Cronenberg's Leading Men Part 2

Weird and certainly doomed.

In the first post, I discussed the voyeurism of Cronenberg’s early films.

Today, we review The Dead Zone, The Fly and Dead Ringers.

Once again, I’ll discuss how the protagonists and men he chose to cast reflect on the overall movie.

We begin with The Dead Zone.

What do you get when you mix Stephen King with David Cronenberg? Well, it turns out that you take a lot of magic away from Cronenberg.

King’s horror tends to be cerebral and character-motivated. Chills build throughout his narratives, culminating in second-act climaxs filled with psychological horror.

That ain’t Cronenberg. At least to me. Watching his movies consecutively, going from Scanners to The Dead Zone is like punching the brakes on your car. Expect to hit the windshield with your head and have a headache.

You go from scumbag making love to a television set to Christopher Walken (Johnny Smith) teaching English with a Prince Valiant bowl cut.

I understand why Cronenberg took this film. Working with a Stephen King property was a good choice for any horror director. Get a little cash, and expose yourself to a broad audience.

But The Dead Zone puts Cronenberg’s fangs in the backseat. It is a slow burn of a movie with a director who’s got his foot on the gas. In my opinion, it's not the best match of tones. I want much more ‘flesh’ in my Cronenberg films—and I can’t be the only one.

The story is simple. Johnny Smith is a regular guy who gets in a car accident and wakes up five years later. His fiance has moved on and has a family—and if he touches someone, he has the power to see their future.

For a minute, he helps a detective find a serial killer, which ends with him getting shot.

That’s enough bullshit for Johnny. He becomes a hermit in a small town and tutors children.

Christopher Walken is a weirdo. If there is someone to portray an alienated psychic, he’d be high on my list. Firstly, his green/blue eyes are alienesque. His cheekbones are chiselled, pushing out of this skin. The way he talks is slow and delicious—with unborn pauses and the undertone of a Queens, NY, accent riddled into it.

In The Dead Zone, Walken is the outcast. When everything seems okay, or like Johnny (Walken) will have a regular life, his powers lead him to more pain and alienation.

There isn’t a lot in this script for Walken to play with. He spends half the time in a bathrobe with a mobility aid while he recovers.

Walken portrays Cronenberg’s paranoia well.

Johnny’s body becomes weakened—the power of his mind eating away at his body. Johnny’s doctor becomes his friend, offering to help him recover his health. He denies him, saying he doesn’t want to be an experiment, then talks about how alone he is—albeit safe.

The Dead Zone isn’t body horror, but paranoia runs through it—Cronenberg never lets us feel safe.

One of the kids Johhny’s tutoring is the son of a US mayor (Martin Sheen). He saves the kid’s life, keeping him from falling into the ice below—learning that he can change the future if he interrupts the present.

Of course, he touches the mayor and is bombarded with visions of nuclear war. The mayor will become president—and then, Kaboom, the end of the world.

King’s story feels filled with paranoia about the Cold War and the constant threat of nuclear war. He posits the idea that an elected official could abuse the power he is given.

Johnny starts to talk about what would you do if you met Hitler as a child. Would you kill him? He and his doctor friend discuss the idea. His friend says he would kill him to protect those he killed.

This is one of those arguments that has made the rounds—the idea of killing a tyrant in their crib. It is an ethical debate we’ve all encountered. Is killing a baby ethical? Could killing the baby lead to worse outcomes down the road? Are the potential benefits worth the moral cost?

In a poll on the subject, most people (42%) chose to kill baby Hitler. Johnny, it seems, lies firmly in that camp.

Johnny tries to kill the senator. He brings a gun to a town hall, misses him and is shot. The mayor picks up a child to shield himself from bullets, and someone takes a picture of it.

Johnny dies but touches the mayor, seeing that he has changed the future and the mayor has been disgraced.

I want to like this movie. A lot of people do, but it feels boring. Walken’s visions are the most exciting, but they aren’t thrilling.

Part of me wanted his special powers to have a gimmick or something. I wanted to slip into the Dead Zone with Walken via a unique camera angle, a shift to black and white. The Dead Zone is a boring place that I don’t quite understand.

In this movie, another Cronenbergian protagonist bites the dust. A bullet and some tears from his former sweetheart send him into the afterlife.

While The Dead Zone doesn’t feel like a Cronenberg film, it has threads connected to his cinema: a dead protagonist, paranoia of medicine and mind powers. All we’re missing is organs growing where they shouldn’t and a lot of fake blood.

Don’t worry; we get plenty of ‘the flesh’ in The Fly, one of his finest films. It’s a tight hour and thirty-five minutes of science fiction with gore and visual effects. The story is decent—an update of a series of films from the fifties and sixties.

Starring Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum, The Fly hits all the earmarks I consider Cronenbergian: Body horror. Check. Paranoia. Check. Weirdo male protagonist. Check. Violent ending with a dead protagonist. Yup. Adapted from an already existing property. Yup.

