Movie Review: Rabid (1977 and 2019)

Rabid (1977) *** ½ / *****

Directed by: David Cronenberg.

Written by: David Cronenberg.

Starring: Marilyn Chambers (Rose), Frank Moore (Hart Read), Joe Silver (Murray Cypher), Howard Ryshpan (Dr. Dan Keloid), Patricia Gage (Dr. Roxanne Keloid), Susan Roman (Mindy Kent), Roger Periard (Lloyd Walsh), Lynne Deragon (Nurse Louise), Terry Schonblum (Judy Glasberg), Victor Désy (Claude LaPointe), Julie Anna (Nurse Rita), Gary McKeehan (Smooth Eddy).

 

Rabid (2019) *** / *****

Directed by: Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska.

Written by: John Serge and Jen Soska & Sylvia Soska.

Starring: Laura Vandervoort (Rose), Benjamin Hollingsworth (Brad Hart), Ted Atherton (Dr. William Burroughs), Hanneke Talbot (Chelsea), Stephen Huszar (Dominic), Mackenzie Gray (Gunter), Stephen McHattie (Dr. Keloid), Kevin Hanchard (Dr. Riley), Heidi von Palleske (Dr. Elliot), Joel Labelle (Trent Taylor), C.M. Punk (Billy), Edie Inksetter (Dr. Beverly), Tristan Risk (Nurse Dana / Cynthia Creature), Sylvia Soska (Bev), Jen Soska (Ellie).

 

David Cronenberg’s second film, Rabid, is not one of his best. Like many of his pre-Videodrome (1983) films, it is Cronenberg still working through how to connect all his different obsessions – weird sex, body horror, psychology, identity, all into a genre film and the results are mixed. I don’t think it’s quite as good as his debut – Shivers (1975) and certainly isn’t as good as its follow-up, The Brood (1979) – but I do prefer all three to his first foray into bigger budget films – Scanners (1981). Cronenberg isn’t overly interested in his main character in Rabid – Rose, played by adult film star Marilyn Chambers. Along with her boyfriend, Hart (Frank Moore), she is involved in a motorcycle accident in the opening moments of the film, and ends up at a nearby plastic surgery clinic – and ends up having an experimental treatment done. It does work out quite as they expected – as the strange treatments have caused her to develop a new organ – a small stinger that emerges from her armpit, and can be used to suck human blood – the only thing that will keep her alive. She is patient zero in an epidemic that descends upon Montreal – martial law is declared, and Hart tries to save her – and she tries to prove she isn’t the monster she is.

 

There is room for improvement in Cronenberg’s film – which is the kind of pleasingly bizarre 1970s horror film that would likely mostly be forgotten by now had it not been an early film in the career of a master like Cronenberg – and one that so clearly shows the obsessions he would indulge for the rest of his career. The Soska sisters, Jen and Sylvia, should therefore had plenty of room to play with Cronenberg’s premise. Their remake though strangely seems to both kind of expand and contract Cronenberg’s original. They are clearly fans of Cronenberg – there are references here to many of Cronenberg’s movies, from Dead Ringers to Naked Lunch to The Fly, and probably others. Yet, the also are clearly not slaves to Cronenberg’s earlier film either – there is certainly some connective tissue here, but they have basically gone completely their own way.

 

Some of those changes work, other not so much. The biggest problem with the film is probably its first act – which basically takes 30 minutes to accomplish what Cronenberg does in 30 seconds. They clearly want their main character, Rose (Laura Vandervroot) to be a more complete character than Cronenberg’s, and they want to establish her world – she works for a fashion designer, her foster sister is a model, but poor Rose is a wallflower – which leads to one of the most ridiculous “hot girl isn’t hot because she’s wearing glasses” I have ever seen in the movie. I’m not sure I love the fashion industry stuff here – it seems too easy a target, and the film doesn’t even go as far as say The Neon Demon does – but they clearly want a more focused film than Cronenberg’s.

 

For me, that took a while to get used to – because Cronenberg’s depiction of Montreal slowly descending into chaos – the society wide outlook of that film – is really the reason to watch it. Chambers isn’t a particularly good actress – she excels in a few scenes (seducing that guy in the adult theater, writing around on the floor in pain) – but she doesn’t have much range. The Soska sister clearly just aren’t interested in that here.

 

But the remake gets better as it goes along, as it begins to focus on the changes to Rose, and the strange doctor – named Dr. William Burroughs (Ted Atherton). The climax becomes bloody, disturbing, disgusting. While the ending of this film is completely different than the ending of Cronenberg’s – they stay true to the downbeat, depressing nature of the ending.

 

Overall, it’s interesting to revisit one of Cronenberg’s earliest films. It remains interesting, but mainly for what it would setup for his future career. It’s also interesting to see the Soska’s sisters film – an early film in what hopefully will be a great career. They have the chops to make a great film – this one just isn’t it.

Classic Movie Review: The Brood (1979)

The Brood (1979)

Directed by: David Cronenberg.

Written by: David Cronenberg.

Starring: Oliver Reed (Dr. Hal Raglan), Samantha Eggar (Nola Carveth), Art Hindle (Frank Carveth), Henry Beckman (Barton Kelly), Nuala Fitzgerald (Juliana Kelly), Cindy Hinds (Candice Carveth), Susan Hogan (Ruth Mayer), Gary McKeehan (Mike Trellan), Michael Magee (Inspector), Robert A. Silverman (Jan Hartog).

 

David Cronenberg’s The Brood was hardly a critical favorite when it was released back in 1979 – and I think it’s fair to say that if Cronenberg had not had gone onto the have the career he has had since, that The Brood would most likely have been largely forgotten by now – and it certainly would not have gotten a high profile release on the Criterion Collection a while back. Taken as a film unto itself, The Brood is an effective horror movie – creepy and chilling, with one of the grossest, most memorable climaxes you could come up with, but is also a rather silly film, whose basic elements do not make a whole lot of sense. The movie largely overcomes those deficiencies though, because what works about The Brood works really, really well. It’s also fairly clear though, that The Brood has become better remembered than it would otherwise be, because of Cronenberg – and because of how many of his pet themes are very much present in the film. He would go onto refine these themes in later, better movies – just as The Brood represents a step-up from his first two films, Shivers and Rabid, which on some level addressed the same concerns.

 

The film’s main character is not one of two top billed stars, but rather it’s Frank Carveth (Art Hindle), whose wife, Nola (Samantha Eggar) is under the care of Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed) – an unconventional doctor who specializes in “psychoplasmics” – in which mental anguish and pain manifests itself physically. Frank has, in many ways, given up on his wife – but he is legally obligated to allow his daughter – around 6 – visit her mother in the hospital every weekend. When she comes back with wounds all over her, he is determined to stop these visits – but is told if he does, he will lose custody completely (that makes absolutely no sense, but whatever). So, he decides to investigate Raglan to prove that he is crackpot – and dangerous – and that his daughter will be in danger if she keeps going. As he starts investigating, a series of grisly murders starts striking those close to him – and seemingly committed by one or more dwarfs or small children. What he eventually discovers is more shocking than he ever would have imagined.

