SHIVERS (1975)

  Big fan of director David Cronenberg but his first horror film here has never really been my favorite. It's kind of a zombie movie except these zombies are really horny! Oh and they're actually controlled by a parasite that sneaks around like a slug and crawls into people's orifices(including the great Barbara Steele in a bathtub). Lynn Lowry gets naked for no reason and we get lots of orgy scenes to go along with the murderous rampages. Still an impressive early movie clearly made on a low budget with ideas that would be more fleshed out in years to come. AKA IT CAME FROM WITHIN and THEY CAME FROM WITHIN

Known in Italy as THE DEMON UNDER THE SKIN:

VIDEODROME (1983)

 Ordinarily movies that feature hallucinations that we're never quite sure are actually happening, or not, being being a main feature of a film is something I don't care for but in the case of this film I give it a pass. There are certainly enough ideas intertwined with the twisted realities that we are shown to keep me invested. This film sorta predicts the internet even if it got the exact medium wrong. Reality TV programming, virtual reality and obsessions with video games are also not too hard to see coming within the universe set forth here. What is basically an obtuse horror/sci-fi-art film that somehow received a major release seems very hard to comprehend being made today but maybe with stuff like that artsy MOTHER flick getting a shot it would be possible? Then again films these days seem to be play in theaters for about 2 weeks before they are gone so maybe it's not even that big of a deal anymore. Debbie Harry is really good here as the pain-loving gal pal of Max Renn(played equally brilliantly by the great James Woods who would go on to become a Republican which I guess is the worst sin in Hollywood since his career has yet to recover). This may be my favorite film by director David Cronenberg but it's really hard to pick since I love almost everything he has done pretty equally. Bizarre imagery including stomach vaginas, hands that turn into puss-oozing guns, veiny and throbbing television sets that suck you right into their warped reality and tumor-infested "bad guys"(are there really any good guys in this??) that melt like the wicked witch make for one of the all-time great mind-trips of cinema.

 

THE BROOD (1979)

 THE BROOD, directed by the great David Cronenberg, was never my favorite film of his because it dwelled so much in the land of drama. There are long psychological bits when characters cry about their past, the main couple Samantha Eggar and Art Hindle try to work out their marriage dilemma and this sort of thing. Luckily Cronenberg fills out the rest of the film with some truly unique bizarre elements including murderous dwarves/children/little deformed monsters, psychoplasmically-induced body-modifications and Eggar munching down on her newborn's fresh afterbirth that just popped out of a distended external-uterus growing out of her. Also you get the legendary Oliver Reed in a somewhat subdued state as the psychologist who sets all this strangeness into motion. I was lucky enough to view this on the big screen from a 35mm print last night and would say it's totally worth a watch or a re-watch for lovers of weirdness.
 When I was a teen I had a poster from Fangoria magazine depicting the little girl here, Cindy Hinds, getting grabbed through the wall by the little murdering munchkins and although I had not seen the movie itself at that point that was enough to freak me out. Not all that many horror flicks can weird you out from just one still image.

Weird European title: