Eraserhead (1977)

Five years in the making, Eraserhead is David Lynch's bizarre and groundbreaking film debut. Shot in black and white, the film unfolds in a lifeless, industrial wasteland where the protagonist, Henry Spencer, tramps the grey, empty streets in a confused dream. An aloof young man who works as a printer, Henry finally faces up to his winsome, hysterical girlfriend and her freakshow family before finding he’s the father of a mutant alien child. Lynch called Eraserhead “a dream of dark and troubling things”, and Henry inevitably falls deeper into an unconscious nightmare populated with the demented, deformed and depraved until a beautiful vixen offers him some hope of escape.