DAVID CRONENBERG

A DEEP DIVE INTO HIS MIND.

“Horror films are eternal. There is something in the human psyche that needs to deal with death, that is something that will never go away.”

There is nothing more disgustingly attractive than the storytelling of David Cronenberg, the Canadian film director, who has been crossing the borders of flesh and mind for generations, leaving a firm imprint on pop-culture and the world of cinema.

Cronenberg considers art and film to be reflective and forces his viewers to look within themselves and confront their darkest thoughts, questioning every aspect of their fleshly bodies. His fascination with psycho-sexuality and so-called “body-horror” has translated itself into dark, graphic and often violent fantasies; his films featuring handguns made from flesh and bone, insect-typewriters and phallic armpit-tentacles.

Cronenberg himself claims that these so-called obscene and controversial thoughts need to be expressed; not acted on, but expressed.

We take a look at some of his most famous and iconic works.

PART 1: EARLY CAREER: Shivers, Rabid and The Brood.

Shivers (1975)

Cronenberg’s first “commercial” feature film, showcases several of the director's fascinations. The film was formed around a nightmare Cronenberg had, concerning a woman who while sleeping had a spider crawl from her mouth. Due to the low-budget nature of the movie at the time, the spider was replaced with a parasite. These parasites live in your body, transforming the host into a sex-crazed being, whose only purpose is to fulfil its needs and pass on the parasite to other humans.

It was deemed both immoral and pornographic but set the tone for Cronenberg’s future films.

Shivers introduced several more themes that recur in his later films, namely: the psychosexual nature of mankind, body-transformation and disease. All of this framed against the cold, suburban setting of Shivers made so much more than mere “pornography”.

Cronenberg’s fascination with the human body is based on the premise that the body is the first fact of human existence. If you start from there and start to question that fact, the idea of physical transformation raises its head. This being the case in Cronenberg’s follow up film Rabid.

Rabid (1977)

Rabid features the pornographic queen Marylin Chambers, playing the role of Rose. A woman who, after undergoing life-saving surgery, grows a phallic tentacle from her armpit. This tentacle needs human blood to survive, instigating a reign of terror, which brings a town to its knees.

This mutation was viewed at the time as a metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases. A very contentious issue during the time.

Practical effects are a big part of Cronenberg’s filmography, and the actual tentacle in Rabid looks very real, organic and flesh-like. The beauty in this lies in the varied ways a human body could take form if you were to stray away from its traditional look.

The Brood (1979)

Cronenberg’s third film was famously made during a long legal battle with his ex-wife. The film tells the story of a fractured relationship between a man and a woman. The Brood also continues Cronenberg’s trend of focusing on physical transformations. This time, bodily transformations are a manifestation of repressed emotional or psychological trauma. The film shows Nora, who as a result of trauma gives birth to human-like, deformed children, known as The Brood.

PART 2: BREAKING NEW GROUND: Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly and Dead Ringers

Scanners (1981)

Scanners was inspired by Bart Hughes, a Dutch librarian who famously drilled a hole in his own head to cause a permanent high. Again, we see the theme of physical transformation, going hand in hand with the psychological.

Scanners are a type of people who possess telepathic abilities. They have the ability to destroy other human beings using just their minds. The film is also most known for its iconic head-exploding scene. This too was created using only practical effects, through a process of trial-and-error. A dummy head was filled with a mixture of things ranging from latex scraps, wax and random leftover food, which was then destroyed with a shotgun.

Videodrome (1983)

Starring James Woods and Debbie Harry from Blondie, was a commercial failure at the time, however it was praised for its groundbreaking practical effects. Videodrome is now cited as one of Cronenberg’s best films, capturing brutal violence, psycho-sexuality and biological horror. Everything the director is famous for is on show here, including some absolutely stunning graphical effects such as stomachs transforming into gaping vaginas, people being sucked into their televisions and hands transforming into weapons. All this draped with an erotic, sexual veil makes Videodrome something special.

Max Renn, played by Woods, stumbles on a television channel known as Videodrome. A channel that seemingly shows people being tortured and murdered. Renn becomes obsessed with it and goes deeper into the rabbit hole, in an attempt to find out what Videodrome actually is.

When asked as to why Cronenberg chose to make this film, he has responded that he felt inspired by obscure, foreign television-channels he remembers from when he was a child. These channels were physically hard to watch due to all the static but left room for your own fantasy to be portrayed on the television. These images could be something forbidden, coming from a distant place and that’s what sparked the inspiration for Videodrome.

