with strong emotional storytelling.
- The prom scene took two to three weeks to shoot.
It was the longest sequence in the film.
It was the big set piece, of course.
Nobody I've worked with has done as many takes as Brian.
- That prom scene is just really muscular filmmaking.
Like, just what he's doing with the camera
is so exciting.
- Why am I here with you?
- [laughs]
Because I asked you.
- You know, even when they're dancing,
and the camera's revolving around them,
and it just starts spinning out of control,
it shouldn't work, and it's--it's really uncanny.
- Carrie, we're here.
- She's, you know, been cocooned for her whole life
with this oppressive religious mother,
and then finally she gets a chance
to emerge as this beautiful butterfly.
[laughter]
You really begin to feel this sense of hope.
[dramatic musical sting]
And then what happens after that
is just tragic.
- Can I have your ballot, please?
narrator: Carrie's enemies rig the ballots
so she becomes prom queen,
and so they can spring a terrible trap.
- I think everyone always responds to that movie,
where, like,
"We just want it to turn out differently this time."
♪
She's happy; you know, she's just happy for the first time,
and we're so happy to see that
and dreading what we know is coming,
and then it all explodes.
♪
- [gasps]
- Drenched in blood, Carrie snaps,
and her psychic powers erupt.
♪
- Sissy Spacek's eyes-- she's covered in blood,
but her eyes are really big and blue.
[laughter]
- I remember the first time I saw that,
I think I backed up a little bit and went,
"Oh, no, oh, this is bad. This is bad.
I've never seen her mad yet. I haven't seen her mad yet."
♪
- She splits, and De Palma splits the screen.
[electrical crackling]
And when Carrie's personality splits,
and she just looks, it's like the other side takes over.
It's like in the beginning
she has this little bit of power with the drop of blood,
but when she's covered in blood,
that's when it really comes out,
and she's like, "I'm going to make you pay."
- [screaming]
- Somewhere inside every girl,
they can relate to this idea
of feeling like, "My power has been taken away from me,
"and what would I do
if I got all that power and then some back?"
[dramatic musical sting]
narrator: After laying waste to her graduating class,
Carrie goes home
to the less than comforting arms of her mother,
who's decided her daughter must die.
- [gasps]
- Piper Laurie raises the knife...
- [gasps]
Aah!
- And then they did that whole sequence
where the knives "whoosh," they twirl through the air.
- [gasps]
- You know when I first saw it, I didn't know how they did it.
- I was wearing this iron vest underneath,
and each place I was going to be hit
there was a block of wood underneath
and a hole in the costume with a wire stretched out
to the prop man.
And this knife or can opener would travel
until it hit me,
and then I would react.
Aah! Aah!
- That one particular scene was always my favorite.
[somber music]
♪
And I thought the movie was over,
so I was really 100% completely satisfied,
and then of course the arm comes out of the ground
at the end.
- [screaming]
- Carrie has the greatest jump scare ending ever.
- [screaming]
- That ending changed movies.
- If you were making a horror movie,
you had to have a jump scare at the end,
or the audiences were pissed.
narrator: Decades after its release,
"Carrie" remains
one of the all time great horror classics,
because while fashions may change,
the misery adolescence is timeless.
- Everybody sympathizes with Carrie.
The character of Carrie White continues to resonate
generation after generation
because she is sort of, like, this heroic character
for anybody has been marginalized or bullied
or has had an oppressive parent.
[crowd screaming]
- It is a warning to all of us to be kind to each other
because you don't know what monster you're making.
narrator: It's understandable
that a gentle soul could be pushed to the breaking point,
but some children defy understanding.
Like the angel-faced tikes with murder in their hearts.
♪
narrator: What is the nature of evil?
- [screams]
narrator: Is it learned behavior?
Or are some kids just born bad?
- [screams]
narrator: When a child kills,
do we blame the parents?
- Say good-bye. - No!
narrator: Or faulty brain chemistry?
[tires screeching]
[terrifying music]
Those difficult questions are at the heart of two films
made half a century apart
in two very different Americas.
- What are all these people watching?
People like me.
narrator: "We Need to Talk About Kevin" from 2011
and "The Bad Seed" from 1956.
♪
"We Need to Talk About Kevin" is an evil child film
for the era of school shootings.
♪
Through disjointed flashbacks,
the film traces the relationship
of a reluctant mother to her son.
