SCFZ poll: David Cronenberg

[flip]

eustache didn't meet the criteria, so maybe we can try with him again later - i'll start the becker poll soon

[brian d]

i had been watching some of his films anyway, so i just kept going. seen 13 now.

shivers
m butterfly
the fly
rabid
a dangerous method

when i was young a babysitter was watching some
movie that scared the shit out of me. for some reason it came back to mind a few years ago, but i could only remember one scene. turns out that movie was rabid (i remembered the scene with the drill through the car door). just found that out the other day.

[MatiasAlbertotti]

I'll watch Rabid today and then add my votes, hopefully.

Done:

Seen 8

1-Videodrome
2-Eastern Promises
3-Crash
4-Existenz

[flip]

notes on the votes:

- excepting the two very early films (Crimes of the Future, and Stereo) every Cronenberg feature got at least one vote except Spider
- M Butterfly did well in the poll, entirely because it was either the #1 or #2 film on four people's ballots. But it only got one other vote, so it's either polarizing, or maybe just not many people have seen it, but those who have think highly of it

results

1. Videodrome (1983) -- 48 pts
2. The Fly (1986) -- 39 pts
3. Dead Ringers (1988) -- 38 pts
4. Crash (1996) -- 27 pts
5. M Butterfly (1993) -- 19 pts
6. A Dangerous Method (2011) -- 17 pts
7. A History of Violence (2005) -- 16 pts
8. Shivers (1975) -- 14 pts
8. eXistenZ (1999) -- 14 pts
10. The Brood (1979) -- 12 pts
11. Scanners (1981) -- 11 pts
11. Cosmopolis (2012) -- 11 pts
13. Naked Lunch (1991) -- 7 pts
14. Eastern Promises (2007) -- 6 pts
15. Maps to the Stars (2014) -- 5 pts
16. The Dead Zone (1983) -- 3 pts
16. Rabid (1977) -- 3 pts
18. Fast Company (1979) -- 2 pts

[...]

Too bad about Spider. I get why it doesn't rank for most people, as the basics of it do feel a bit more familiar than much of Cronenberg's other works, as so many thrillers play with personality disorder themes. I think Spider is different from that crowd, but perhaps not by enough to gain a real sense of clear separation. Nonetheless, it's an important transitional movie for Cronenberg, where he moved away from examining something like an outward expression of individual epistemology which often blurred into taking on an ontological state, to a more inward examination of the same concepts. "Body horror" had been the label his films were often placed under prior to Spider which led to some thinking he'd moved on to an entirely different vein from Spider onwards, often to their expressed disappointment. I don't think the themes did change all that much, with the later films still invested in how bodies shape awareness and the earlier ones in how we know the world.

[josiahmorgan11]

Great insight there Greg. I haven't seen spider but now will throw it on my priority list when it comes to Cronenberg. as for m.butterfly which I am yet to see. My great friends, the Cloutiers both refer to M. Butterfly among his very best, so there is that, also.

[thoxans]

yeah, i need to see both m. butterfly, as well as shivers. spider was perfectly fine, from what i remember, but not much stands out in my memory, other than a decent ralph perf and that room with the strings strung throughout it. admittedly, i haven’t luvved crone’s later work, as much as his ‘body horror’ period, and greg does bring up a very good point about that pretty clear transition in crone’s career (i also didn’t think much of a history of violence the first time i saw it - though i came to appreciate it upon a subsequent viewing - and really didn’t like eastern promises and a dangerous method - and haven’t gotten around to subsequent viewings of either one of those flicks - and i abs hated maps to the stars - and don’t plan on revisiting that repulsive piece of crap (dt’s appreciation withstanding)), and greg’s comment makes me think i simply need to rethink my approach to the crone, especially as he continues in this subvisceral vein

[---]

I don't think I've ever seen a body horror film I didn't dislike

[Roscoe]

VIDEODROME's appeal entirely escapes me, maybe another viewing is in order but I'm not in a hurry. I started to like Cronenberg with DEAD RINGERS, and then with THE FLY, where he put actual human beings onscreen instead of the aptly named Stephen Lack (yeah, his lack of affect is probably on purpose but that doesn't make SCANNERS any more interesting). EASTERN PROMISES just meant nothing to me, alas.

[thoxans]

roscoe, my man, everyone knows scanners’ charm lies in the exploding heads

[nrh]

scanners charm lies in the way cronenberg shoots a very specific kind of north american suburban/industrial landscape, which i think is actually more ballard than he managed in his ballard adaptation. plus patrick mcgoohan, who more than makes up for steve lack.

but will admit to not understanding the appeal of videodrome at all. haven't seen it in quite awhile but the my least favorite of his films that i've seen.

[Umbugbene]

My reason for voting for Scanners was the 1970s vibe. It caught the end of the era before postmodernism when architecture looked to the future. The horror effects were just silly.

[flip]

posted this to letterboxd:

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... s-poll-95/

[josiahmorgan11]

The appeal of videodrome is in that body horror so infrequently is accurately tied to sex without inhibition; Cronenberg's techno-focus actively asserts that the presence of a cock is synonymous or at least analogous to the presence of an overseer. It is maybe the only Cronenberg film that examines an individual's connectivity to the external world [other than, perhaps, Cosmopolis] as opposed to the individuals connection to themselves. To put it differently: often Cronenberg engages in exploring a response to an external stimulus and the body horror follows from here. In Videodrome; the stimulus is entirely internal. Therein lies the horror.