 

It is perhaps the least surprising news ever to find out that when Cronenberg was making The Brood he was going through a rather bitter divorce and custody battle. If you were feeling ungenerous to the film, you could almost see it as a horror film in which the worst nightmare of “Men’s Right Activists” comes true. Frank is clearly the better, more responsible parent – he is Candice’s best interests at heart, does everything he can to protect her – but he’s stuck in a society in which he has no chance to win in court against the mother. The portrait of motherhood on display in The Brood is perhaps the most disturbing and poisoned that one could conceive. Apparently Samantha Eggar only shot for 4 days on the movie – and yet, it is Nola who everyone remembers in the film. The finale, in which we discover her secret (SPOILER WARNING) is which the dwarfs who have gone on a killing spree are the physical manifestations of her rage – that she birthed and carrying in an external womb. Yet, there is something tender even in the film’s most infamous disgusting moment – when she births a new one, and then likes the blood off of her new offspring.

 

To think, however, that the film is misogynistic would only to be looking at the very top part of the surface of the film – because in The Brood, both parents will end up doing some pretty horrible things – it’s just that Nola’s are more obvious. Frank keeps leaving Candy with others – as he goes off on his search, prioritizing his desire to win custody of his child, over his child – and often it’s in those moments where the killer dwarfs from Nola strike – Candice witnesses her grandmother beaten to death by the dwarves, and later, will see her beloved teacher suffer the same fate. The climax of the movie involves quite literally a fight to the death between the two parents – a fight in which both of them don’t try and save their daughter, who is at the mercy of the murderous dwarves at the time. The ending of the movie seems like a normal one – the “good” guy prevails, while the evil woman is punished – yet by then the damage has been done. The good guy has become a murderer – and the scars that both parents have inflicted on their daughter are permanent. The Brood is a divorce drama disguised as a horror film.

 

You would also need to ignore the fact that Nola, for all of her faults, was somewhat powerless over what she becomes. Like her daughter, she was first marked by her parents’ divorce – which has haunted her until her adulthood, where she believes her mother was abusive to her (whether or not she was, remains unresolved – although the film certainly hints that at best, he mother is an alcoholic). Her husband clearly never understood her, and wanted her to be more “normal’ – something to drove her even more crazy. All this doesn’t even mention Dr. Hal Raglan, a classic Cronenberg creation – the male doctor who experiments on and exploits female subjects, and then is horrified by the results. Cronenberg has always been fascinated by psychology – although he has often found it be extremely problematic – no more so than in The Brood, where it is quite literally responsible for what happens.

 

All of this makes The Brood sound fairly fascinating – and I didn’t even mention the fine role for Cronenberg favorite Robert Silverman – and it really is. The Brood is a film who’s surface level is, as Roger Ebert described it at the time of its release an “el sleazo exploitation film” (he wasn’t a fan) – but when you start peeling back the layers, you find a surprisingly complex film. And yet, it really must be said that analyzing the film is more interesting than actually watching much of it – Frank does make for a rather dull protagonist, and even if Oliver Reed and Samantha Eggar kind of make up for that, with their over the top performances (Eggar in particular is wonderful). But stretches of the movie are rather dull, and some of the scenes involving the dwarf killers are not as effective as they should (they actually more effective in quieter moments, where they aren’t murdering anyone).

 

Cronenberg would go on to make better films that explore the connection between the body and the mind – The Dead Zone, Videodrome and The Fly were all less than a decade away, and all of them are better films. The Brood is a fascinating film in many ways – but it is a perfect example of a film that is helped by auteur theory – it’s more interesting when taken as a part of Cronenberg’s whole filmography, than a film unto itself.

Classic Movie Review: Dead Ringers (1988)

Dead Ringers (1988)
Directed by: David Cronenberg.
Written by: David Cronenberg and Norman Snider based on the book by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland.
Starring: Jeremy Irons (Beverly Mantle / Elliot Mantle), Geneviève Bujold (Claire Niveau), Heidi von Palleske (Cary), Barbara Gordon (Danuta), Shirley Douglas (Laura), Stephen Lack (Anders Wolleck), Nick Nichols (Leo), Lynne Cormack (Arlene), Damir Andrei (Birchall), Miriam Newhouse (Mrs. Bookman).

There is an icy cold precision to David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers which makes it so very disturbing. The plot – about twin gynecologists, who are both geniuses, who pass women back and forth without their knowledge, and eventually succumb to a spiral of despair, drug use and violence – very easily could have been turned into an exploitation film – the kind of cheesy film you come across on cable late at night enjoy, then forget. You won’t necessarily enjoy Dead Ringers – but you won’t forget it either. Like Cronenberg’s best movies, it burrows under your skin and stays there.

Beverly and Elliot Mantle (both played, brilliantly, by Jeremy Irons) are Toronto born twins who more intimately involved with each other’s lives then they should be. They run a successful practice – helping rich women get pregnant – and are minor celebrities in the medical field. Beverly is smart, shy, awkward and excels at research. Elliot is outgoing, charming – and excels at getting the brothers the money, they need to continue to do their research. The brothers have always “shared” women – without telling the women of course – and don’t have a problem with it. Elliot believes that Beverly is so shy and awkward that he’d still be a virgin if it weren’t for him. It is an arrival of a woman – Claire Niveau (Genevieve Bujold) – a famous actress – who will ultimately start the brothers’ downward spiral. As always, Elliot “gets” her first – and then passes her off to Beverly. Beverly then does something stupid – and falls in love with her. She falls for him as well – which causes both twins different problems. She brings her drug addiction into her relationship – and Beverly is soon caught up in it as well. Never having had a real girlfriend before, he is also vulnerable to petty, almost teenage boy level jealousy. Elliot is jealous as well – but in a different way. Beverly and Elliot have always been the most important person in each other’s lives, but Claire changes that.

Dead Ringers is remarkable on several levels. From a technical standpoint, the film is probably the best example of having one actor play two characters in cinema history. Cronenberg doesn’t invent new tricks to cover up the way he does things – he just does in more complex way. He doesn’t try to hide the seam separating the two characters in a shadow, but instead Cronenberg moves his camera – the splice changing positions. I’ve seen the film a number of times now, and I never notice a seam. The film works on other technical levels as well – Howard Shore’s score is one of his best, Cronenberg’s use of color, in particular the blood red surgical gowns the twins use, is striking. The gynecological tools invented by Beverly late in the film are perhaps the most disturbing things Cronenberg has ever put in a movie, which ranks them among the most disturbing in any movie, ever. If Cronenberg’s technical specs in the movie are impeccable – and he directs with the cold precision of a surgeon, the movie itself benefits from that ton. The film doesn’t shy away from the gory details of the movie – but presents it with a clinical view that makes it all the more troubling.

