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On The Ill Tip: Early Cronenberg

post #1 of 22
7/2/10 at 3:38pm
Thread Starter 
I finally got around to watching Shivers and Rabid yesterday. I had put them off for a long time because I assumed the body-horror aspects would be too much to take. Instead I was impressed by Cronenberg's Romero-like ability to capture paranoia and depict epic-like disintegration on a low budget.

Like a lot of horror masters coming up in the 70s, Cronenberg's work got labeled misogynistic but obviously that is not fair. Sexuality has played a huge part in the genre, but has anyone quite played off a fear of sex itself and its consequences? Or perhaps a subconscious fear of women?

Here is a thread just to talk about his early work in the horror genre. Feel free to throw out your critiques and/or insane theories.
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post #2 of 22
7/2/10 at 3:51pm
It's been a long time since I've seen his early films, so I don't have much to add. However, whenever anyone brings up Cronenberg, I always want to direct people to this fantastic career retrospective interview he did in 2003:
http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/note...ointerview.htm

Seriously, it's great. There's good material in there for expanding this discussion.
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post #3 of 22
7/2/10 at 3:57pm
What's awesome about Shivers is its a happy ending masquerading as a dystopian ending.

For more early Cronenberg, get your hands on the bonus disc of Blue Underground's Fast Company - it has Stereo and Crimes of the Future on it.
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post #4 of 22
7/2/10 at 4:33pm
Stereo and Crimes really show where he wanted to go much more than his first couple of features do. I mean, those features are still great and Cronenbergian, but somewhat compromised by a need to fit a certain horror/drive-in template; once he did Videodrome and The Fly, that was his kiss-off to gross transforming body parts and an open door into the next level. Which you can see there right from the beginning. Even From the Drain is more cerebral.
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post #5 of 22
7/2/10 at 5:57pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
For more early Cronenberg, get your hands on the bonus disc of Blue Underground's Fast Company - it has Stereo and Crimes of the Future on it.
Thx for the heads up!

Shivers was awesome. Disturbing, freaky shit. There's some images that will haunt me, I'm sure. (12 year old twins barking and being walked like dogs; Alien-like chest bursting). It's like Night of the Living Dead and Invasion of the Body Snatchers with 100 percent more rape. The third act is haunting.

Rabid was a pretty wicked flick. Crazy how Cronenberg's early work anticipates AIDS to the point of working as metaphor. . Marilyn Chambers was surprisingly quite good/and sympathetic. (Fun fact: original choice was pre-stardom Sissy Spacek. Nice nod with Carrie poster). My fave moment is a mall cop accidentally blowing away Santa!

The Brood has always been my favorite. It's been a while; look forward to revisiting in context with the others.
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post #6 of 22
7/3/10 at 12:29am
Which movie is Tongue Girl from?
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post #7 of 22
7/3/10 at 12:42am
The Brood is the first perfectly balanced mix of Cronenberg's grindhouse and intellectual sensibilities, and his most personal film. It's possibly the best divorce movie ever made.

Where do we draw the line for 'Early Cronenberg', by the way? Maybe at The Fly? Or perhaps as far as Naked Lunch?
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post #8 of 22
7/3/10 at 12:44am
Videodrome is when he starts using good actors. Dead Ringers is when he moves to a new phase thematically.
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post #9 of 22
7/3/10 at 12:50am
To quote myself insufferably:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Insufferable Self-Quoter
David Cronenberg's career thus far can be neatly divided into four sections. First, you have the Student Period (1967-1970), in which Cronenberg began to integrate his ideas with his cinematic vision. Some budding filmmakers play with an 8mm camera out in the backyard -- Cronenberg took his camera to deserted universities and crafted odd stories about death and rebirth.

Second, you have the Drive-In Period (1975-1982), wherein Dave gave the groundlings what they wanted -- T & A and gore -- while still smuggling in some provocative ideas and images.

Third, you have his Highbrow Period (1983-1993), in which Cronenberg began drifting away from slime and deformation in order to probe mutation of a more interior kind.