Kevin's an inscrutable psychopath
who makes her life hell as a toddler
and ends up a teenage mass murderer.
[children screaming]
- What could be more frightening
than your child gone wrong?
I mean how organic is that?
How horrendous would that be?
Because you're there for at least 18 years, man.
[laughs] However your kids comes out,
you have a responsibility.
♪
- It's almost just every parent's nightmare
than anything else.
[crowd screaming]
It's highly relatable,
because I think every parent
experiences that "what if" moment.
You know, what if my daughter or son did this or that?
narrator: Kevin's guilt-ridden mother is haunted
by not knowing if her child was born bad,
or if her failures as a mother made him a monster.
[thumps]
- There's a very contemporary kind of engagement
with the discussions of what's sometimes referred to
as the Mommy Wars.
Just a continual question
of how much time, energy,
and emotional attachment
do mothers need to give to their children?
And you know, all kinds of guilt accorded to mothers
who supposedly do not give
enough emotional time and energy to their children.
- [sarcastic] Looks like someone's having a nice day.
Enjoying yourself?
- I'm sorry?Ooh!
- I think culturally, that's what we do to women
who don't always live up to the ideal of, like,
"Oh, my God, I love my beautiful child.
My child is just the most wonderful thing."
- I don't like that. [yelling]
- Mommy was happy befow wittle Kevin came along.
You know dat?
- Basically, I think it's an expose
on how difficult parenthood can be.
- Now Mommy wakes up every morning
and wishes she was in France!
- You never know exactly what you're gonna get, right?
- You're a little clammy.
You feeling okay?
- Never better.
narrator: Today,
the idea of a seemingly normal American kid
committing coldblooded mass murder is a sad fact of life.
In 1956, it was shocking. - [crying]
[dramatic musical sting]
narrator: The pigtailed psycho killer
at the heart of "The Bad Seed"
is 8-year-old Rhoda Penmark.
She's the original evil child of horror.
- If you say a child is a bad seed,
everyone knows what you mean.
It's part of the, uh-- the Lexicon now.
"The Bad Seed" is one of the more chilling
child horror stories
because there's not a supernatural element to it.
She's just an evil kid.
- Good morning, Miss Fern. - Good morning, Rhoda.
- Always smiling, always nice, always clean-cut,
and then pure evil behind your back.
- You've got them hid, but you'd better get them
and bring them back here, right here to me!
[dramatic musical sting]
- Patty McCormack is the bad seed.
It'd had been a play first on Broadway,
and she having played it onstage,
really knew that character.
- I thought I'd seen some mean little gals in my time,
but you're the meanest.
- And she made it real.
- I know what you think.I know everything you think.
♪
- Rhoda just thought she was right about everything...
And had no problem, once she had a goal,
and achieving that goal no matter what the cost,
and slowly through the film,
the mother realizes
that her daughter is different.
[laughs]
Is it true that when bloodhas been washed off anything,
a policeman can still findif it's there?
♪
narrator: "The Bad Seed" arrived in the mid 1950s,
one of the most conservative periods in American history.
The generation that grew up during the Great Depression
believed in strict discipline and frowned on selfishness.
Rhoda embodied their worst fears
about their own children.
- I was a child of the '50s,
and, you know, they hit you-- you know what I mean--
when you were naughty. [laughs]
No one called Child Services, you know?
You made up your mind in one second!
So it was so fun to be free of the constraints
of the time.
And I told him I'd hit him with my shoe
if he didn't give me the medal!
- I think the film is definitely at least hinting
at the idea that sort of capitalistic greed
is at the heart of social decay
and maybe of Rhoda's pathology.
- Could I have both stones? The garnet too?
- Rhoda! - [laughs]
- You know, that kind of rugged individualism
in some ways kind of creates monsters
like Rhoda, you know,
who are willing to do whatever it takes
to get what they want and to succeed.
It's just a more pointed version
of what capitalism encourages everybody to do.
- I wish she were mine.
narrator: What could be more frightening
than a lone predator stalking us behind a mask of innocence?
A pack of young wolves
thirsting for your blood.
♪
narrator: You can never be entirely sure
what kids are thinking. - [screams]
narrator: Or what they might do next.
- Aah!
narrator: When you gather them together,
that unpredictability leads to fun, troubling,
and transgressive horror films.
[scary music]
- Kids are a bit of a mystery, and so in that mystery,
you can tuck some really dark forces.
Maybe they're just being a weird kid,
or maybe you're about to die.
