Category Archives: David Cronenberg Films
THE DEAD ZONE
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THE DEAD ZONE-United States-1983
Directed by David Cronenberg
Screenplay by Jeffrey Boam
Based on the novel by Stephen King
Starring
Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith
Brooke Adams as Sarah Bracknell
Tom Skerritt as Sheriff Bannerman
Martin Sheen as Greg Stillson
Herbert Lom as Dr. Sam Weizak
Colleen Dewhurst as Henrietta Dodd
Nicholas Campbell as Frank Dodd
The Dead Zone is about change. It is about changes in our lives and it is about the ability to make changes in our lives. A man tells his girlfriend he’s going to marry her. That changes. He awakens after a five year coma. His entire life has changed. His girl has married another man. Changes. He has to learn to walk all over again. Changes. He has the power of second sight. Changes. He also has the ability to change the outcome of his visions. He meets a politician and for a brief moment their hands are entwined in greeting. He sees the future this man has planned for us and it is not a paradise. He must make a choice, a change, even if it costs him his life.
The Dead Zone is a David Cronenberg film. His films are metaphors for disease. The power that Johnny Smith (played brilliantly by Christopher Walken) has is a disease of the mind. It is not something he asked for. He doesn’t want it. Cronenberg sees Johnny Smith as what he is; an ordinary man with an extraordinary ability who in the end would rather be more like Ichabod Crane whom ‘no one troubled to hear about anymore.’
Walken is one of the most talented actors and the perfect choice for Johnny Smith. He proves with this film that his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for The Deer Hunter was no fluke.
The Dead Zone as directed by David Cronenberg is one of the best adaptations of a Stephen King novel. It may be based on a Stephen King book, but it is a Cronenberg film through and through.
THE FLY
THE FLY-United States-1986
Directed by David Cronenberg
Screenplay by David Cronenberg and Charles Edward Pogue
Based on the short story by George Langelaan
Starring
Jeff Goldblum as Seth Brundle
Geena Davis as Veronica Quaife
David Cronenberg’s The Fly goes beyond the realm of horror and science fiction. It is a film whose central core is how a person can be stricken with a terminal disease and what that person does to handle that disease. It is also about what happens to the people he/she loves. It is about the memories they share, no matter how brief or how long they are. It is also about the toll that disease takes on this person and on the people who care about them. It uses the ‘experiment gone horribly wrong’ as a brilliant metaphor for the physical ravages that a disease like AIDS or cancer can do to the human body. It is Jeff Goldblums’ finest achievement as an actor and it is David Cronenbergs’ masterpiece.
The story of a scientist who suffers the consequences of an experiment gone wrong has been done to death in the world of science fiction and horror. However, in Cronenbergs hands it is merely a stepping point. The Fly looks like a horror film. It even looks like a science fiction film. But it’s really neither. At its heart it is essentially a romance. What makes it horrifying is that it is a romance between a healthy woman and a man dying from a ‘disease’ that is changing him on a personal as well as a molecular-genetic level. This man is angry, confused and frightened by what’s happening to him. The tag of the film is “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”, but it is not the woman who is finally afraid but the man himself. He is afraid that he will die and will be forgotten. That he will only be remembered as a man who died of a horrile disease and not a brilliant scientist who did something to change the world to make it a better place. One can understand where he’s coming from. Take the late tennis player Arthur Ashe, for example. You could tell someone what a great tennis player he was and they might look at you and say “Didn’t he die of AIDS?” It doesn’t matter about what he did, but what he died of. The same could be said of Freddy Mercury or Amanda Blake.
In the hands of a lesser director, The Fly would have been just another horror movie. David Cronenberg refuses to allow that to happen. Thank you, Mr. Cronenberg. Thank you.