The best thing in the movie may well be Jeremy Irons performances as the twins. He wasn’t the first, nor the last, to play dual roles in a movie – but he may well be the best. Beverly and Elliot look identical – and yet there is not a moment in the film, not even a silent one, when you do not know which one you’re looking at. It’s all in subtle ways Irons moves, speaks and carries himself. He delivers not one, but two, great performances of a man coming apart at the seams – but for different reasons – and it he makes their every move clear. It’s one of the great screen performances in history.

You could nitpick a few things in Dead Ringers if you were so inclined. The fact that Bujold’s character disappears from the movie for the second half (to show up near the end) is a loss – she sets everything in motion, than leaves, which makes her more of a dramatic convenience than a character. Elliot’s descent into madness and drug addiction happens perhaps a little too fast – one scene his “girlfriend” is trying to stop him from taking drugs, the next he’s a spaced out junkie.

But those things don’t bother me much in Dead Ringers – the movie can only do so much, and it does need to get to its shattering climax. That climax is creepy, tragic, haunting and pathetic all at once – (I want ice cream!) and it’s also inevitable. Beverly and Elliot deserve each other.

Classic Movie Review: David Cronenberg Shorts

Three Shorts By David Cronenberg
Camera (2000)
Directed by: David Cronenberg.
Written by: David Cronenberg.
Featuring: Leslie Carlson, Marc Donato, Harrison Kane, Stephanie Sams, Kyle Kass, Katie Lai, Natasha La Force, Daniel Magder, Chloe Randle-Reis, Camille Shniffer.

Chacun Son Cinema: At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World (2007)

Directed by: David Cronenberg.
Featuring: David Cronenberg.

The Nest (2014)

Directed by: David Cronenberg.
Featuring: Evelyne Brochu, David Cronenberg.

Most major directors have a host of directing credits that people have never heard of. Often times, these are early shorts or TV work made when the director was trying to break into the business, or at film school, etc. – and often they are hard to find, unless the director is proud of them. David Cronenberg for example made four films while at film school – and released two of them – Crimes of the Future and Stereo on the DVD of Fast Company (1979) – and they are quite good. I assume the reason he didn’t release the others is because they are not. Cronenberg also has 11 directing credits for TV – TV movies, shorts or episodes – between 1970 and 1975 – when his debut film, Shivers aka They Came From Within – came out (and one credit right after, in 1976). Since then, however, it’s mainly been his features – one 1988 of the Fridays Curse (the Friday the 13^th TV series) and two early 1990s episodes of something called Scales of Justice aside (I am very curious about this later credit – why did the director of The Fly and Dead Ringers do two episodes of Canadian TV?).

Since the year 2000 however, Cronenberg has made three interesting short films (see the note at the bottom of the page) – and those are the ones I am having a look at here. The first of these is Camera, from 2000, that was commissioned by TIFF to play in front of some movies at that year’s festival (another of those films, Guy Maddin’s The Heart of the World, is one of the greatest shorts ever made in Canada, and has previously been reviewed). In the film, an aging actor, Leslie Carlson, talks directly to the camera about aging and dying – as well as that “old Panavision” camera the “children” have brought into the house. Carlson thinks the camera does nothing but destroy – that its sucking away our humanity. He gives a bitter, somewhat paranoid rant, directly to the camera for most of the runtime. It’s only in the last moments, when the children turn their Panavision camera on him, that Carlson lightens up and talks about how wonderful the camera is – and what it can do. He is telling the truth when the camera isn’t on him, and lying when it is.

By having an elderly actor play the role – one who had worked with Cronenberg before (in Videodrome, The Dead Zone and The Fly), it’s hard not to see the films cynical view of the future and death as Cronenberg’s cynical view of the future of cinema – and film – itself. The digital revolution was just starting in 2000, but telling, the kids bring in a film camera, not a digital one.

This leads into the second short – At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World – made as part of the Chacun Son Cinema project, which brought together directors from around the world to make shorts of only a couple minutes long to talk about the future of film. Some directors, like the Coen brothers wickedly funny segment World Cinema, have an optimistic view. Not so for Cronenberg, who cast himself as the Last Jew in the World, who spends the movie with a gun in his mouth, as a news reporter gives live updates on whether or not he’s killed himself yet. It’s an odd, depressing little film – one that doesn’t leave much hope for movies or movie going (or Jews for that matter) in the future, having everything replaced by cable “news” where if it bleeds it leads. It isn’t a particularly original idea, but when you only have three minutes to express your feelings on the future of film, what do you expect?

The most interesting of the three films to me is the most recent one – The Nest. The film stars Evelyne Brochu who sits topless on an exam table in some sort of would-be drab but futuristic operating room (actually Cronenberg’s garage), as she talks to her doctor (Cronenberg himself, as only a voice, and at one point a gloved hand). She thinks the doctor is a shrink, who is trying to talk her out of having the surgery – but he assures her he is not. She wants to have her left breast removed, because she is convinced that there is a nest of insects – perhaps wasps – living inside it (the right one is a “real tit”) she explains. The doctor is skeptical, and they go around in circles talking about the surgery – perhaps he can just remove the nipple, and create a hole for the insects to escape from, she wonders. Ah, but what if they don’t want to come out, he counters.

The film is disturbing in the extreme, precisely because of the coldness with which Cronenberg shoots it. The entire film is one shot, all from the doctors POV, as the two dispassionately discuss cutting off the woman’s breast. Normally, you would assume that the woman is just crazy – but given some of things that have come out of the bodies of Cronenberg characters over the years, I’m not so sure. For those who have wanted Cronenberg to return to “body horror”- The Nest is about as close as you’re likely to get.

The three films don’t really add much to the Cronenberg filmography – at least not by themselves. They are not overly original. But they are all interesting, disturbing and memorable. If you’re a fan of Cronenberg, you really should check them out.

NOTE: If you look at the IMDB you’ll actually see 5 different credits – one for Camera in 2000 and one for Short6 in 2001 – although the short included in Short6 is in fact Camera. You see his credit for his Chacun Son Cinema segment, and then you see two in 2014 – one for The Nest and one for Consumed. Consumed is actually just a shorter, two minute version of The Nest. Cronenberg made it to act as a trailer for his debut novel, Consumed.