[horrific musical sting]
narrator: Few children in film history
are as mysterious or as deadly
as the ones in "Village of the Damned."
♪
Five months after everyone in an English village
falls unconscious,
12 strange children are born.
They are emotionless, hyper intelligent,
and have the power to read and control people's minds.
- They're so malevolent, and they're so powerful,
and you can't imagine the human race ever surviving
the war with these kids, the way they get inside your head.
narrator: We never know what led to their birth,
but we instantly see
that they are convinced of their absolute superiority
to their parents.
- You have to be taught to leave us alone.
narrator: And that they have a hidden agenda.
- Leave us alone.
♪
- It's also the innate fear that parents have,
that your child is here to replace you.
- What are you going to do with that power?
- Father,
we know whatyou're trying to find out.
It'd be better if youdidn't ask these questions.
We want to learn from you.
- They're here because you're leaving...
- All right, that'll be all for the day.
- And they're gonna take over.
And the anxiety is that they're not gonna wait.
narrator: It's no coincidence
that the children bear a strong resemblance
to fanatical Hitler Youth.
Director Wolf Rilla's family fled Nazi Germany
when he was 14.
He had seen the indoctrination of minors firsthand.
The Nazis were neither the first nor the last
to realize that ideology can be used
to turn children into pitiless killers.
The 1970s, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge used teenagers
to carry out a genocidal campaign
that left nearly 2 million people dead,
including a sizable number of their parents.
Very loosely adapted from a short story by Stephen King,
written when the Khmer Rouge was in power,
"Children of the Corn"
begins with the mass murder of all the adults
in a small town by young religious zealots.
- [grunts] - No!
- Ay! - [grunts]
- Stop it! - [grunting]
- What "Children of the Corn" did,
like a lot of, you know,
button-pushing movies of the '80s,
is that it made kids killers.
- [gasps]
- Mom!
- In the '80s,
it was very taboo to see kids killing adults,
kids picking up knives, kids being violent.
- Don't do it! [screaming]
- "Welcome to Nebraska."
narrator: Three years after the massacre,
two travelers find themselves under attack
by the town's corn-worshipping kids.
- Aah!
- Oh! - [screaming]
- Outlander!
[children shouting]
narrator: They're deemed outlanders
who must be sacrificed to an invisible god
called "He Who Walks Behind the Rows."
children: Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!
- I kind of love the concept
of taking something so innocent and pure
and turning it into something cruel and malicious.
children: Praise God! Praise the Lord!
- As parents, that's the last thing you want.
You wanna shield your child
from everything wrong in the world,
and so to see them become a part of it is like a nightmare,
which makes it scary. [laughs]
♪
narrator: The death cult is led by child preacher, Isaac,
whose grammatical eccentricities
rival Jedi Master Yoda.
- Question not my judgment,Malachi.
I am the giver of His word.
narrator: Isaac's surly lieutenant
is the scenery chewing Malachi.
- We want to give you peace.
Bring in the blood of the outlander!
Outlander! Shut your mouth.
- [grunts] - Aah!
- It's one of those movies that somehow
just got exploited to death.
Like, the VHS 1980s audience
just loved watching "Children of the Corn" movies
for some reason.
[otherworldly warbling] - No!
[screaming]
[explosion]
- Well, what all these movies had in common
was they were about kids
supernaturally punishing their enemies,
and I think that that is something
that is extremely attractive to young people
who feel that they have no control over their lives.
- What is it with this corn?
- [scoffs] You got me.
- Look, there's a little girl.
[uneasy music]
♪
narrator: But for a truly terrifying look
at children turning on adults,
there's a deep-cut horror film you have to see.
♪
- Tom! What's she doing?
♪
- There's a movie called "Who Can Kill a Child?"
A Spanish movie which, um, involves
an entire island filled with murderous children.
[playful commotion]
[horror music]
♪
It's like the protagonists are surrounded by wild dogs.
They look cute, but they're gonna bite you.
[eerie psychic tones]
narrator: The children are infected by a psychic virus
that compels them to kill every adult.
Adults are powerless to defend themselves
because who can kill a child?
- No!Tom!
- You don't wanna punch a child.
You don't wanna kick a child.
They're scary, but you're like,
"I can't do anything. It's an actual child."
♪
And so it's a very unnerving thing
to watch a scary child
or a child with a knife or anything like that.
