Oliver Reed as Dr. Hal Raglan in The Brood (1979)
David Cronenberg really directed some doozies between about 1975 and 1990…. actually he never stopped making remarkable movies, but that first big chunk of material represents most of what we think about when we throw out the word “Cronenbergian.” The prosaic yet unsettling visions he presented in Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, The Fly, and Dead Ringers are the most thorough expression of the “body horror” genre and have no true equal in the canon of world cinema.
Until I watched L. C. Durham’s intriguing, er, dissection of Cronenberg’s repeated inclusion of unreliable medicos in this period, it had never occurred to me that the pattern was that strong. Get a load of this murderer’s row of medical professionals: Dr. Antoine Rouge, Dr. Emil Hobbes, Dr. Dan Keloid, Dr. Hal Raglan, Dr. Paul Ruth, Dr. Sam Weizak, Drs. Beverly and Elliot Mantle. It’s a lovely bunch, no? We can only wonder why Cronenberg had quite so much to say about doctors.
Patrick McGoohan as Dr. Paul Ruth in Scanners (1981)
Durham’s thoughtful approach investigates the first third or so of Cronenberg’s career and examines the “mad doctors” to be found, starting with 1969’s Crimes of the Future (1970) and ending with Dead Ringers (1988), providing a judicious summary of each movie’s contents and the role of unreliable and/or hubristic doctors in each. Often the doctors aren’t really to blame for the horrible things that go wrong, but sometimes they are. It’s very helpful to see such a generous sampling of clips from Cronenberg’s early period, which makes the distinctively futuristic yet kind of stodgy mise-en-scène of so many of his movies so strikingly apparent.
Martin Scorsese once said that he thought Cronenberg (in person) looked like “a Beverly Hills gynecologist”—I guess, given the mortifying events of Dead Ringers, we can be glad Cronenberg never followed that career path…..
via Nerdcore
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Secret Weapons’: David Cronenberg’s made-for-TV dystopian sci-fi biker movie, 1972
Concept art for David Cronenberg’s ‘Total Recall’ that never was