‘Scanners’
While it was made after David Cronenberg’s pure-horror stage, “Scanners” does still rely heavily on special makeup effects. But oh, what effects. Set in a future where telepaths, or scanners, work to bring down the government that seeks to control them, Cronenberg fills the screen with indelible images that horrify and amaze even modern viewers. From the now infamous exploding-head scene (achieved with a latex head, rabbit livers and a twelve gauge) to the skin-crawling final battle, this is not a movie for the faint of stomach.
Michael Ironside is well-cast as the villainous Revok. Patrick McGoohan, creator and star of the classic television mind-blow “The Prisoner,” is a welcome addition as Dr. Paul Ruth, who mentors a young scanner in an attempt to infiltrate the scanner underground. The film plays mostly as an action picture, but Cronenberg manages to entwine a sense of dread and unease with the storyline. This marks “Scanners” as his first true success at blending genre filmmaking with psychological drama.
‘Videodrome’ and ‘eXistenZ’
“Videodrome” tells the story of a sleazy television producer (the born-to-play-it James Woods) and his discovery of a pirate TV station that may be showing snuff films. As he gets deeper into his obsession for the programming the show starts to change him mentally and physically.
“eXistenZ” follows the designer of a new kind of video game and her bodyguard (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law, respectively) as someone chases them in an attempt to destroy her game. The total immersion style of play blurs the lines between game and reality.
However, both movies are better seen than described. Similarities between the two certainly abound and Cronenberg makes no effort to hide them. Each explores the reality of experience and technology’s role in the disappearance of an absolute reality. Each abounds in the stomach-turning practical effects that made Cronenberg famous, but they deftly explore man’s place in a world in which he is replacing himself with machines. Each is fascinating, but “Videodrome” stands out slightly more, if only for Woods’ performance and its total acceptance of the dingier elements of its plot.
‘Dead Ringers’
A psychological drama following the tribulations of twin gynecologists, “Dead Ringers” is the first Cronenberg-written film to contain no elements of the fantastic. (1979’s “Fast Company” was directed but not written by Cronenberg and is a straight-forward drag racing movie mostly forgotten by his fans but still held dear by the director himself.)
Jeremy Irons gives the performances of his career playing both Beverly and Elliot Mantle, whose gynecological practice struggles when the two start to stray from their previously identical lifestyles. The questions of identity, ever-present in Cronenberg’s work, take the center stage, pushing aside (mostly) the carnage of his past.
The aggression and cruelty is of the emotional variety and the science is shocking fact instead of fiction. When the less confident Beverly spirals into drug addiction, he begins to create monstrous gynecological tools that, in other Cronenberg films, we might have seen used to gruesome effect. What he gives us instead is an acting piece by Irons so engrossing that it befuddles the mind to think where the awards are. Even without Oscars or special effects, “Dead Ringers” is quite possibly Cronenberg’s most complete work to date.