[gunshot] - [gasps]
narrator: The real horror of these films
is watching children blinded by ideology,
lacking empathy, filled with rage,
capable of anything.
- [screams]
narrator: In other words, children behaving like adults.
[gunshot]
Few films have better expressed
the fear that our children
are twisted reflections of ourselves than "The Brood."
♪
- [grunts]
narrator: Mutant children begin murdering people
a man's bitter ex-wife doesn't like.
- Nola?
- [screams]
narrator: He suspects it's connected
to her psychiatrist's radical treatment for anger.
- [screams]
- This is David Cronenberg's 1979 masterpiece,
"The Brood." - Aah!
- That was another movie that I saw as a young person
that just, um, kind of cracks open your mind, you know?
[unsettling music]
- David Cronenberg is one of the few directors
who's able to take an exploitation subject
such as a horror film
but make it personal to him...
- [screaming]
- [screams]
- And if it is possible,
and I think it is possible,
to make an art/horror film,
David Cronenberg is one of the few who can do it.
- And the thing with "The Brood"
is he calls it his horror version
of "Kramer vs. Kramer,"
because he was going through, like, a bitter custody dispute
at the time, and "The Brood" is his way of, um...
[laughing] Dealing with it.
- Art Hindle plays the husband
to this woman played by Samantha Eggar,
who has left him and gone
and joined this, uh,
experimental therapy commune
which is run by a doctor named Hal Raglan,
played by Oliver Reed.
- Right now you're dreaming.
From what Frank tells me, it was lousy from the very start.
You never had anything real together.
- The husband has been sending the daughter
to go visit periodically and then he starts to believe
that the mother is harming the daughter
because the daughter keeps coming home with bruises
and marks on her body.
- And that's very unfair of him.
That's very arrogant of him.
- You mus'n't be too hardon him, Nola, sweetheart.
He's just trying to bea good protective father.
- She needs to stay very far away from her child, uh,
but her body is reacting to this rage
and manifesting these weird
creature children.
- [snarls]
♪
- They're children, Frank.
Or exactly, they're the children of her rage.
They're motivated only by her anger,
whether that anger is conscious or subconscious.
I mean, when--when Nola got cross with Candy last weekend,
annoyed really, the brood beat her.
- A lot of films have an idea
of one of your, like, fears or anxieties being made flesh,
and in that movie, they actually do it.
That's what the movie is about.
People are so angry
that some people can develop physical welts
through their anger,
and one woman can actually develop extra beings,
she is so angry.
[brood snarling]
- [cackles] - Aah!
- The look of them, it was so imaginative, you know?
They have no navel, and they can't speak,
and they have a cleft palate.
It's just, you know, they were born of something
that should never have happened.
- There's a really creepy shot
where they kidnap the main character's kid,
the two parka monsters,
and they're just three kids walking down a road
in the snow and a car drives past.
- Kids in horror together
is always something that's unsettling to watch.
- Ooh, you do-- this margin.
♪
- A scene, like, where the school teacher is murdered
by the brood in front of the kids
is so deeply distressing...
- [screams] - Don't--oh!
- [screaming] - Aah, ow!
[screams]
You know, the guardian is, like, killed
in front of the kids by these monsters is, like, terrifying.
One most of the most, like, terrifying scenes in cinema.
[children whimpering and crying]
- And I'm sure that's a scene
where a lot of critics wrote that film off
on the basis of that scene alone.
It was like, "No, you've crossed a line here."
♪
- Art Hindle discovers what's happening
and he has to confront her.
[dramatic music]
♪
When he actually sees what his wife is doing...
[laughs]
And you see her manifesting one of these--
these children and licking it
like a--like a mother cat licks a newborn kitten.
It is sensational.
- Oh, God, Nola.
- No.
I disgust you.
- The film is not especially sympathetic
towards the mother,
the female character, Samantha Eggar.
- You hate me.
- But if you talk to a lot of women
who love that film, you know,
they get very different things out of it.
- 30 seconds after you're born, you have a past,
and 60 seconds after that,
you start to lie to yourself about it.
- The anxiety around having children,
around loving children, loving them too much,
um, wanting to destroy them...
What if there's a sort of mutant quality to the--
to the children we bring in to the world?
narrator: The ultimate message of the film
is that broken marriages create broken children.
- I love the end of "The Brood"
where it closes in on the little girl,
and you see the rage blisters developing on her arm.