Classic Movie Review: Naked Lunch (1991)

Naked Lunch (1991)
Directed by: David Cronenberg.
Written by: David Cronenberg based on the novel by William S. Burroughs.
Starring: Peter Weller (Bill Lee), Judy Davis (Joan Frost / Joan Lee), Ian Holm (Tom Frost), Julian Sands (Yves Cloquet), Roy Scheider (Dr. Benway), Monique Mercure (Fadela), Nicholas Campbell (Hank), Michael Zelniker (Martin), Robert A. Silverman (Hans), Joseph Scoren (Kiki).

On the Criterion Blu-Ray of Naked Lunch, writer-director David Cronenberg (rightly) says that a faithful version of William S. Burroughs classic novel Naked Lunch would cost $100 million and be banned in every country. Burroughs’ book, as brilliant as it, is essentially un-filmable, as it contains so many different outshoots and tangents, so many different characters and places and has chapters that Burroughs has said were written so that they could be read in any order. The last line in the Wikipedia plot summary of the novel is “The book then becomes increasingly disjointed and impressionistic, and finally simply stops.” – Which is pretty much accurate. Filmmakers had tried for years to find a way to adapt Burroughs book, but were never able to get it off the ground. What Cronenberg does is take elements from Burroughs’ novel, elements from other Burroughs’ writing and elements from Burroughs’ life itself, and mixed it up with Cronenberg’s own unique sensibility and the result is one of the strangest, most disturbing films you will probably ever see.

The film stars Peter Weller as Bill Lee – an exterminator living in New York, who along with his wife Joan (Judy Davis) gets addicted to the bug powder that he uses in his job. Eventually, Bill will meet a giant bug who talks out of his ass, who tells him that his wife needs to be killed- and soon after, Bill and Joan will do their “William Tell” routine, that results in Bill shooting his wife in the head (much like the real Burroughs did to his wife). Bill will meet a giant Mugwump (you’ll have to see him to believe him) who “specializes in sexual ambivalence) and flees to Interzone – a strange locale, that somewhat resembles Tangiers, except of course the typewriters there have a mind of their own, and produce intoxicating narcotics when Bill produces something they like – which, of course, is the novel Naked Lunch. More characters enter his life – Tom and Joan Frost (Ian Holm, and Judy Davis again) a pair of, well, something, their strange maid Fadela (Monique Mercure), a homosexual playboy (Julian Sands) and the infamous Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider). There are conspiracies built within conspiracies – and everyone wants the “black meat” of the Brazilian centipede.

That’s the plot of the movie – kind of – but it doesn’t really give you an idea what the experience of watching Naked Lunch is really like. This is a surreal nightmare of a film, with lots of Cronenberg’s trademarked gross out special effects. Like his work on Videodrome (1983), The Fly (1986) and later eXistenZ (1999), the special effects here are about the melding of technology and biology. The typewriters in the movie are living, breathing, speaking organisms. And that’s just the start – there are other gross out special effects – a deranged sex scene in a birdcage, and another scene where one character takes off a suit – which is essentially a different character of a different gender. Cronenberg has often made movies about identity – about the horrors coming from within not outside forces, and the same is true of Naked Lunch.

It is also a film about writing – and oddly came out the same year as another masterpiece about writing – the Coen Brothers Barton Fink. That film was about a talentless hack who calls himself a writer. Naked Lunch is about a talented writer, who insists he is not a writer. Throughout the movie, Bill Lee is writing what will become Burroughs Naked Lunch – but refers to it all as “reports”. Oddly, Judy Davis plays the doomed muse in both the Coens and Cronenberg’s films – but plays three vastly different characters. Like Miranda Richardson in Cronenberg’s later film Spider (2002), the greatness of Davis’ performance is how she creates two different characters, that still feel as if they share an identity of sorts – if that makes any sense (and after seeing the movie, I think it does). Peter Weller, best known for playing Robocop, delivers a surprising great performance in Naked Lunch in the lead role. He has the same deadpan, monotone that actors often affect when playing Burroughs, as Viggo Mortenson did in On the Road and Ben Foster in Kill Your Darlings recently, but without some of the more overt theatrics those two actors used.

The film is a mind-fuck of a movie as only Cronenberg (or perhaps Lynch) could have made it. Perhaps one day someone will figure out how to make a “straight” version of Burroughs novel – yet I hardly think it would work as a movie – at least not nearly as well as it works as a novel. What Cronenberg did is what more filmmakers should do when confronted with a brilliant, yet difficult novel, and find a way to capture the spirit of the work, filtering it through their own sensibility and coming up with something wholly unique and different. Naked Lunch is like nothing else you’ve seen before – which is appropriate because the novel is like nothing else you’ve ever read before. The two works are startling different – but they share the same DNA.

10 Best Canadian Films of All Time

Two weeks back, TIFF announced the results of their most recent survey of the Greatest Canadian Films of All Time – something they do every 10 years, give or take. For the first time since the survey started in the 1980s, Claude Jutra’s Mon Oncle Antoine did not win – that went to Zacharis Kunuk’s Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner for 2001 – which shouldn’t be all that surprising, considering it placed 5^th in 2004, just three years after it came out. Apparently, the race was close, but Atanarjuat won it. Is it the greatest Canadian film of all time? Not to me, but it’s pretty damn close, so why complain?

Their list was as follows:

1. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (Zacharis Kunuk, 2001)
2. Mon Oncle Antoine (Claude Jutra, 1971)
3. The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997)
4. Leolo (Jean-Claude Lauzon, 1992)
5. Jesus of Montreal (Denys Arcand, 1989)
6. Goin’ Down the Road (Don Shebib, 1970)
7. Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988)
8. C.R.A.Z.Y. (Jean Marc-Valle, 2005)
9. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007)
10 (tie). Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)
10 (tie). Les Ordres (Michel Brault, 1974)

When the list came out, I started thinking about what my top 10 list of all time Canadian films would look like. I almost immediately knew that if I was going to make one up, I’d have to limit myself to one film per director – if not, I could easily have 6 Cronenbergs, 2 Egoyans, and only have two spots left. And what would be in the fun in that. I think one can argue that perhaps the reason why Cronenberg – Canada’s best known, and best director, ranked all the way down at number 6 is because he has so many films that could qualify, and there seems to be no real consensus as to what his best is. Browsing through the ballots, there was obviously a lot of votes for Dead Ringers, but there were also a lot of votes for Videodrome and Crash, and scattered support for Eastern Promises, Naked Lunch, eXistenZ, Spider, Shivers, Scanners, The Brood – even a couple of lone votes for M. Butterfly and Rabid. A few, possibly confused, individuals voted for Cronenberg’s American films – The Dead Zone, The Fly and A History of Violence. My guess is that if you were to ask this same group who the best Canadian director of all time was, Cronenberg would win. But that’s just a guess. In case anyone is interested, I do have a ranked list on Letterboxd of the Best Canadian films of all time, where I don’t limited myself to one film per director (and actually, only three Cronenberg’s made the top 10 – although he makes up a third of the top 21 films). http://letterboxd.com/davevanh/list/my-35-favorite-canadian-films/

Cronenberg is hardly alone in having multiple films split his vote. While almost everyone who voted for a Kunuk, Jutra, Lauzon or Shebib film voted for Atanarjuat, Mon Oncle Antoine, Leolo and Goin’ Down the Road respectively – Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter came third, but also found a lot of support for Calendar (one of the few films of his I have missed), Exotica, Family Viewing and The Adjuster. Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal came 5^th – but his The Decline of the American Empire and The Barbarian Invasions got lots of votes as well. Sarah Polley has only directed 3 films – but while Stories We Tell came in at number 10, she also got a lot of votes for Away From Her. Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg made the top 10, but lots of people loved The Heart of the World, The Saddest Music in the World, Careful and Archangel as well. Canadian cinema remains a nice market even within Canada (and especially outside of Quebec) – so it’s not surprising that the same directors show up on everyone’s lists – they’re the only ones getting things made.

