David Cronenberg’s particular genius is getting inside our deepest, most primal fears, the ones that exist in the id and are impervious to any assuaging from the land of logic. Hence in RABID, Marilyn Chambers grows something suspiciously phallic in a most unexpected place, in VIDEODROME, our televisions turn on us, and in DEAD RINGERS,… Read More »
EASTERN PROMISES
EASTERN PROMISES is a gloriously dark and compelling thriller that plays cat and mouse with its audience the way that the characters involved play cat and mouse with each other. The tension, though, in this well-plotted suspense yarn arises not so much from the evil that the villains purvey, it’s the way that the underworld… Read More »
David Cronenberg’s SPIDER
David Cronenberg is on familiar turf with his latest film, SPIDER. The twist is that, while the film is rife with the horror, it stems from seeing the sane world through the eyes of a schizophrenic. When I talked with the soft-spoken and erudite director, I asked why he eschewed his usual trappings of blood and gore.… Read More »
David Cronenberg & Viggo Mortensen Make EASTERN PROMISES
When I talked with Viggo Mortensen and David Cronenberg about EASTERN PROMISES on August 24, 2007, it was just a matter of time before the steam bath came up. In one of Cronenberg’s most audacious sequences, Mortensen, wearing only his manly pride, engages in a brutal knife-fight with two assailants. I saved it for the end, though. Before that,… Read More »