She's Mommy's girl.
narrator: Society expects parents
to love their children unconditionally,
no matter how awful they may be,
but everyone has their limits.
[horrific musical sting]
♪
- Honey?
Frank?
- Somebody kicking again?
- No, it stopped.
narrator: Some men have problems adapting
to the increased responsibilities
and stresses that come with fatherhood.
- We're slowly but surely poisoning ourselves,
you know that?
- Fine world to bring a kid into, fellas.
narrator: The problem is particularly acute
when your child is a monster baby.
[horrific musical sting]
- [screaming]
- "It's Alive" was made in the mid '70s
by Larry Cohen.
And it's the story of an experimental drug
that has the effect
of turning these babies
into little demonic--
You know the song "Baby Shark?" [laughs]
- [wailing]
- Baby sharks. You know, they are babies,
but they have giant fangs, and they're carnivorous.
- Rick Baker did this baby which, you know,
is--is fairly inanimate,
and--and so you've gotta be careful how you cut around it
because it's not really very mobile.
It's more of an idea.
And it's a very clever movie.
narrator: "It's Alive" was a low-budget movie
that explored big ideas.
- It's a human, doctor.
That's what's disgusting to you, isn't it?
- It kills like an animal.
- And when we find it,
we're gonna have to destroy itlike one.
narrator: The rampaging baby isn't evil;
it's a frightened and confused newborn.
The real villains of "It's Alive"
are the mother's untrustworthy doctors
who are being paid off by drug companies
to push their defective products.
- We have an openingon the board
of our researchand development department.
Now, we wouldn't want peopleto lose faith in us, would we?
- In the '50s and '60s, there was a drug called Thalidomide
that was sold to expectant mothers,
and it created horrific birth defects.
- Mrs. Davis, I don't supposeyou took the pills I gave you?
You really should, you know.
- Maybe it's all the pills I've been taking over the years
that brought this on.
- This is a movie that came out of a real horror.
- Where are you? Look out, Charley!
- [snarling] - [screams]
[gunshot]
- "It's Alive" dramatizes the idea of, you know,
a monster kind of born, you know,
and it's because of environmental factors
so it works in that whole eco-horror theme,
but it's also just very much about the idea, you know,
that for men, childbirth is something
over which they're going to exercise little control,
and, you know,
what's going to happen, you know, with this birth?
[baby screaming] - [screaming]
- With his monster child on the loose,
the father's life falls apart.
- Mr. Davis,what did it look like,
if you were to describeit to us?
- Leave me alone. I've got nothing to say.
narrator: When the story gets out, he loses his job;
he's harassed by the media;
and his family life crumbles.
- Get outta my way!
I don't know what it looks like.
- Where is your baby? - Never mind my baby!
Leave my wife out of it, you understand me?
- John Ryan in "It's Alive,"
an absolutely amazing performance.
He's really powerful, really compelling.
- And why is everybodylooking at me?
Yeah.
Like it's my own fleshand blood or something.
[tragic music]
Well, it's not,understand?
♪
It's no relation to me.
narrator: By the film's climax,
the father is helping the police
chase his killer newborn
through the storm drains of LA.
- There's the innate funny of, like,
guys with shotguns going out to hunt babies.
- [agonized screaming]
- That moment when he realizes, like, he can't
'cause it's his child is just--that's amazing.
That's an incredible sequence.
- Can you hear me, Frank?
It can't be saved!It's gotta die!
[baby crying] Do you hear me, Frank?
[suspenseful music]
♪
- John Ryan's dealing with those conflicting emotions
of, "My kid's a monster, but he's my kid.
I must protect him,"
and that's, you know, a primal urge.
[baby crying]
narrator: Like many confused patriarchs
who weathered the social storms
of the '60s and '70s,
the father comes to accept his problem child.
[sirens blaring]
- It can't hurt anybody!
Hey, look, if you fellas shoot, you're gonna shoot me.
Now, put the weapon down. Look, it's harmless.
- Take it easy.Take it easy.
- [crying]
narrator: Other films have tried to recapture
the shock of "It's Alive."
- Aah! - [screaming]
- [screams]
narrator: But no one has even attempted to top
the ultimate evil baby movie:
"Eraserhead."
♪
narrator: Of all the movies ever made
about the terrors of parenthood,
nothing to compares to David Lynch's masterpiece,
"Eraserhead."