Finally, you have his Pure Period (1996-present), in which Dave seems to be getting back to the basics of his early shorts and features -- psycho-techno movies like Crash and eXistenZ are old-school Cronenberg, harking back to the sparse artiness of Stereo and Crimes of the Future and the biological hijinks of Shivers and Rabid.
That was written in '99, so I'd add a fifth section, Family Psychodramas, 2002-present (Spider, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, perhaps A Dangerous Method although not literally family).
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post #10 of 22
7/3/10 at 12:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
Videodrome is when he starts using good actors. Dead Ringers is when he moves to a new phase thematically.
I don't know man, I think Oliver Reed and Art Hindle are pretty good actors.

Alternate reply: Are you saying Marilyn Chambers isn't a good actor?

Whole hearted reply: I'd say Dead Ringers is a pretty big change-up and would be willing to accept everything before it as 'Early Cronenberg'.
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post #11 of 22
7/3/10 at 12:59am
Art Hindle's not, and Reed's not doing great work in The Brood. He's serviceable, same as McGoohan in Scanners. I think there's a LEAP creatively between Scanners and Videodrome. But there's also a shift between Videodrome and The Dead Zone; Cronenberg's films become much more emotional after Videodrome. There's lots of ways to demarcate the "periods" of his work.

I hated Spider and haven't visited it again, but of his successful work certainly it's been exciting to watch the various ways - from the beginning of his career to the present - that Cronenberg's expolored the theme of transformation. I can't find the quote, but something he said regarding The Fly about how he's fascinated by the idea of how much someone can change before they aren't that person anymore. It's been a lifelong preoccupation that goes all the way to Eastern Promises. I feel like these last two films are more "Cronenbergian" than anything since 1998.
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post #12 of 22
7/3/10 at 1:04am
I'm glad he didn't end up doing that Ludlum thriller.
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post #13 of 22
7/3/10 at 1:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
What's awesome about Shivers is its a happy ending masquerading as a dystopian ending.
I really didn't appreciate Shivers on the right level until I heard Cronenberg talk about it on American Nightmare.
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post #14 of 22
7/3/10 at 1:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil View Post
Art Hindle's not, and Reed's not doing great work in The Brood. He's serviceable, same as McGoohan in Scanners. I think there's a LEAP creatively between Scanners and Videodrome. But there's also a shift between Videodrome and The Dead Zone; Cronenberg's films become much more emotional after Videodrome. There's lots of ways to demarcate the "periods" of his work.
Yeah, ok. I guess you make a point. The acting in The Brood is light years better than the acting in Scanners though, 'cept maybe Ironside. Cool mythology and concept aside, I've always thought Scanners was a step back from The Brood.
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post #15 of 22
7/3/10 at 1:27am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Blank View Post
To quote myself insufferably:


David Cronenberg's career thus far can be neatly divided into four sections. First, you have the Student Period (1967-1970), in which Cronenberg began to integrate his ideas with his cinematic vision. Some budding filmmakers play with an 8mm camera out in the backyard -- Cronenberg took his camera to deserted universities and crafted odd stories about death and rebirth.

Second, you have the Drive-In Period (1975-1982), wherein Dave gave the groundlings what they wanted -- T & A and gore -- while still smuggling in some provocative ideas and images.

Third, you have his Highbrow Period (1983-1993), in which Cronenberg began drifting away from slime and deformation in order to probe mutation of a more interior kind.

Finally, you have his Pure Period (1996-present), in which Dave seems to be getting back to the basics of his early shorts and features -- psycho-techno movies like Crash and eXistenZ are old-school Cronenberg, harking back to the sparse artiness of Stereo and Crimes of the Future and the biological hijinks of Shivers and Rabid.