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- David Cronenberg’s Novel Mantra for Cosmopolis? ‘Let It Express Itself’ (wired.com)
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- On David Cronenberg, The Dark Knight Rises, and Genre Film (tor.com)
- Sex, Anarchy, and Robert Pattinson’s Hair Haunt David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis (io9.com)
- The Fly (1986) (geekvsgoth.wordpress.com)
- ‘Antiviral’ Trailer: Brandon Cronenberg’s Creepy, Churning Debut Feature (slashfilm.com)
- Adam Berg to Direct VIDEODROME Remake Written by Ehren Kruger; Misses Point of David Cronenberg’s VIDEODROME (collider.com)
- Five Superheroes For ‘Cosmopolis’ Director David Cronenberg (splashpage.mtv.com)
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The Brood
Written and Directed by David Cronenberg
Cast
Oliver Reed as Dr. Hal Raglan
Samantha Eggar as Nola Carveth
Art Hindle as Frank Carveth
Cindy Hinds as Candice Carveth
Also starring
Nuala Fitzgerald
Susan Hogan
The Brood is a film directed by David Cronenberg that once again exposes the monster within us and not the other way around. Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar) is the estranged wife of Frank Carveth (Art Hindle), and the mother of Candice Carveth (Cindy Hinds). She is a patient of the psychotherapist Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed) and is undergoing a new form of therapy called ‘psychoplasmics’. The therapy encourages patients to go all the way with their negative emotions and this in turn causes their bodies to react and change as well. One with abandonment issues develops welts all over his chest and back. Another develops a lymphatic cancer because of his own self loathing.
Nola, on the other hand, is Dr, Raglans’ star patient due to the fact that when she becomes angry either consciously or sub-consciously she gives birth (parthenogenetically) to strange mutated children (the titular Brood). These children are the manifestation of her anger and attack the people that her rage is directed towards. Frank notices bruises on Candice’ back and believes that Nola did this to her during a visitation. He tries to have her barred from seeing Candice and this leads to the Brood lashing out at Nola’s parents as well as a teacher at Candice’ school whom Frank befriends. The Brood kidnaps Candice and brings her back to the institute that Nola is housed in. Frank confronts Nola and must make the choice to stop her to keep the creatures from harming their daughter. The film is not too gory but there is one scene in particular that will probably turn a few stomachs.
I found Samantha Eggar to be a good choice for the part of Nola. She is a very beautiful woman and this beauty adds a new dimension to Nola’s angrier moments that I don’t feel would have been achieved otherwise. Oliver Reed has been accused of being a ‘scenery chewer’ but I felt that he was rather subdued here. I don’t know very much about Art Hindle but I feel that he was credible in the role of Frank Carveth. Cindy Hinds was good as Candice Carveth and did not annoy me the way a lot of child actors tend to do. All in all I enjoyed the film and understand that a remake is in the works for 2013.
David Cronenberg has said that he got the idea for the film while going through a rough custody battle and divorce with his wife Margaret Hindson. He said that Nola possesses some of the same characteristics of those of his ex-wife. The film is his third horror film after Shivers and Rabid.
TRIVIA
Related articles
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- ReFramed No. 21: David Cronenberg’s ‘The Brood’ (1979) (Short Ends and Leader) (popmatters.com)
- Crazy Red-Band Teaser Trailer for David Cronenberg’s COSMOSPOLIS (geektyrant.com)
- David Cronenberg: analyse this (guardian.co.uk)
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Rabid
Written and Directed by David Cronenberg
Cast
Marilyn Chambers as Rose
Frank Moore as Hart Read
Joe Silver as Murray Cypher
Howard Ryshpan as Dr. Dan Keloid
Also starring
Patricia Gage
Roger Periard
Rabid is a film directed by David Cronenberg (The Fly, The Dead Zone). It stars Marilyn Chambers (yes, the late adult film actress) as Rose. Frank Moore plays Hart Read, Roses’ boyfriend. The two of them are traveling on Hart’s motorcycle when they are involved in an accident. Hart suffers a dislocated shoulder. However Roses’ injuries require plastic surgery and she becomes the “guinea pig” of Dr. Dan Keloid. Dr. Keloid performs a new type of plastic surgery on her in which her intact tissue is grafted to the burned areas of her body on the hope that it will differentiate and replace the damaged area. The operation is a success…kind of. Rose heals, but she also develops a need for human blood. She doesn’t bite her victims in the way of the traditional vampire. Under her armpit is a new orifice that hides a phallic-like stinger that she injects into her victims to draw their blood. The ones that survive have no recollection of what happened to them and after a period of about 8 hours they show the symptoms of rabies (rage, foaming at the mouth). They attack others and pretty soon there is an epidemic going on and martial law is declared to keep things from getting too far out of hand. Throughout all this Rose continues to stack up victims of her unnatural thirst and seems to have no idea that she is the Patient Zero who started the epidemic. I’m not going to give away the ending. If you haven’t seen the film check it out and let me know what you think. If you have then let me know how I did summarizing it and point out any mistakes I may have made.
David Cronenberg is a director whose central theme in his films has always been the monster within us, not the monster without. He is known as the Director of Venereal Horror. Rabid is his second feature film and was preceded by Shivers aka They Came from Within.
TRIVIA
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