Natal nightmares: ‘Honeymoon’ and ‘Eraserhead’
A common tidbit of movie trivia is that the ‘chestburster’ scene in Alien was, in addition to being a complete surprise to the actors, intended to elicit the horror of childbirth. Through James Cameron’s Viet Cong reimagination of the xenomorph in Aliens and beyond, the franchise lost sight of what made the original so famously gruesome — at least until 2012, when Noomi Rapace’s Dr Shaw took the motif to revolting new heights with the live alien ‘abortion’ scene in Prometheus.
Still, both Alien and Prometheus are a little too busy with their sci-fi worldbuilding to explore the horror of childbirth to the fullest. Luckily, the franchise is not alone in its attempt to capture the pains of sexual reproduction through allegorical horror. There is, of course, the infamous black comedy Teeth, in which a woman’s toothed vagina protects her from unwanted advances and makes a mockery of Christian abstinence-advocacy groups in the process. Fortunately, the topic has been covered more seriously within the genre, too.
A notable example is David Lynch’s 1977 body horror midnight movie Eraserhead, a surrealist chronicle of Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) trying to raise the mutant offspring from a loveless fling. Less well known is Leigh Janiak’s Honeymoon — a horror which flew under the radar in 2014, the film alludes to the decline of a ‘honeymoon period’ in a relationship. In particular, the film is unabashedly allegorical of the traumas of pregnancy, from the hormonal changes it inflicts upon Bea (Rose Leslie) to the act of childbirth itself.
Honeymoon’s narrative is far more traditional than that of Eraserhead. It’s often a good idea to spread out viewings of infamous ‘mind-fuck’ movies among more standard films to give yourself time to process what you’ve just seen. These two films work perfectly on that front. Both are brilliantly unsettling, although in vastly different ways. Gorgeously shot, Honeymoon shocks with frightening, emotional performances — Eraserhead follows, screaming wildly like Henry’s mutant baby, and baffles every bit as much as it horrifies. Thankfully, as the second film in this double bill, the whole night remains to contemplate its bizarre and meticulously crafted terror.
If you wish, splice the two with Alien in the middle to make it a triptych: Honeymoon, Alien and Eraserhead, completing the arc of procreational horror. However, I have deliberately chosen to exclude Alien from this recommended viewing because its surface-level plot is far stronger than either of the other two films. That is to say, one can watch Alien and appreciate it for what it is, but it is decidedly more difficult to ignore the allegories behind Honeymoon and Eraserhead. Without the extended metaphors that drive them, both films are somewhat nonsensical, which encourages a search for the deeper meaning within them.