That was written in '99, so I'd add a fifth section, Family Psychodramas, 2002-present (Spider, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, perhaps A Dangerous Method although not literally family).
Very interesting, Blank. I was thinking thru VIDEODROME, but you obviously put more scholarly thought into it. Lol

Isn't it interesting how his early films anticipate AIDS?
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post #16 of 22
7/3/10 at 9:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fat Elvis View Post

Isn't it interesting how his early films anticipate AIDS?
Yeah, but he would tell you that AIDS limits the meaning he's going for. By the time The Fly came out, of course, everyone read it as a metaphor for AIDS or cancer, and Cronenberg said something like "Critics are very plugged into what's going on now." His point is that everyone dies of something, everyone faces debility of some sort (assuming they don't live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse), and what do you do when your body — the home for your very being — starts changing? It's like living in a house that gradually stops obeying three-dimensional perspective, or something. Except the only way to move out of the house is, well, you know. Cronenberg said The Fly (I realize this isn't one of his early films, it just offers a good example of him resisting "this = X disease" analysis) was more about the process of aging than anything else.

Not to say you're wrong; of course the films anticipate AIDS. But Cronenberg would say that if it wasn't AIDS, it would be something else, and historically has been something else up until a cure was found.
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post #17 of 22
7/3/10 at 4:21pm
After years of cancer treatment The Brood, The Fly and Videodrome all mean a lot more to me. Whether he knows it or not Cronenberg really tapped into the terror of ones body working against them, more than movies specifically about cancer. I've heard similar things about Nam vets having more trouble with Aliens than Platoon, so maybe genre abstractions allow this stuff to better penetrate the psyche?
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post #18 of 22
7/3/10 at 4:39pm
Cronenberg probably wouldn't have reassuring words for you, then. I think he's said something to the effect that he tries to think pro-cancer in those body-horror films — to see it as not a bad thing but as a metamorphosis. Of course, that's easier said than done if you haven't done a round of chemo. But he says that he tries to make it about more than wellness=good, disease=bad. To him, cancer is an organism innocently trying to survive, and who's to say it shouldn't? Of course, it also kills its host as it grows.

In brief, he tends to get philosophical about disease in a way that doesn't necessarily have much to do with the reality of living with it.

The horror of the films, he would say, comes into play when Seth or Max or whoever can't accept what's happening; they try to fight it or rationalize against it, instead of saying "Well, we all have to die." That's also where the conflict comes in. Otherwise, as he's said, if you turn into a fly and everybody likes it, you don't have drama; you have a sitcom.
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post #19 of 22
7/23/10 at 5:14pm
Thread Starter 
Last night I watched Videodrome for the first time since childhood. Boy, was I too young for it first time out. It was one of those movies that was all too much. Disturbing S & M visions. Ear-piercing needle fetishes. Images that my young mind just couldn't take. Well I get it now. It's kind of the "It" of his early phase; weirdly wonderful, the most Cronenberg-ian of his Horror classics. Of course, James Woods is a big part of what makes it work too. What he brings takes it to dark comedy in more than a few places, a nice balance with the body horror imagery.

Also playing a lot better than remembered: Scanners. Coming amongst his greatest works, is it possible it's the most undervalued/appreciated by the hardcore fans?
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post #20 of 22
7/23/10 at 5:17pm
It's hamstrung by a horrible, horrible lead actor. Scanners is a home-run concept; should have been ten times the crossover hit that it was.
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post #21 of 22
7/23/10 at 5:20pm
SCANNERS is full of a lot of amazing ideas. It is hobbled by a really amateurish and down-right-awful (in places) performance by the lead. But there's some great shit in that film. Just for the iconic impact of the exploding head at the opening of the film SCANNERS deserves respect.

Also, the VHS cover of a flaming man (I think Ironside?) was one that haunted me as a kid in the videostore.

EDIT: Dammit, Phil and your fast typing. Making my entire post redundant. *shakes fist*
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post #22 of 22
7/24/10 at 1:51am
I third the love for Scanners. I know the lead actor was bad, but in fact his deadwood performance actually fits that character quite well. The character is a cipher, barely a personality when the film begins, and highly susceptible to the feelings/thoughts of those around him. After his mega-mind meld with the group of telepaths, his "girlfriend" tells him she knows he's a monster...because he's empty inside. What is he at the end of the film?
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