The film opens with the image of a planetoid partially obscured by a floating, diaphanous likeness of the main character HENRY. Cut to a shot panning across the surface of the planetoid until it reaches a metal shack with a hole in the roof. POV lowers through the hole. Inside the shack, looking out a broken window, is the character I will call the CONTROLLER. He is covered with something like barnacles, suggesting that he is ancient, long-established. The Henry-likeness opens its mouth and "births" a tadpole-like fetus. The Controller's arm twitches and then pulls several levers, which apparently cause the fetus to move away from the Henry image and splash down in a puddle. The swirling bubbles in the puddle are shown in close-up; tiny bright specks against a dark background, like the starlit black sky surrounding the planetoid; first examples of an image which recurs throughout the film. Then there is a shot of an opening surrounded by darkness. POV moves towards the opening, reversing the earlier entering-the-hole-in-roof POV, (i.e. leaving the Controller's realm?).

Cut to actual, non-likeness Henry, looking back (as though at the opening's exterior) with a concerned expression. What is his relation to the first scene? He turns and heads off through an urban wasteland. He accidently steps in a puddle, like the puddle into which the fetus fell (fallen into a wasteland?). He enters his apartment building and checks his mailbox, which is empty. He gets into the elevator and waits a long time for the door to close. Does this wait lend significance to where the elevator is taking him? Outside his door an attractive female NEIGHBOR tells him that Mary called and asked him to dinner.

Henry enters his bizarre and shabby room. There is evidence of uncontrolled organic growth is several places, like beneath the radiator. A sick-looking miniature tree growing out of a muddy mound is on a night stand next to his bed. There is a little cabinet attached to the wall. The anticipatory wait in the elevator makes us pay close attention to these details. Henry opens a dresser drawer and takes out a torn picture of Mary.

Cut to Henry crossing more urban wasteland. He is met at the front door of Mary's house by perpetually-anxious MARY and her MOTHER. They retire to the living room for some monumentally uncomfortable small talk. Mary has a brief convulsive fit after Mother asks Henry the question; "What did you do?". We meet Mary's FATHER, a morbid cartoon version of a blue collar worker. He says he has seen this home's neighborhood turn from "pastures to the hell hole it is now". Mary's house is filled with examples of gross or decaying life-forms; a dog nursing a flock of noisily ravenous puppies, dead or uncontrollably proliferating plants, Mary's senile-catatonic GRANDMOTHER. The overall impression, looking past the deadpan, sick-black hilarity, is of something gone terribly wrong with Nature (a world turned into a wasteland). They adjourn to the dinner table where Henry is invited to carve up a tiny "man-made" baked chicken. When he touches it with his fork, the chicken's legs begin to move uncontrollably up and down as it "menstruates" out of its tail-end orifice. This gynecological grossness sends Mother into a convulsive fit, which recalls Mary's fit and also associates to the twitching eyes of her Father. Are these movements also related to the twitching arm of the ancient Controller, perhaps a suggestion that Mary's family is somehow acting under his control? After regaining her composure, Mother takes Henry aside. We see a lamp flicker on and off several times before shorting out. She questions Henry about his sex life with Mary (recalling Mary's response to Mother's question; "What did you do?"). Henry recoils as Mother interrupts her words about sex to deliver an open-mouthed (grossly unnatural) kiss to his neck. Mary enters and pulls Mother off Henry. Mother says that there is a premature baby at the hospital and that Henry is the father. Henry says a baby is impossible, his sexual activity with Mary was for too recent. Mother tells Henry it is time for him to marry (the never merry) Mary, that he will be in trouble if he "doesn't cooperate" (with the Controller?).