Videodrome is a high-tech nightmarish satire of the television industry. Blurring lines between reality and consciousness it’s a metaphor for our continuous obsession with technology and entertainment and how it’s evolving, slowly becoming part of our physical form; a theme still very relevant today. The film is constantly challenging the audience and shifting between reality and hallucinations.

The Fly (1986)

loosely based on a George Langelaan short that was published in Playboy magazine, is the film that captures the term “body-horror” perfectly. Most horror films are based on situations you can technically run away from, however, in The Fly, the horror comes from within. The horror being your own physical body and subsequent transformation, something you can only endure. There is literally no escape.

The Fly tells the story of Seth Brundle, a scientist, played by Jeff Goldblum, who invents a device known as “tele-pods”. A teleportation device that can transport the physical body from one place to another. Brundle transports himself with a fly accidentally attached to him, which causes his DNA to merge with the DNA of the fly. His body begins to mutate into a physical fly.

This premise, that we should be scared of our very being, is very provocative because it invokes the idea that every single human is capable of doing terrible things to oneself or other people. We can get so lost in our own psyche, that it begins to manifest externally onto our own physical bodies. The Fly embodies the message that as human beings, we will never be able to fully understand every aspect of our own bodies or minds.

Critics deemed The Fly to be a metaphor for AIDS, however Cronenberg has said he did not have this intention. Rather he saw the film as an analogy for disease itself, and more specifically the process of ageing.

Dead Ringers (1988)

continues Cronenberg's fascination with the darker side of human behaviour. A story based on the lives of Stewart and Cyril Marcus, two doctors who mysteriously died simultaneously, presumably by way of a suicide-pact.

Dead Ringers shows two brothers, both gynaecologists and both played by Jeremy Irons. They are so alike that they often share women, without them knowing. The balance between the two changes, as one of them falls in love with a woman, resulting in a paranoid trip, including psychotic dreams and delusions of mutant women with abnormal genitalia.

The film depicts the fear of mental and physical disintegration, but also focuses on the power struggle between sexes, showing glimpses of a different side of Cronenberg.

PART 3: A BROADER SPECTRUM: Naked Lunch, Crash, Existenz

Naked Lunch (1991)

Naked Lunch is a film based on the works of William Burroughs, mixed with Cronenberg's own personal work. It sets the stage for an overly graphic, sexual and surrealistic film. Naked Lunch treats the most authentic, uncensored human needs as an art form. It challenges the social norms and its appetite for sex, drugs and intimacy.

It shows a world filled with strange creatures such as the infamous “insect-typewriter” and is filled with a love for the grotesque, mixed with a very dry sense of wit.

In 1996, Cronenberg shows a brutally realistic side of mankind’s obsession with base human needs, with his controversial film Crash. Banned at the time, Crash is Based on the 1973 book of the same name by J. G. Ballard. It is a film centred around a subculture of symphorophiliacs, who are sexually aroused by car crashes. A film focused on sex and death, it explores the ideas of sexuality being transformed, questioning our normal ideas of eroticism. He takes this idea of sex and death quite literally, exploring the link between wounds and sex.

Cronenberg’s themes of body transformation, psycho-sexuality and the exploration of society’s moral code is present here. He stretches the lines of what is deemed to be acceptable.

Crash (1996)

Crash explores the boundaries of sex and violence and how they intertwine with each other. Mankind’s fascination and love for technology play a big part here as well, the cars playing a pivotal role in the film, serving not only as a human-made tool but also a method for evoking the basic, physical human need for intimacy.

The last of Cronenberg’s films in which he examines the nature of self and identity is Existenz (1999).

In a world in which a video-game called Existenz is projected directly into the minds of people to create a virtual reality so convincing that it becomes indistinguishable from the real. Again we see the classic Cronenberg themes pop-up. The intertwining nature of man and technology, bodily transformation and a redefined idea of sexuality. The line of the organic and the inorganic is easily crossed here and leaves the viewer wondering what is real, and what isn’t.

PART 4: THE “WHO ARE WE?” FILMS: A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method

An era of Cronenberg films in which he visualises society on a personal level. These films explore the reasons for people becoming who they are. What surroundings cause them to evolve into certain types of people. What events create a personality and what is most important, nature or nurture?

These themes are most noticeable in A History of Violence (2005) based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke. A film that depicts violence in a brutal but interesting way. Do we choose violence, or is it the result of our environment?