David Cronenberg Marathon: Part 1

Scanners (1981): The first three movies we have watched in this marathon have all been classic Cronenberg body horror.  But in a lot of ways, Scanners is about the horror and power of the mind, not the fear of decay and death.  Scanners are people with telepathic and telekinetic powers who are being used by a large corporation, ConSec, for an unknown but possibly nefarious purpose.  Cameron Vale (a serviceable Stephen Lack), a derelict scanner who has been living in a shopping mall and is unable to control or understand his power, is discovered by ConSec after he unwittingly murders a woman who is thinking bad things about him.  Cameron is recruited by ConSec to help them deal with a renegade scanner, Dale Revok, played by a delightfully evil Michael Ironside.  Like most movies dealing with telepathy, Scanners has some silly scenes of people thinking really hard, but some of these scenes have deliciously grotesque payoffs (see, e.g., the exploding head).  I do think that Scanners could have been much more interesting than it actually was - for example, had the film explored the fear of people scanning you, knowing your thoughts, and being able to manipulate your body without your control, Scanners would have been much more stimulating.  As it is, Scanners is a movie with a good concept but only middling execution.  Ironside is creepy and gives me a little Ben Linus-from-Lost realness, but Vale is boring and you almost want him to lose, which is never a good quality in the supposed hero of a film.

Videodrome (1983):  So far, Videodrome has been the weirdest, most disturbing, most Cronenbergian movie we have watched in this Cronenberg marathon.  James Woods is Max Renn, the executive of a cable access channel that plays sleazy television (pornography, violence, etc.).  Simultaneously, he is introduced to Nicki Brand (a gorgeous, ethereal but vulgar Debbie Harry) and an illegal feed of Videodrome, a TV show depicting torture and murder.  Renn can't believe how realistic Videodrome is and can't stop watching; he also can't help but be sucked into Nikki's trap when she seems even more aroused and excited by Videodrome than he is.  As Renn tries to discover the origin of Videodrome and begins to have strange, incredibly bizarre hallucinations,  he becomes entwined with Professor O'Blivion (who will only communicate through video) and his daughter Bianca.  I have seen some weird movies and Videodrome is definitely one of the stranger ones: the hallucinations are both surreal and incredibly vibrant, and Cronenberg deftly toes the line between reality and horror.  Woods is at once villain and hero, victim and victimizer, and, unlike so many movie characters that become increasingly unhinged as strange things happen to them, he reaches a new level of clarity and finds a true purpose in his life in trying to find and eventually defeat Videodrome.  A film about the power of images and the relationship between the viewer and the viewed, Videodrome not only examines the influence of media in the present but foretells the evolution of an individual's relationship to what they watch. Videodrome at once reinforces and subverts the message that you are what you watch: you become what you consume, and it becomes you as well. Unsettling but powerful, Videodrome gets under your skin just like Videodrome does for Max and Nicki.

The Fly (1986): First thought, best thought.  Didn't someone say that?  Well, my first thought re: The Fly is that Jeff Goldblum is an undercover hottie.  The fact that I can say that in a movie where he becomes a hideous monster is a tribute to his surprising charisma as Seth Brundle (aka Brundlefly).  The age old story of a scientist who experiments on himself and becomes his own worst creation, The Fly is funny, creepy, and even a little sexy.  In some ways, The Fly is the most conventenial of all the films we have watched thus far; the story is familiar to any moviegoer who has seen Frankenstein or Jekyll and Hyde.  Goldblum is a genius scientist working on teleportation who meets Geena Davis's Veronica, a journalist, at a museum event.  They have immediate chemistry and she begins to document his experiments.  After a fight, Seth gets the courage to try out his teleportation machine himself, and it works brilliantly. Except, not quite: As the pod closed, a fly snuck into the machine with him!  At first, his symptoms manifest themselves in positive ways: he becomes increasingly confident, stronger, and more virile.  But as the film goes on, he begins to morph into a hideous fly-man (Brundlefly).  Davis is charming as a woman who sees the man she loves slowly and horribly become a monster, and the great chemistry and real spark between her and Goldblum helps make the movie a real, albeit surreal, love story.  This is the epitome of Cronenbergian body horror, as we and the characters watch in horror as Brundle's body decays and morphs into a disgusting shell of his former self.  His humanity begins to crumble and his new, insect nature takes over. By the end, we are as heartbroken as Veronica as what has become of Brundlefly.

Julie