Cut to Mary feeding the BABY in Henry's room. The delicate infant, looking like the hybridization of an extraterrestrial and a mucous membrane (maturing tadpole-fetus?), perpetually makes demands. We see Henry go down to his mailbox, where he finds a tiny package. He walks outside with it (hiding it from Mary and the Baby) and unwraps a tiny slug-like creature. He hides it in his pocket before returning to his room, where we witness the couple's perverse attempts at domesticity. Mary frets over the groaning, wailing Baby. She grows increasingly frustrated as Henry half-heartedly tries to look like a proud father. Neither seem capable of embodying their parental roles. Henry stares at the radiator and sees a tiny stage gradually light up behind it. The stage fades away as Mary asks him if there was any mail (contact with the rest of the world?). Henry lies and says no.

Later, Mary is in bed. Before joining her, Henry takes the slug out of the pocket of his coat and puts it inside the small cabinet that hangs on the wall, making sure that Mary is not watching him. When he gets into bed, Mary recoils from his touch. The Baby will not stop wailing. After several failed attempts at quieting the Baby, Mary gets hysterical and tells Henry she is leaving. We see her make another strange convulsive movement, (Controller-resonant?) at the foot of the bed. It is finally revealed that Mary is pulling out her suitcase. She leaves (as directed by the Controller?). Henry does not seem disappointed. He leans back on the bed and looks up at the ceiling. We then see an image of the attractive Neighbor walking down the hall (a fantasy of Henry's?).

Later, Henry, wondering if the Baby is sick, checks its temperature. Everything looks "normal" until the Baby suddenly screams and is instantaneously covered with festering sores. Wrapped in swaddling clothes, born of a woman named Mary, conceived under biologically impossible circumstances, the Baby is now receiving a gross version of Christ-referencing stigmata. Apparently the Baby is an enormously important entity; "immaculately" conceived (diaphanous fetus image), related to the Controller (who lives on a planetoid; non-earthly realm) whose lever-pull caused the fetus (Baby) to descend into the puddle (wasteland Earth). Henry has been handed a staggering responsibility, one he didn't ask for; keeping the fragile Baby alive. Mary and her family, under the Controller's direction, have left the Baby with Henry, its "chosen" care-giver/parent (explaining the presence of his floating likeness, viewed (projected?) by the Controller through his window during the "mouth-birthing" scene). Perhaps Henry's nerdishness, his inability to completely invest himself in or fully identify with the ways of the (wasteland) world can be construed as a vague glimmer of potential spirituality; the reason why he was "chosen". He tries to help the afflicted Baby, absurdly providing a vaporizer, but nothing works. He sits by the Baby, listless. Then he gets up and goes to the little wall cabinet and opens it briefly, revealing the slug he found in the mailbox. But the Baby only cries more loudly when Henry leaves its side (the slug and the Baby are in some way oppositional). Henry returns to the Baby, looking profoundly trapped.

Later, in bed, Henry looks at the radiator. Again the little stage lights up. POV moves in on the stage as the RADIATOR WOMAN comes in from the wings and begins to dance. Her exaggeratedly broad cheeks suggest an artificial cheerfulness. Numerous tadpole-fetuses begin to fall from the ceiling, (an obligation from Above?). Maintaining her innocent smile, the Radiator Woman begins to squash them with her feet (refusing to fulfill the obligation?). Cut to Henry in bed. Was he dreaming or was he somehow connected, conduit-like, through the radiator to a tempting alternative space outside his room? Mary is back in his bed. She begins to give birth to numerous tadpole-fetuses. Is Henry dreaming now? Or is the dream/non-dream ambiguity making a point? The sense that "this can NOT be happening but IS happening" seems to pervade ERASERHEAD. The audience can never be certain whether it is viewing a dream, a fantasy, waking reality or some sort of metaphysical realm, even as the film's various settings refer to and transition into one another. The seemingly intentional non-resolution of these contextual uncertainites creates an overall sense of implausible, yet non-dismissible, threat. Henry, disgusted, throws the fetuses away. Would Henry have destroyed them if he had not first been given "permission" by the fetus-stomping Radiator Woman? They smash against the wall near the little cabinet. Then the cabinet doors open by themselves. The slug inside the cabinet begins to move.Cut to the slug frolicking (rebelliously?) on the surface of the Controller's planetoid. Perhaps the slug is a distilled version of Henry's under-developed (undersized) enjoyment-seeking self, linked (through the mailbox) to the non-spiritual aspirations of the world. The slug stops moving and opens itself up into an orifice-shape. POV enters the orifice (into the slug's "inner world"). We next see the bright-flecks-on-dark image. This image turns out to be speckling on a dark wall (like the night sky, the transportation medium between planetoid and Earth; i.e. an image related to movement, transition, change of setting). POV lowers through a hole in the wall (a second "orifice") through which we see Henry, seated on his bed in his room. The lighting now seems darker and more muted (a visually flatter, perhaps more metaphorical version of Henry's life-setting). POV has passed through two orifices; an externalization of the slug's internal perspective. It seems we are about to see slug-Henry's perspective on controlled, marginally loyal, Baby-caregiver Henry's situation.