[terrifying music]
♪
- "Eraserhead" is not what people would think of
as horror in the traditional sense, but, boy,
that's what makes horror such an interesting genre,
'cause you can fit so many things in it.
Because as an adult,
I can't think of very many movies I found that disturbing
and horrifying and scary.
♪
- Lynch is just one of those filmmakers
who--he opens the medium up for you, you know?
Like, you watch a Lynch film and you realize,
"Oh, like, there's so much that can be done."
[smoke exhausts]
narrator: "Eraserhead's" plot defies description,
but it begins as the movie's protagonist, Henry,
arrives for dinner with his girlfriend, Mary,
at her parents' house.
- [moaning]
- It's completely surreal and a completely alien world,
but so sticks to its own rules,
that it just attains a reality all its own.
- [crying]
- She'll be all right in a minute.
- [cries]
- Every time I see the film, I see something different.
I have a different experience.
Scenes that disturbed me now make me laugh,
things that made me laugh now disturb me,
often simultaneously.
- You're very bad trouble if you won't cooperate.
[heavy breathing]
- Well, I...
Mary!
- Mother! [crying]
- So much of Lynch is sort of, like, deliberately wrong.
- There's a baby. It's at the hospital.
- Mom! - And you're the father.
- That's impossible.It's only been--
- Mother, they're still not sure it is a baby!
- It's premature, but there's a baby!
- And it's just wrong in the right way.
- The first thing you see onscreen in "Eraserhead"
is, like--is Henry, his head is just floating in space,
and he's emitting all of these umbilical weird creatures
out of his mouth.
[organ music]
♪
- And then when you see The Lady in the Radiator,
they're falling from the ceiling,
and she's stepping on them.
[bursting squish]
She's stepping on these creatures that he has--
These, like, weird, ugly creatures
that he's birthed.
[bursting squish]
- And then she's just singing, "In Heaven Everything is Fine."
- ♪ In heaven
♪ Everything is fine
♪ In heaven
♪ Everything is fine
- It's, like, she's just assuring him,
like, "No matter what kind of ugly creature
you give birth to, everything's gonna be okay."
- ♪ You got your good things
♪ And I've got mine
- So many people told me how weird it was,
and I didn't--I go, "Oh, this is a movie about a guy
"you know, afraid of getting married
and having a kid, you know?" [laughs]
[baby crying]
[wind howling]
And you watch it, and you go,
"I bet this guy was, you know, married and had a kid
and was freaked out."
- Shut up!
[baby continues crying]
Shut up!
- And then I, you know, read his book,
and, yeah, he was. [laughs]
You know, it was just, like,
it was an artistic expression of his fears.
- I can't stand it! I'm going home.
- Getting this girl pregnant who's a little crazy,
and she doesn't like him, and, you know,
and they have this really acrimonious relationship.
- You're on vacation now!
You can take care of it for a night!
- And the fear of having a baby,
and what if that baby is deformed?
[rain pours]
- "Eraserhead," I think, more than any evil child film
perfectly encapsulates the anxiety of a parent.
- [pained gurgles]
[tense music]
- That what you will give birth to
is this uncontrollable monster. [laughing]
♪
- I always remember when the baby's crying,
and it's in the night
and then he turns on the light
and--and the baby has all the sores over his face.
- [pained breathing]
- Jack Nance goes... both: "Oh, you are sick."
- [laughs] I was like, "Jesus Christ."
- [panting and crying]
[disturbing music]
- Of course the ending where he kills the baby.
♪
I mean, every time I see that film,
I'm shocked at that ending
because it seems to rush at you.
♪
And just knock the wind out of you.
[blaring industrial humming]
I guess he transcends, right?
And then he's embraced by The Lady in the Radiator.
[blaring industrial humming]
- You don't know exactly what it meant literally
to know what it meant figuratively, subtextually.
[soft piano music]
It's a pretty unique movie
that stands alone, you know, in that way.
- [crying]
- It's really unnerving, but it means something.
It's not just kind of surface and there for effect.
It's just very honest and heartbreaking.
♪
[scary music]
narrator: The chilling children and terrible tykes
of the movies can be frightening,
especially if you're a parent.
- [screams]
narrator: But they can also be oddly comforting.
- [screaming]
narrator: Showing us that no matter how
difficult your son or daughter may be,
things could be much worse.
♪
So if you're thinking of having a baby,
but having second thoughts, don't worry.
Your kids will probably turn out just fine.
- [screaming] - [screaming]