So, then, what makes The Fly exceptional? Goldblum’s (Seth Brundle) acting and delivery are top-notch, and Geena Davis (Ronnie Quaife) is a great partner here, equally inquisitive and skeptical.

Goldblum’s the best actor Cronenberg has worked with at this point—and works well for the highs and lows here. He’s almost too charming to be a loner scientist, but it works for this story. Goldblum needs to be captivating to be Davis’ romantic interest.

He is neurotic…and that’s a bit science nerd-esque, right?

Eventually, when everything goes wrong, he brings a manic intensity to the role.

I can’t imagine an ordinary leading man in this role. When I try to picture Peter Fonda as The Fly, it doesn’t work. The weirdness of Goldblum works well here.

The pace of The Fly is phenomenal. We’re in the lab six minutes in, laying down the core ideas.

We’ve got pods to contain objects of transfer, a massive computer bank with voice recognition, one of Ronnie’s stockings (I mean, Cronenberg needs a tiny bit of kink involved) and teleportation.

The thing is, the machine only works on inanimate objects. Don’t think about this for too long—because this tech would change our world if it existed. But no one is keeping tabs on Brundle, so he’s free to obsess about what he wants and what he wants is to send ‘the flesh’ from one pod to the other.

We are well on our way to science going wrong, and I’m happy to see it.

Ronnie is a journalist on the science beat. Brundle proposes that she write a book about his experiments—which is bold. I don’t think he’s paying her rent while she’s hanging out. She must have a pretty good page rate.

The subplot is simple. Ronnie’s ex is a magazine editor who she briefs about Brundle’s teleportation discovery. Ronnie’s relationship is strained because he’s a jerk, and she’s attracted to Brundle. He is around to provide Ronnie with her plotline and be the bad (good?) guy at the end of the second act.

Brundle plays fast and loose with the scientific method.

After turning a chimpanzee inside out (a lovely piece of practical SFX) and teleporting a steak, he discovers that the computer doesn’t understand ‘the flesh’ properly and sets about reprogramming it.

Then, he transports another chimp, which arrives intact.

The computer has mastered the flesh.

But…the teleportation chambers aren’t in a sterile environment. They’re just plunked into the flat he lives in. Flies have been foreshadowed throughout the first act, making themselves known. Typical male genius, his inability to clean his workspace is his downfall. If you had put your leftovers in the fridge, you wouldn’t have turned into a fly monster.

Brundel experiments on himself while drunk. A fly gets into the pod. Blammo! You get the classic Brundel reveal as he departs the teleportation pod.

What comes next is the fall.

Brundel’s hubris takes control. He feels powerful—and is insatiable sexually.

But there is foreshadowing—the wiry hairs on his back and the need for excessive sugar.

Brundel and Ronnie sex it up until—he tries to convince her to take the plunge and join him in the new world, which he has theorized as teleportation, making his body ‘pure.’

Ronnie fights back, saying, ‘Don’t give me that born-again teleportation rap.’

She flatly refuses to do it, sending Brundel into a tailspin.

His following speech is terrific.

“You’re afraid to dive into the plasma pool, aren’t you? You’re afraid to be destroyed and recreated, aren’t you? I bet you like to think that you woke me up about the flesh, don’t you? But you only know society’s straight line about the flesh. You can’t penetrate beyond society’s sick, grey fear of the flesh. Drink deep, or taste not the plasma spring. See what I’m saying? I’m not just talking about sex and penetration. I’m talking about penetration beyond the veil of the flesh, a deep penetrating dive into the plasma pool.”

Brundle takes off into the night to eat candy bars and arm wrestle. Strange boils start developing on his face. We’re past the point of no return—although it could be argued that this moment was decided when he entered the pod

Watching Brundel's downfall is a particular joy. His sanity dissolves in a montage, and we’re left with someone far removed from the charming man at the movie's beginning.

Goldblum’s shift into the darkness is transformational—his charm shifts quickly to arrogance.

When Ronnie confronts him again, he punches through a wooden beam, declaring, “Does this look like a sick man?”

It isn’t until he pulls a couple of his nails off that he starts to question if he fucked up.

The body horror has begun. Brundlefly (what Brundle starts referring to himself as) begins to emerge. A story about teleportation has become one about gene-splicing.

Cronenberg sets the climax by letting us know Ronnie has become pregnant. With the idea of larvae growing inside of her, she runs to a doctor to have it aborted.

The fear of birth and babies is an interesting point to bring up if we’re talking about genetics. If I break it down into a mental health perspective or something like shared genetics between father and offspring—the horror here sits firmly in the idea of passing an unwanted genetic trait to your children.

This is a common fear to tap into. It also poses a question. If this is a sub-fear, what is the main fear The Fly poses as a horror movie? My initial guess is that a monster is inside us all, waiting to come out.

