Eraserhead

Henry lives in a room in an industrial wasteland. He is told he has a child. The child is not a baby.

Lynch shot it over five years at the AFI stables, funded by odd jobs and a loan from Jack Fisk, with cast and crew returning whenever there was money for film stock. Continuity across that span is why Jack Nance kept the same haircut for years.

The sound is the achievement. Alan Splet built a continuous industrial drone that never stops, and there are long stretches with no dialogue at all, only machinery.

Lynch has never said what the baby was made of and has asked everybody involved not to.

It played midnight screenings for years and is the reason Mel Brooks hired him for The Elephant Man.

It is not frightening in a conventional sense. It is about dread and obligation and it does not let up.