After making my list, I have to say, I think the TIFF survey did an excellent job. 6 of my top 10 are on it – and 2 others are by directors who made the list, but for different films. After some honorable mentions, I’ll get to my top 10 – which I ranked to make things more fun.

Honorable Mentions: C.R.A.Z.Y. (Jean Marc-Valle, 2005) is a funny, touching and heartfelt movie about being a gay teenager in 1970s Quebec (ask me another day, and I may put Vallee’s wonderful Café de Flore for 2011 here instead). The Dirties (Matt Johnson, 2013) was a funny and disturbing DIY movie about a school shooting. Ginger Snaps (John Fawcett) is one of the only truly original werewolf movies – which brilliantly, and hilariously, likens turning into a werewolf with teenage girl puberty. Goin’ Down the Road (Don Shebib, 1970) is undeniably one of the most important Canadian films in history – and has a brilliant documentary like feel to the story of two men who come from Out East to the Big City, and find it just as miserable. Goon (Michael Dowse, 2011) is perhaps not a great movie – but it’s a great hockey movie which is FAR rarer. Hard Core Logo (Bruce McDonald, 1996) has rightfully become a cult hit – it perfectly captures the messiness of punk rock and self-destruction (although sometimes, I think McDonald’s under seen Pontypool – a zombie movie with no zombies - is even better). Last Night (Don McKellar, 1998) is a very Canadian movie about the end of the world. Mansfield Park (Patricia Rozema, 1999) is as good a Jane Austen adaptation as more celebrated ones by Ang Lee or Joe Wright. Mommy (Xavier Dolan, 2014) is the wunderkind’s best film so far, and I doubt that it will be too much longer before he’s made a film good enough to be in the top 10. Splice (Vincenzo Natali, 2009) may not been as original as his Cube, but makes up for it by being batshit fucking insane – which is what I want from a Canadian movie like this. Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (Francois Girard, 1994) is a musician’s biopic, but one with none of the usual trappings and clichés that mar even the best the genre have to offer.

10. 21-87 (Arthur Lipsett, 1963)

The montage films of Arthur Lipsett are fascinating to watch – his first film, Very Nice Very Nice – was Oscar nominated, and remains probably his best known film, and the consensus pick for his best. I, however, was much more impressed with his follow-up film – 21-87, made in 1963. Lipsett uses a mixture of found footage and footage he himself shot, and made a pessimistic, almost dystopian, view of society – where machines were taking over, and soon we would all be reduced to a number, not a name. It’s a sad portrait of our culture, and one that has only become more relevant in the 50 years since he made the film and today. The film was a key influence on George Lucas – especially for THX 1138 (although there is a reference to the title in the original Star Wars movie as well). Sadly for Lipsett, he didn’t last long at the NFB, where he made the film – his bosses didn’t like, and didn’t get his films, and so by the end of the 1960s he was off on his own – and slowly slide into mental illness. But this short film – only 8 minutes long – deserves a spot on this list.

9. The Barbarian Invasions (Denys Arcand, 2003)

Jesus of Montreal is a more daring film, and The Decline of the American Empire is out and out funnier, but Arcand’s Oscar winning The Barbarian Invasions is still my favorite of his work. The films takes place 17 years after The Decline of the American Empire, and revisits the same characters – and their now adult children. Remy (Remy Girard), the leftist, womanizing history professor of the original film, is dying – and although he has done his best to alienate those around him, they all come back as he faces death. This may seem sentimental or unrealistic – and to a certain extent it is, as everyone from his adult son, who has embraced everything he rejected, to his ex-wife, who he cheated on constantly, to former lovers come back to send him off. Yet Arcand isn’t only being sentimental here – he has some points to make. The older generation was idealistic – the younger generation isn’t – and the older generation may complain about how the world is going to hell, but Arcand makes clear that they are as responsible for that as anyone else, and if the kids are screwed up, well just look at who they had for parents? (The younger generation has Remy’s overachieving side and Marie Josee Croze’s heroin addict as flip sides to the same coin – and interestingly, they become characters perhaps more complex than anyone else). The film touches on issues like 9/11, the overburdened Canadian healthcare system and others as well. But through it all, Arcand remains his funny, whip-smart self. 

8. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (Zacharis Kunuk, 2001)
The newly minted “Best Canadian Film of All time” really is a masterful film – and unlike anything you have ever seen before, or likely will ever see again. Running nearly three hours long, the film takes place in an small Inuit community – the time period could be now, or 1,000 years ago, it doesn’t much matter. It is a film that both shows the Inuit culture in a way that it has never been seen before, and tells a story of passion, jealously and murder. The film is both very specific to its culture, and yet universal. It’s also not a boring film – not in the least – or some dull history lesson. The film is moving, and at times exciting – the three hour runtime moved by very fast for me. Kunuk has, unfortunately, not really been able to follow-up the film with much success – The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006) is fascinating, but feels much longer than Atanajurat, despite being an hour shorter. No, I do not think this is the best Canadian film of all time (obviously) – but it is one of the only films I can think – from anywhere in the world – that I would describe as truly one of a kind.

7. Enemy (Denis Villeneuve, 2013)

I could have easily have put Polytechnique here – Villeneuve’s gut-wrenching, black & white film about the massacre in 1989, or Incendies, his Oscar-nominated film about a legacy violence passed down from generation to generation (hell, ask me another day, and perhaps I would). But for now, I’ll go with Villeneuve’s most recent film – Enemy – an adaption of the Jose Saramago novel, The Double, about a history professor who discovers his exact double (both played by Jake Gyllenhaal in an excellent performance). The movie is 90 minutes long, and neatly twists itself at the 30 and 60 minute marks, taking the film in a new direction each time. Villeneuve’s film is a surreal nightmare – evoking Cronenberg – and making both Toronto and Mississauga seemed darker and greyer than ever before. The film is really about Gyllenhaal’s relationship to the women in life – brilliantly played by Isabella Rossellini as his other, Melanie Laurent as a new girlfriend, and best of all Sarah Gadon as his pregnant wife. The shock of a finale is ingenious – because it works first as per shock value, and then as something deeper. Villeneuve is a talented filmmaker – and Canada may well lose him forever to Hollywood (he has already directed the wonderful thriller Prisoners there – has completed another Hollywood film (which will premiere at Cannes this month), and has two more on the go (including a Blade Runner sequel). But if this is it for him in Canadian film – he’s left his mark.

