There’s a very specific kind of film that makes you feel like you’re having a stroke in a library full of bugs. That’s Naked Lunch. David Cronenberg’s 1991 adaptation—well, hallucination—of William S. Burroughs’ infamous novel is not so much a movie as it is a fever-drenched dare. It dares you to sit through two hours … Read More “Naked Lunch (1991) – Cronenberg’s Kafkaesque Puke Dream of Typewriters, Talking Bugs, and Creative Self-Destruction” »
There are some movies that leave you shaken. Others that leave you inspired. And then there’s Dead Ringers, a film that leaves you vaguely uncomfortable and wondering if your couch just performed a pelvic exam on your soul. Directed by David Cronenberg in 1988—right after the grotesque triumph of The Fly—Dead Ringers is what happens … Read More “Dead Ringers (1988) – Identical Twin Gynecologists and a Red Robe Full of Pretension” »
David Cronenberg’s The Fly is the rarest kind of horror film—it’s disgusting, it’s tragic, and it’s tender enough to make you genuinely sad about a man who throws up on his food before eating it. Released in 1986, it’s both a goo-drenched monster movie and a warped romantic tragedy, a remake that out-mutates the original … Read More “The Fly (1986) – Cronenberg’s Love Story with Body Parts Falling Off” »
David Cronenberg directing a Stephen King adaptation sounds like one of those pop culture experiments you’d dream up in a feverish haze—like “what if Wes Anderson made a slasher film” or “what if Nicolas Cage played every role in The Breakfast Club?” But in 1983, Cronenberg tried his hand at mainstream respectability with The Dead … Read More “The Dead Zone (1983) – Premonitions, Political Assassinations, and Peak Walken Staring Blankly into the Middle Distance” »
In Videodrome, David Cronenberg throws a cathode-ray brick through the TV screen and invites you to climb in after it. Released in 1983, this slippery horror-techno-thriller is widely considered one of his seminal works—a sticky mix of body horror, media theory, and erotic hallucinations that’s been dissected in film schools and YouTube video essays like … Read More “Videodrome (1983) – Long Live the Flesh, but Wake Me Up Between Hallucinations” »
If you’ve ever heard of Scanners, chances are it’s because of that scene—yes, that one. The exploding head. The one that turns a man’s skull into meat confetti and made Cronenberg a midnight movie legend. It’s gory, it’s iconic, it’s the kind of moment that makes you pause your popcorn hand halfway to your mouth. … Read More “Scanners (1981) – Heads Explode, But the Plot Just Simmers” »
You can always count on David Cronenberg to turn therapy into a blood sport. In The Brood, he skips the foreplay and dives headfirst into his own trauma-soaked psyche, dragging us with him like unwilling participants in a group counseling session sponsored by Satan and Canadian tax credits. This isn’t just body horror—it’s custody horror, … Read More “The Brood (1979) – Mommy Issues, Murder Dwarves, and One Hell of a Psychotherapy Bill” »
Before there were exploding heads, before there were pulsating televisions and fly-human hybrids vomiting on their breakfast, David Cronenberg made Fast Company—a movie so aggressively generic and un-Cronenbergian that it feels like it was directed by a guy who lost a bet at a Jiffy Lube. It’s the forgotten black sheep of Cronenberg’s early career, … Read More “Fast Company (1979) – Cronenberg’s Midlife Crisis on Wheels” »
Marilyn Chambers has a needle in her armpit, and I’m supposed to feel things. Rabid is what happens when you cross a medical horror film with a porno in denial and then shake it like a snow globe full of blood, Canadian snow, and sexual panic. David Cronenberg’s 1977 follow-up to Shivers is slicker, meaner, … Read More “Rabid (1977) – Cronenberg’s Bloody Valentine to Science, Sex, and Skin Grafts” »
Before David Cronenberg gave us talking typewriters, flesh guns, and gynecological nightmares, he dipped his scalpel into the primordial ooze of 1970s Canadian horror with Shivers—a film that asks, “What if the real disease was repressed horniness?” Released in 1975 and partially funded by the Canadian government (your tax dollars hard at work, eh?), Shivers … Read More “Shivers (1975) – Sex, Slugs, and Suburbia” »