There is a knock on Henry's door. He rises from his bed and answers. He sees nothing for a few moments, but then his comely Neighbor appears, dream-like, out of darkness. She explains that she has locked herself out. As she talks Henry tries to stifle the Baby's crying. She seductively asks if she can stay with him until morning. They end up having sex in a milky pool (puddle) which has replaced Henry's bed, neglecting the Baby. They sink beneath the surface (into the wasteland). Through an image of parting milky liquid we briefly see a night sky (transition), the Neighbor in deep shadow, the planetoid and then the Neighbor disappearing into shadows (the slug's perspective; Henry's fantasies about the Neighbor are hopelessly insubstantial) to be replaced by the Radiator Woman on her stage, singing; "In heaven everything is fine. You've got your good things and I've got mine. In heaven everythig is fine. You've got your good things and YOU'VE got mine." Henry steps up onto the stage and approaches her. She encourages him. But when he touches her he is blinded by light. He tries again with the same result. There is the suggestion that Henry is engaging in behavior considered neglectful and self-involved from the viewpoint of the Controller ("you've got your good things and you've got mine"; you have received the special Baby, but you are only concerned with you own mundane wishes). Then the Radiator Woman disappears. She is briefly replaced by the Controller, source of the restricting light (which recalls the flickering light at Mary's house, occurring when Henry was about to find out about the Controller's Baby). Then we see a wind come up and blow away the tadpole-fetuses left over from the Radiator Woman's "squashing" scene. An enlarged version of the sickly tree seen next to Henry's bed slides onto the stage. Henry retreats behind a chest-high curtain. The tree begins to bleed. Henry's suddenly inanimate head pops off and falls onto the floor. The Baby's head sprouts out of Henry's shoulders. (Henry's obligations to the Baby have objectified him (inanimate head)). Henry's head falls through the bloody (puddle) floor and lands in a vacant lot (wasteland). The position of the head on the ground is matched to the head position of a nearby derelict (discarded objects). A little BOY finds the head and takes it to a questionable-looking office. It is passed to a TECHNICIAN who takes a core sample (raw material) of the head and then feeds this head-core into a machine which converts the raw material into pencil-top erasers (commodity), which physically remind us of the goofy stacked hair that tops Henry's body. This downward progression (person-object-discarded object-raw material-commodity) is the slug's perspective on Henry's life since the Baby came into it; ultimately associating him with erasure (turned into an overburdened child-care-providing commodity erased from the concerns of Mary and the rest of the world). Of course, this progression could alternately be seen (from a more selfless perspective) as a failed opportunity. The trials that Henry has involuntarily gone through could have been used to erase his self-concern and turn him into the nurturer of an entity perhaps capable of erasing the world's grossness and decay. Henry, in this process, would have assumed some of the qualities of the exceptional Baby himself, a positive take on the juxtaposition of Henry's body with the Baby's head. But this has not occurred. Could he have reasonably been expected to successfully care for the Baby? Is the slug's perspective deserving of unqualified condemnation? A great deal was asked of Henry by the barnacled Controller whose broken windows (fading vision?) and damaged roof (failing mind?) suggest a deteriorating, misdirected quasi-God. The Technician brushes shavings off his pencil machine. They fall in slow motion (another repeat of the transition-signaling bright-flecks-on-black image).

