In the churning slipstream of David Lynch’s “Inland Empire,” this weekend the Museum of Modern Art is screening a restoration of the director’s original brain-melter, 1977’s “Eraserhead.” Nearly 30 years have passed since its inaugural midnight run at Cinema Village, during which time Mr. Lynch has made such masterpieces as 1986’s “Blue Velvet” and 2001’s “Mulholland Drive.” Assured and mesmerizing, his black-and-white debut feature is as visceral and vivid an experience as a weird nightmare you had last night.

Even passing fans of Mr. Lynch know the futility of encapsulating his films. A self-proclaimed “classical avant-gardist” who chooses to make features, he has made a career of leaving us to perplexed eyewitness accounts and demented catalogues. The bizarre world of “Eraserhead” was the first chapter — a worried little man living in some industrial wasteland, a mewling bird-like baby, a puffy-cheeked lady in a radiator, subsonic rumbles, and spreading darkness.

The mutant infant is the product of an apparently unholy union between the man, Henry (Jack Nance), and his mousy girlfriend. A visit with her pathological family, scored to a litter of puppies noisily suckling, parades the messy psychosexual urges that draw the film into the crevices of the mind. Back at Henry’s apartment (decorated with unexplained mounds of earth), the couple’s first nights are ruptured by violent and sensual dreams starring the radiator chanteuse, alien-like fetal missiles, and the call-girl next door.

In addition to nighttime journeys through porous parallel realities, many of what would become Mr. Lynch’s characteristic motifs and techniques are already thriving. Dimly lit, meticulously designed rooms recall bare motel rooms with their look of dated normalcy and sordidness seething under the surface. Creepy soundscapes, impromptu musical performances, flickering lights, and even a femme fatale are all in place.

But when we detail the strangeness of Mr. Lynch’s work, what we’re really trying to express is the ineffable intensity of their effect on us. “Eraserhead,” like the director’s best films, has an unnerving way of bypassing reason and infiltrating the unconscious. Even his more familiar images and stories envelope the viewer in primal mysteries because his approach to surrealist juxtaposition is grounded in a mastery of texture and tone.

The accomplished control in “Eraserhead” is all the more amazing because it was filmed over several years under shoestring circumstances. A dedicated crew and seed money from the American Film Institute (later augmented by Sissy Spacek and others) fueled Mr. Lynch’s enterprise, which was undertaken largely in a stable on the AFI grounds. Like many a filmmaker grinding out a debut feature, he wore several hats (including sound design, as in later features), but in this case that also entailed building a swaddled mutant baby.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to have a dream like that,” Mr. Lynch’s mother reportedly exclaimed after the premiere. Like dreams, “Eraserhead” is much less interesting when analyzed (one influence the director has cited is some time spent in Philadelphia). It’s a film best not gawked at like a freakshow, but entered into headlong and heedlessly.

Through January 24 (11 W. 53rd St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues, 212-708-9400).