6. Leolo (Jean-Claude Lauzon, 1992)

The fact that Jean-Claude Lauzon died far too young – in a plane crash at the age of 43 having just completed two films – is a tragedy, because Leolo is one of the most inventive films I have ever seen, and I wish I could have seen more by him. It is a tale inspired by Lauzon’s own childhood in Montreal – and centers on an introverted 12 year old from an insane family – and not a lovably eccentric insane family like most movies of this sort, but genuinely crazy. Not that Leolo isn’t himself a little crazy – he believes that his real father was an Italian farmer who masturbated into some freshly picked tomatoes, and the semen eventually impregnated his mother when she fell in them in the market in Montreal. Oh, and he’s devising an intricate machine of pulleys to murder his grandfather – who is a horny old bastard anyway. It’s one of those films that defy description, and must be seen to be believed. If you haven’t seen it, then do so. Now.

5. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007)

There has never been a filmmaker like Guy Maddin before, and there will likely never been a filmmaker like him again. His films are inspired by cinemas’ past – particularly melodramatic silent films – but while his films often take that form, it doesn’t begin to describe them. His greatest film is My Winnipeg (although you could vote for any number of his films, and be right – and I hear his latest, which premiered at Sundance is one of his best) is his ode to his hometown of Winnipeg. Maddin both seems to love and loathe Winnipeg, and gives us a “documentary” about his town, and everything that happened in its history – none of it, and all of it being true. Maddin attributes the movie’s unique take on Winnipeg as laziness – he was hired to make a documentary about his old hometown, and decided not to do any research, and just do the whole thing from memory. In its way, it gives a more interesting insight into the city because it isn’t researched – and is about how it feels like live there. Basically though, it’s much more about Maddin than about Winnipeg. That’s why, to me, it’s the most fascinating film Maddin has made so far.

4. Mon Oncle Antoine (Claude Jutra, 1971)

In small town Quebec, in the 1950s, a young teenage boy learns a lot about life and death, and loses his innocence, all over one Christmas Eve. He lives in the kind of small town where most of the men work at the asbestos mine, and the entire town will congregate at the local general store – which has everything one could need to buy. The store is run by his uncle Antoine – who is also the local undertaker – and the boy works there, alongside a girl around his same age, from an abusive background. Claude Jutra’s beautiful movie is shot with documentary like realism in the early scenes – as the film plays as a coming of age film. The final act of the movie takes on a darker tone though – as the boy is confronted with a series of uncomfortable truths on a long, cold, snowy sleigh ride to pick up and return a dead body with his uncle. The film works wonderfully as a coming of age/loss of innocence story – but there’s more here than that, as the movie also functions as an allegory for Quebec from the time the film takes place (the 1950s) to when it was made (1970s) that makes it a deeper experience. Jutra never hit these heights again – but in Mon Oncle Antoine he made a perfect film.

3. Away From Her (Sarah Polley, 2007)

Sarah Polley’s directorial debut Away From Her is a subtle heartbreaker of a film. The great Julie Christie stars as a woman who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and eventually has to go into a nursing home. Her husband, the great Gordon Pinsent has to deal with the fact that he has been left alone – the woman he has loved all these years is still there, and yet gone – she even finds a new love interest, and doesn’t realize that she is already married. Pinsent is hurt, and tries, in vain, to try and get her back. But this isn’t The Notebook – but something deeper and truer to life. Polley shoots the film is bright whites – it takes place during the winter, and there is white snow everywhere, the sun is shining, the fluorescent lights of the nursing home non-ceasing. There is nowhere to hide. Polley does a remarkable job adapting Alice Munro’s short story – something that is hard to do, because Munro’s genius is often about what happens outside the story – that is not written, but felt. Polley has directed two other films since Away From Her – Take This Waltz, a wonderful, underrated examination of infidelity and divorce, and Stories We Tell, a personal documentary about Polley’s past (that easily could have been here instead of this one). Alongside Xavier Dolan, she is probably the brightest hope of Canada’s future cinema, especially since Vallee and Villeneuve seem determined to go Hollywood (not that I blame them). This is a subtle, heartbreaking masterpiece.

2. The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997)

Over the lifetime of this blog – started in 2009 – I have been hard on Atom Egoyan as he makes one disappointment after another (Chloe, Devil’s Knot, The Captive). But I’m hard on him because during the 1990s – and into the 2000s (I will still stand up for films like Ararat, Where the Truth Lies and Adoration), he seemed poised to perhaps one day rival Cronenberg as the greatest Canadian director in history. That hasn’t happened – but Egoyan has made at least three truly great films (Exotica and Felicia’s Journey are the others) – but The Sweet Hereafter really does tower over the rest. The film is subtle and heartbreaking and shot in the winter, with snow covering everything (much like the previous two films on this list come to think of it). It tells the story of a tragic school bus accident that takes the lives of 14 children, and its aftermath. Ian Holm delivers a remarkable performance as a lawyer who comes to town and hopes to sign up the parents for a class action lawsuit. But he isn’t a slime ball or a crusading hero – The Sweet Hereafter is too complex for that – but a sad man, dealing with loss of his own. The film is not about assigning blame, but is really about grief, and how nothing will ever make everything whole again. Adapting the book by Russell Banks, Egoyan has crafted a masterpiece. I want this Egoyan back – not the one who made Devil’s Knot.

1. Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988)

I’ve been working on this piece for a couple of days now, and I have gone back and forth and back and forth multiple times as to what David Cronenberg film should be #1. I could easily have put Crash (1996) here – and its disturbing portrait of a sexual car crash fetish, which acts, in its way, as the culmination of Cronenberg’s career up to that point. Or I could Videodrome here, with its genre leanings mixed with media messages, and gory special effects. What about Naked Lunch – a brilliant blending of the sensibilities of Cronenberg and William S. Burroughs, to come up with something wholly unique. Spider is a wonderful examination of a schizophrenic mind that came out the time as the feel good version – A Beautiful Mind. eXistenZ was a virtual reality film the same year as The Matrix – and Cronenberg’s film was smarter. Eastern Promises was an exciting, brilliant acted and directed Russian mob movie. The more I think about it, the more I love Cosmopolis – the Wall Street giant as emotional vampire film from a few years ago. Even Cronenberg’s less successful stuff – like the early Shivers, Rabid and The Brood, or later A Dangerous Method or Maps to the Stars are fascinating to watch. Luckily The Dead Zone, The Fly and A History of Violence are technically American films, or that would have made things even more complicated. So finally, what was it that made me land on Dead Ringers as his best (Canadian) film? Part of it is the technical mastery on display in the film – it may be easier now to have one actor play two characters and interact with each other, but it was much harder in 1988 – and Cronenberg pulls it off brilliantly. Not only that, but the whole movie is coldly, almost surgically, directed, making an exploitation like premise come across as something much more serious – and tragic. Part of it is the performances by Jeremy Irons – who makes the two Mantle twins completely different characters, even as they are wholly dependent on each other. But it’s really the final scene that makes me vote for this one, finally, over Crash. Both films have a tragic conclusion in their way – Crash with a marriage only temporarily “saved” as the characters continue to careen towards their deaths. But Dead Ringers final shot is haunting, tragic, sad, inevitable and just plain brilliant. Ask me another day, and perhaps Crash gets my vote (in fact, when I initially wrote this up, it did) – but for now, I’ll stick with Dead Ringers.

Movie Review: Map to the Stars

Maps to the Stars
Directed by: David Cronenberg.
Written by: Bruce Wagner.
Starring: Julianne Moore (Havana Segrand), Mia Wasikowska (Agatha), John Cusack (Dr. Stafford Weiss), Evan Bird (Benjie Weiss), Olivia Williams (Christina Weiss), Robert Pattinson (Jerome Fontana), Kiara Glasco (Cammy), Sarah Gadon (Clarice Taggart), Dawn Greenhalgh (Genie), Jonathan Watton (Sterl Carruth), Jennifer Gibson (Starla Gent), Gord Rand (Damien Javitz), Jayne Heitmeyer (Azita Wachtel).

For the second movie in a row, David Cronenberg has made a film about empty people, living in a world of affluence that has no real meaning to it. Like his last film, Cosmopolis (2012), Maps to the Stars is in many ways a deliberating distancing film – cold, cruel and violent – and is certainly not an overly “entertaining” film. Like Cosmopolis, it has haunted me for a few days after seeing it for the first time – and I have a feeling that it will grow in my mind as time goes on, and I re-watch the film. But unlike Cosmopolis – which I enjoyed more than most – I’m not really sure that Maps to the Stars ultimately works – that it really has anything to say about its subject – Hollywood and our celebrity obsessed culture. In Cosmopolis, Cronenberg made one of the best takedowns on Wall Street greed in recent memory – casting Robert Pattinson as a emotionless void in the center, with strange people circling around him, coming and going in and out of his car, talking about money – but he has reached his endpoint. The film, despite its cold tone and deliberately odd dialogue felt relevant to what was happening in the larger world outside the movie. With Maps to the Stars however, it did not surprise me to find out that Bruce Wagner wrote the screenplay 20 years ago – and has simply been updating it periodically over the years, waiting for someone to make it. It feels like a movie that could have (and probably should have) been made in the mid-1990s – a darker, more disturbing companion piece to Robert Altman’s The Player. In 2014 however, its insights seem to be too little, too late. If it resembles any other film, it would be Paul Schrader and Bret Easton Ellis’ The Canyons from last year. Maps to the Stars is better – the screenplay is better written, more wide reaching and more clever, the direction is better – isolating its various characters in the frames by themselves, even when surrounded by others, and the acting is far superior. But given this is a Cronenberg film, I cannot but think it’s a little disappointing that he has simply made a better version of a not very good film from the previous year.

The film it one of those multi-character films – the ones that Altman specialized in – where a seemingly unconnected group of characters eventually come crashing into each other. Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore) is an aging actress, haunted by the specter of her sexually abusive mother (Sarah Gadon) – who was a far bigger star than Havana ever was. She is currently up for a new role – playing an older version of her own mother – and will do anything to get it. She needs a new “chore whore”, and her friend Carrie Fisher (playing herself in an amusing cameo) suggests a girl she met on Twitter – Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), a woman whose body bares some burn scars, and has just arrived in Hollywood by bus from Florida – and immediately hires a limo, driven by Jerome Fontana (Robert Pattinson) – who is, of course, really an actor. Odd for a woman who just arrived by bus, Agatha seems to have more than enough cash. Then there is the Weiss family – Benjie (Evan Bird), is a 15 year old child star, fresh out of rehab, who has to belittle himself in order to keep his role in the very profitable “Bad Babysitter” franchise – an act that makes him physically sick. His mother, Christina (Olivia Williams) doesn’t seem to do anything accept fuss over Benjie, and his career – even though he has another agent. His father, Stafford (John Cusack) is a massage therapist to the stars – including Havana – who is also on TV, spouting some New Age sounding empowerment bullshit. The further the film goes along, the more secrets about these people, and their screwed up past, present and future begin to come into focus.

The cast is mainly okay – I’m not quite sure what else Cusack or Williams could have done with what amounts to fairly underwritten roles, but they do what they can – Cusack in particular is rather ghoulish as Stafford. Bird overplays Benjie’s self-absorption a little bit – and it kind of plays like Wagner and Cronenberg think the audience will be shocked that such a fresh faced, innocent looking kid can be such a little shit – spouting anti-Semitic slurs, and other offensive dialogue – but unfortunately that is about the only thing he is given to do. Pattinson’s role seems almost completely unnecessary – perhaps a remnant of the many earlier drafts Wagner wrote – apparently inspired by his earlier days in Hollywood as a limo driver himself. Current Cronenberg muse, Sarah Gadon (who is showing up in pretty much every fucked up Canadian movie in the last few years) is in fine form for her few scenes as Moore’s mother – who may be a ghost, but is more likely a hallucination in her diseased mind.

There are two great performances in the movie however – by Wasikowska and Moore. Wasikowska is really the central character in the movie – a mysterious young woman, whose motives remain hazy for much of the movie – but is clearly unstable from her opening scene with Pattinson in the back of that limo (and get increasingly unstable throughout). Saying more about her character would probably give away too much – but I will say in a year that has already seen her deliver fine performances in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, Richard Ayoade’s The Double and John Curran’s Tracks, she has delivered her fourth great performance this year alone- she is quickly becoming one of my favorite actresses. Moore is given the showcase role of Havana – and she delivers a great performance (that has already won her a Best Actress prize at Cannes earlier this year). It would have been easier to make Havana into some sort of one-dimensional, scenery chewing ghoul – but following Cronenberg’s lead, Moore plays her character somewhat more subdued. Yes, she is shallow, superficial, self-involved monster – the kind who takes glee in getting in a role only because of a tragedy in the life of a rival, or thinks nothing of questioning Agatha on her sex life, as she sits on the toilet, or who decides to screw her boyfriend – just to be cruel. She is a monstrous character – but Moore doesn’t make her into some sort of a caricature – but of a woman who is only a slightly exaggerated version of what we see on reality TV nightly.

