30 Day Horror Challenge Day 21 - Your favorite medical horror film

I’ve always been kinda dubious about doctors. To tell you the truth, they freak me out a little. It’s kind of the same concept as why some people find clowns so creepy. After all, laughter is the best medicine, right? Wait, I didn’t mean for that comparison to go into metaphorical territory. What I’m saying is that both of their outward personas are something that’s supposed to be good and beneficial. Who they are behind the facade, however, could be anything, and that’s what is so scary. We put our physical well being, even our lives, in the hands of people we really know nothing about. We’re told from childhood to trust doctors. For all we know, our lives could be in the hands of a sicko, pervert, or lunatic. Never is this trust more important, and never is someone more vulnerable, than in the relationship a woman has with her gynecologist. It is that trust that David Cronenberg twists and exploits in Dead Ringers and believe me, it’s disturbing.

It’s the story of a pair of twins, Elliot and Beverly Mantle. Beverly is the shy, scholarly one. Elliot is the confident ladies man. They have a gynecology practice where they specialize in infertility. As many twins do, have a very strong bond; sharing an apartment, the practice, and even their women. Yes, Elliot seduces them, and then they pull the switch. Enter Claire, a pill addicted actress. They try to pull the switch on her, but she can tell them apart. When Beverly falls in love with her, it threatens their enmeshed bond as twins. This sends the brothers spiraling downwards into a nightmare of drugs and madness. In the end one last surgery must be performed. That’s all I’m gonna say.

This being a Cronenberg movie, I could, like with every other Cronenberg movie, go on and on about metaphor and symbolism and subtext for hours. I’m not going to, however. I’m just going to say that this movie is creepy. Straight up creepy. Really f’n creepy! Cronenbergs films up to this point in his career had been pretty gory. He wisely decided to keep the on screen bloodletting subdued in this flick, however. This is a sophisticated, literate, and methodical type of horror. He knew that just the suggestion of certain medical procedures would send shivers up audience’s spines. This is never more apparent than when he shows the bizarre gynecological instruments that Beverly has invented. They look like alien medieval torture devices. The thought of what they do, and more importantly where they go, is only hinted at, but it’s an image you won’t soon forget. His restraint paid off, building the creep factor and the suspense psychologically until the very end, giving the final bloody scene a much more visceral impact. Even the little details are top notch. For example, the red robes and masks the doctors and assistants wear give the surgical scenes the feel of some sort of bizarre arcane ritual. Not the kind of thing you want to think about in conjunction with medical procedures.

The single most important factor in the success of this film is a mind blowing performance by Jeremy Irons. He plays both Elliot and Beverly. He manages to give two amazing performances in one movie. Being twins, they are obviously very much alike, but he gives each one such subtle physical, conversational, and emotional differences that for most of the movie you immediately know which brother he is playing. In the scenes where they are trying to fool someone and near the end when the brothers seem to share the same madness, however, he blends the two characterizations so seamlessly that it’s almost impossible to tell which one he is playing. It’s almost three distinct characters; Elliot, Beverly, and the hybrid of the two. Credit for the illusion is shared by Cronenberg for his (at the time) groundbreaking split-screen wizardry, but without Irons, it could never have been pulled off. I don’t have any more adjectives to tell you how great he is in this movie. How the hell did he not even get nominated for an Oscar for this? Dustin Hoffman won that year for Rain Man. I’m calling bullshit. Irons blew that performance away. It’s not even a competition. One thing though; am I the only one that can’t hear Irons’ voice without thinking of Scar?

As I said, I found this movie creepy as hell. I can only imagine how creepy it is for a woman. I don’t possess the right parts to truly comprehend how terrifying those instruments, or the concept itself, are. I’ve only watched this one with a woman once. She never spoke to me again. I’m sure a lot of the effectiveness of a psycho gynecologist movie is obviously lost on anyone with testicles, but man, does this flick succeed on every level. In less capable hands, this could have turned into a genetaliatic rendition of The Dentist or Dr. Giggles. In the hands of Cronenberg and Irons (and, to be fair, Genevieve Bujold as Claire, who is also awesome), it is a twisted character study of depravity and desperation that will leave its mark on your psyche. Two severed thumbs up. Dr. Nathan says take two of these, check it out, and call me in the morning.

30 Day Horror Challenge Day 11 - Your favorite science fiction horror film

When I was back there in film school, there was a person there who put forth the proposition that you can fully explain a David Cronenberg film. Explain a Cronenberg film. YOU CANNOT EXPLAIN A CRONENBERG FILM! His films are obtuse, esoteric, and incredibly subtext laden. They are also bizarre and grotesque. Above all, though, they are true deep mind trips, movies that you will definitely be mulling over long after the credits have rolled. Personally, I love me some Cronenberg, and Videodrome is his masterpiece.

In this film James Woods, who seems to be the go to guy for sleazy characters, plays Max Renn, who runs a TV station intent on pushing the boundaries of sex and violence on TV. He discovers a show called Videodrome, a snuff torture show coming out of Pittsburg. While I’ve never heard him say it, I would be wiling to bet that this is Cronenberg giving a little tip of the hat to George Romero. Slowly, Max becomes obsessed with the show. He learns from Brian O’Blivion, a character that only exists on video, that Videodrome is part of a plot to kill off those who seek this type of entertainment. Max then begins a series of hallucinations in which he literally becomes one with the media technology. On the orders of O’ Blivion’s daughter, he assassinates the producers behind Videodrome but to truly overcome it, he must take one final step and fully become one with the “new flesh.”

The difference between this and many other science fiction and horror movies is that while the film does veer into the fantastic, its main concept is rooted in cultural reality. It is all about society’s relationship with the media; being controlled, becoming addicted, and eventually losing our identities and being assimilated into it. The movie came out in 1983. The home video revolution was just beginning. Cable and satellite TV were becoming widespread. There was a public outcry about the effect violent and sexual media were having on the minds of the populace. It was not set in a dystopian future, but a dystopian present. It also has the distinction of being one of the few science fiction movies that hasn’t become trite and outdated. Remember when all of the movies set in the future took place in the year 2000? Some future, huh? Where’s my flying car? Anyway, Beta tapes and the rest of the technology in the film may be ancient history, but the central thematic questions are, if anything, far more relevant in 2011 than they were in 1983. With the rise of on demand TV, cable with hundreds of channels, the internet, smart phones, etc, the media is even more ever present in society and people are even more addicted to it. The analog world Videodrome took place in was just the precursor to the age of the digital revolution we live in today. Media conspiracies and brainwashing? Hello, have you watched the news lately?

Cronenberg was more or less a prophet, predicting a future where mass media would think for us and basically be inseparable from real life. There’s a character that created a library of video tapes of himself, and no one knows he has actually died because he only ever existed on screen. Doesn’t facebook basically do the same thing today? His daughter says about him “My father has not engaged in conversation for at least twenty years. The monologue is his preferred mode of discourse.” How many internet celebrities, TV talking heads, podcasters, and bloggers could that be describing? Max eventually develops what can only be described as an abdominal vagina that video tapes are forcibly inserted into. The symbolism there is about as subtle as a punch in the face. He has literally ceased to be anything more than a media receptacle. Can you honestly say you don’t know people like that? Me neither.

You can’t talk about Videodrome without talking about the amazing effects. Like Tron one year earlier, if you’re gonna make a movie where technology isn’t just a main plot point, but almost a character in and of itself, you’d better bring some ground breaking effects to the table. The scenes of Sam entering the TV screen and the gun hand extending out of the TV were unheard of at the time. Even a new process for showing a screen on screen without flicker was developed for this flick. There has always been a strong current of body horror running through Cronenberg’s work, and here the sheer wizardry of Rick Baker really make it come alive. From the pulsating “ab-gina” to bodies being torn apart from the inside to guts exploding out of a TV to the biomechanical gun’s tendrils burrowing under Max’s skin, it’s all absolutely stellar. It’s a good thing they’re fighting for the “new flesh,” ‘cause after Mr. Baker’s done with it, the old flesh is pretty much screwed.

I could go on forever about this movie. In fact, I did write extensively about it in my film analysis classes. I will mention for the record, that the acting is great and the movie is perfectly cast. Cronenberg movies always deliver the horror goods, often with a sci fi slant, but they rise above just run of the mill fright flicks. They’re much more cerebral. They all have something to say, and they say it in a way that is quite thought provoking. The ideas are not crammed down your throat. Instead you watch, knowing that this all means something more, but exactly what that is you’ll have to figure out on your own. What one of the characters said about Videodrome the show is also true for Videodrome the movie; “It has a philosophy. And that is what makes it dangerous.” Two severed thumbs up. Nathan says check it out. Long live the new flesh!