Cut to Henry in bed, waking (?) from the slug-perspective "dream" that has generated a devastating summary of his life. Later, in daylight, an immobilized Henry looks around his room. Even later, with it dark outside, he gets up, goes across the room and watches, through his window, an assault which is occurring near a puddle (repellent wasteland behavior). He backs away from the window, works up courage while hoping that the Baby will stay quiet and goes out to knock on the Neighbor's door. There is no answer. He comes back into his room. The Baby starts making a noise that sounds like mocking laughter (at Henry's attempts to fulfill his mundane fantasies?). He lies down on his bed. The Fats Waller music that he plays on his phonograph and which accompanies the scenes with the Radiator Woman is faintly heard. But he does not look to the radiator (after seeing himself (by experiencing the slug's perspective) restricted by the Controller from making contact with the Radiator Woman). The Baby laughs some more. The doors of the little cabinet on the wall stay shut (suggesting that the slug has completed its goal, Henry has adopted the slug's non-spiritual agenda). The organ music fades away. Then there is a noise in the hallway. Henry rushes to the door. The Neighbor is in the company of a jaded-looking MAN with a large bruise or birthmark on his face (Nature gone wrong). The Man starts to grope the Neighbor. Apparently she is a whore (puddle dweller, seen moving into and out of darkness). Next is perhaps a Henry-fantasy from the Neighbor's POV which pictures (like in the slug-perspective) the Baby's head on Henry's body (i.e. how Baby-saddled he looks in the eyes of the Neighbor; no notion in Henry or the Neighbor of the Baby's importance). Henry shuts the door. All of his outlets (Neighbor, Radiator Woman, the world outside his window) are closed off to him. He sees himself as alone with his overwhelming obligations to the Baby. Henry gets a pair of scissors out of his dresser. He goes over to the Baby, cuts open its swaddling clothes and stabs it in the heart. The Baby goes through appropriately miraculous death throes, ejecting huge amounts of blood and a mud-like slurry. Its neck elongates above the slurry mound, recalling the sickly tree by Henry's bed (the wasteland world was, in a feebly-implemented Controller act, given a special, but sickly Son (to metaphorically rise above the wasteland) who bleeds like the enlarged version of the tree that bled in the slug's "dream"). The floor lamp is shorting out, blinking off and on (like the foreshadowing lamp at Mary's house). The Baby's head miraculously enlarges and moves in concert with the flickering brightness (the Controller's brightness, which kept Henry from the anti-Baby Radiator Woman in the slug-perspective, is shown here as losing its control-ability; Henry's stabbing has "short-circuited" a conduct-related boundary enforced by the faltering Controller). As the lamp goes dark, the Baby's head moves accusingly close to the cowering, failed care-giver Henry. Cut to the planetoid. We see Henry (in a sense fleeing the scene of the crime) surrounded by transitional, transportational swirling particles-in-darkness. Part of the planetoid surface breaks up and falls away, leaving an opening which POV moves into (like entering the roof hole in the opening scene while also reversing the out-of-orifice, birth-suggesting movements in the opening "mouth-birth" scene and "man-made" (Son of Man) wiggling chicken scene; considered together, an indication that the Baby has been un-conceived (erased)). We see the Controller struggle with his levers and then collapse (a failure, having sent the ill-prepared world his only begotten, high-maintainance Baby). The restricting brightness that kept Henry from the Radiator Woman returns, but this time Henry can see the Radiator Woman through it (Controller has now totally lost control). They reach eachother and embrace (unfortunate alliance). Through the process of seeking a self-focused "heaven" ("you've got your good things and you've got mine"), to escape his harshly imposed responsibility to the Baby, out-of-his-depth Henry did not actualize the one remote possibility (devotion to the Baby) for the success of the Controller's improbable plan for bringing some form of hope to wasteland Earth (its decay a reflection of the state of the Controller). So everything is NOT fine as ERASERHEAD reaches its catastrophic conclusion.

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