Movies like Maps to the Stars are one of the reasons I am glad I no longer give out star ratings on the blog – basically because I have no idea what I would assign the film. There is a lot of things of interest in the movie – I haven’t touched on its themes of incest, which Wagner and Cronenberg (somewhat unconvincingly) try to graft onto Hollywood itself. It is a deeply troubling and disturbing film – and one I know I will revisit again at some point, because it will not leave my mind. But so much of the film quite simply doesn’t work – or feels like a leftover from the 1990s, that I’m not sure the movie really works at all. It’s an interesting movie to be sure – and if it sounds interesting to you, than I definitely think you should see it. But don’t expect a wholly satisfying experience.

Classics Revisited: Videodrome (1983)

Videodrome (1983)
Directed by:  David Cronenberg.
Written by: David Cronenberg.
Starring: James Woods (Max Renn), Sonja Smits (Bianca O'Blivion), Deborah Harry (Nicki Brand), Peter Dvorsky (Harlan), Leslie Carlson (Barry Convex), Jack Creley (Brian O'Blivion), Lynne Gorman (Masha), Julie Khaner (Bridey), Reiner Schwartz (Moses), David Bolt (Raphael), Lally Cadeau (Rena King), Henry Gomez (Brolley).

David Cronenberg’s Videodrome belongs on a very short list of films that seemingly gets more relevant as time passes. I think of films like Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957) or Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976) that looked at the merging of news and entertainment in ways that were meant to be satires when they were made that resemble our current culture even more than the culture that produced them. Videodrome is different, of course, because of its genre – a melding of dystopian sci-fi (and no, I don’t really want to get into a debate about whether Videodrome is really a dystopia or not – like the last time I brought the film up – it’s close enough for me) and horror. Yet, unlike many alarmist sci-fi films that paint a bleak view of the future that end up looking rather dated and paranoid as time passes, Videodrome – which has crazy conspiracies layered inside crazy conspiracies – looks almost prophetic.

The film stars James Woods as one of his prototypical motor mouthed sleaze characters. In this case, he’s playing Max Renn, the founder and President of a low rent cable channel whose programming consists mainly of “soft core pornography and hard core violence”. One of the earliest scenes in the movie has him appearing on a TV panel show, where the host calls him out – wondering aloud if his channel contributes to a culture of violence and sexual malaise. Renn gives a standard answer about giving his viewers a “harmless outlet” for their fantasies so they don’t have to act them out. A fellow panel member, Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry) is a radio shrink who questions Renn’s assertions, but isn’t above accepting his invitation to dinner. She thinks the culture has become degraded and debased – but knows she’s no better than the rest. Also on the panel is Professor Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley) a media professor in the Marshal McLuhan vein, who refuses to “appear on television, accept on a television” – meaning he’s not in the studio, but a TV with his face on it is. To him, culture has become such that “public life on TV is more real than private life in the flesh”. Cronenberg’s use of the talk show really is kind of brilliant – it allows him to quickly introduce three of the film’s main characters – Max, Nicki and O’Blivion – and the films themes in a few short minutes of exposition that would normally bog down a movie like this for its entire first act. Cronenberg is able to get introduce some rather heady media theory into the film from the start, in a way that feels organic to the movie itself.

From here, the movie becomes freer to explore its increasingly outlandish plot – that nevertheless feels authentic in the film. An employee of Max’s, Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) uses a “pirate satellite dish” and tracks down 58 seconds of a show called “Videodrome” – that seems to be nothing but sexual torture. Later, he’ll be able to get an entire hour long episode – which confirms that the show has no plot, no real characters, no context – and simply consists of torture. Max wants the show on his channel desperately. He’s tired of the soft stuff – he wants something hard. Videodrome is hard. But it also starts screwing with his head – giving him hallucinations. He cannot find who is responsible for the show – until he is given one name – Professor Brian O’Blivion. He goes to see him, and ends up talking to his daughter Bianca (Sonja Smits) instead. And the dark secrets of Videodrome start spilling out.

I’m not sure I can fully explain Videodrome – it may well take a Cronenberg or a McLuhan or at least a media major to do so – but I also don’t think that it’s fully necessary to get everything in the movie. Cronenberg’s overriding point – something he will return to again and again – is the relationship between technology and the flesh. You see it in his dryly intellectual student films like Stereo and Crimes of the Future, and in his seemingly exploitation early films like Shivers, Rabid, The Brood and Scanners – all of which are interesting, none of which seem (to me anyway) to be fully successful. Videodrome is Cronenberg’s first fully formed masterwork – something that prefigures what he would on to do (perhaps even more successfully – at least at times) in films such as The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Crash and eXistenZ. In Videodrome, Max slowly begins to be a hybrid creation between human and television – the so-called “New Flesh” – and then exploited for personal gain by those around him. As Professor O’Blivion explains on that talk show the TV has become the “retina of the mind’s eye”. Cronenberg’s special effects in Videodrome are grotesque – breathing videotapes inserted into a slit in Woods’ stomach, a gun that becomes grafted on his hand, a TV that literally reaches out to touch Max – yet unforgettable. We’ll continue to see through his career the merging of metal and flesh – of technology directing changing the body. The film is about human beings becoming a sort of hybrid between themselves and technology – something that more and more people are saying as humans become increasingly “attached” to their smart phones and computers. The dystopian future that Cronenberg depicts in Videodrome – which he smartly depicts as regular 1980s society before he starts twisting it – may not be exactly what we have got in 2014 – but it’s probably a lot closer than anyone expected it to be 31 years ago.

Recently Tim Robey listed Videodrome as one of the top 10 most overrated films of all time (ridiculous – in fact the whole list, as basically his argument against most of the films on it is that they’re good, but not that good where I would think the most over rated films would be bad films that people think are good – but I digress) and says that Cronenberg’s other 1983 film – the studio project and Stephen King adaptation The Dead Zone taught Cronenberg about narrative structure, which aided him in the future. There is some (not a lot) of truth to that. After Videodrome and The Dead Zone, Cronenberg was able to get his more heady ideas into more audience friendly movies – although he still makes films that could be described as deliberately alienating, like his recent Cosmopolis. The Fly (1986) is a more polished film that addresses some of the same themes as Videodrome. Yet Videodrome remains fascinating – and in some ways a more pure distillation of Cronenberg’s worldview. Roger Ebert described it as one of “least entertaining films ever made” – but Cronenberg wasn’t trying to entertain with Videodrome. In the film, I think he accomplished exactly what he set out to do.