August 25, 2012
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David Cronenberg
The book I read to research this post was 80′s The Golden Decade of the Horror Movie by Matteo Tortora which is an excellent book which I downloaded for free from kindle. Matteo has a degree in film studies & is a big fan of horror movies. He is also a catholic and apparently there is an organisation connected to that church in Italy that rates films so he has selected some of the more prominent horror movies & put what they had to say. He has also written a short synopsis to each of them films. He has also written quite a bit about the history of horror films in the eighties in particular how it was a major opportunity to have decent special effects in films for the first time. He also profiles quite a lot of directors so I thought I’d do David cronenberg. Finally he has also has listed absolutely loads of horror films on a year by year basis and put internet links to each one.
David Cronenberg was born in Canada in 1943 & at first did a lot of work in Canadian and American television. In 1974 he made a film called Shivers which was about a contractable disease plaguing a town. It had much critical acclaim. The following year he made Rabid which was about a woman who had a condition which made her eat flesh and affected other close people so they developed the same urge. That was followed by several films including Sisters & The Brood. Sisters featured a young Margot Kidder in a dual role. She would go onto find fame doing the Superman films. The Brood was about a lady being used to breed babies which kind of grew out of her. That starred Oliver Reed & Samantha Eggar. Soon after came what many consider his masterpiece Videodrome which was about a tv station that broadcast sex and violence that gradually controlled someone. Even with him being able to produce an organic gun. It was a kind of parody on people who attribute things like murders to things people watch on television. Let’s face it they must be evil to start with when they commit things like murders. Anyway Videodrome starred James Woods & Debbie Harry. The Fly which starred Jeff Goldblum & Geena Davis and was a remake of a classic film about a man who tries to teleport him and inadvertently gets his DNA mixed with a fly. Cronenberg tried to be factual in what the result of combining their DNA would be. He made Dead Ringers which starred Jeremy Irons & Genevievre Bujold which was about identical twins who were doctors and one of whom was obsessed with a nymphomaniac speed freak which destabilized their relationship. One twin killed the other then killed himself. Cronenberg has had some acting roles most notably in the tv series Alias. Also he has made some good films more recently like Naked Lunch & A Dangerous Method.