That message is hidden in another one: the fear of humanity becoming too large for its britches, tinkering with genetics and creating monsters of ourselves.

Or—the fact that our bodies age and change, slowly becoming something they weren’t.

It could be any combination of these three ideas, and there are probably more I haven’t addressed.

I can’t help but examine the fears that each unique horror is created with, a valuable skill for someone writing horror themselves.

Brundle finds out about his ‘child’ and kidnaps Ronnie before she can get rid of the larvae (or whatever it is).

He returns them to his lab, positing they can become a true family by splicing everyone together into one form.

Ronnie’s ex shows up with a shotgun and gets his limbs melted off with Brundle’s acid vomit.

The Fly ends with Brundle truly becoming more fly than man. His muscles shed off, and his face sheds its features to reveal two bulbous eyes with pulsating palpus.

I love this part, culminating in a shotgun blast that explodes the fly head everywhere. It's gruesome—and a fantastic out for the Crone-protag. That’s it—cue the Howard Shore score.

I’ve liked this movie for a long time. I saw it first as a teenager, and I saw the original Fly on public access even younger than that. This is one of those films that informs my creative genetics.

I’m a John-fly, I guess, metaphorically speaking—and my dreams are filled with acid vomit.

I did a little breakdown of the story elements—because I’m a writer, and sometimes you want to reverse-engineer plots—-that I’ll share with you.

Story Breakdown: A breakthrough. Personal rejection. A hasty decision. High highs. Refusal to admit to a mistake. Discovery of the error. Transformation. Acceptance. Tragedy/The monster takes over. Death.

You would have a great story if you took another character and layered it over this plot structure. Add one or two side characters/plots, and you will have a new screenplay/book. If you would like, you could do it twice.

Which brings us to Dead Ringers.

How do you follow one of the greatest sci-fi/horror movies ever? Well, you cast Jeremy Irons as twin gynecologists in an era of Cronenberg films, which started becoming more sexually charged—for better or worse.

These twin doctors aren’t ethical, but we’re in a Cronenberg movie, and ethics are the least of our problems.

Not surprisingly, this movie is about the flesh. Perhaps discussing babies in The Fly led Cronenberg’s mind to the idea of reproduction.

The movie starts with a two-minute montage of period surgical illustrations and instruments. Are we foreshadowing already? You bet we are. Fucked up shit is on its way.

Irons stars as Beverly and Elliot Mantle in a role where he inhabits two characters. As always, Irons is a handsome leading man (I believe Cronenberg’s leading men get increasingly handsome with each movie), but he is still a strange actor. A strange actor who, through voice and gesture, has you easily differentiate between the somewhat cowardly Beverly and the gregarious Isaac. It is the most fascinating role—especially considering that the twins end up in one of Cronenberg’s psychological vortexes, leading them into the darkest places.

I think one of the reasons I enjoy Cronenberg’s movies so much is because his characters are often reprehensible. I don’t like Isaac or Beverly. They’re manipulative, overbearing pieces of shit. That said, I fell deeply for this film.

Geneviève Bujold is incredible and incredibly brave in this role as Claire Niveau, an actress in Toronto filming a miniseries who gets involved with both twins, utterly unaware of the fact.

Yup, the identical twins share lovers. “If we didn’t share women, you’d still be a virgin.” That line is closely followed by, “The beauty of our business is you never have to go out to meet beautiful women.” I imagine that this movie led to nightmares for any woman having to see their gynecologist. From what I can discern, the last place you would want to meet a sexual partner is during or soon after a vaginal exam.

That said, Claire has a trifurcated cervix with three separate uteruses, which Isaac praises, saying there should be beauty contests for people’s interiors.

In a later film, Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg hits on this idea again—that beauty is found within genetic variation and mutation. He takes it further than most, to the point of fetishizing it— to where it starts feeling uncomfortable.

Cronenberg differentiates himself from others in awkward places. He is willing to delve into areas that many creators aren’t—the crevices where people hide their eccentricities.

He’s pushing boundaries until they break—well, maybe break is too decisive of a word—until they weaken. When he chooses to, and when he is allowed (I’m sure producers for this type of film became scarcer as in the 90s and 00s), he moves in places that other N. American filmmakers avoid.

I was listening to The Velvet Underground’s self-titled album, and Lou Reed sings a lyric in Some Kinda Love that says, “Like a dirty French novel combines the absurd with the vulgar.” That describes Cronenburg’s films so well—at least the ones I enjoy most.

Claire learns of the twins’ subterfuge but stays with Beverly. At this point, we begin exploring one of the film’s central themes—codependency.

Beverly, the sensitive one, becomes deeply dependent on his relationship with Claire. They ingest a great deal of drugs together, and when she leaves to film something elsewhere, a colleague picks up the phone, and Beverly mistakes him for Claire’s lover.

Bev loses his fucking mind, becomes obsessed with the idea of ‘mutant women,’ and commissions a local metalworker/artist to create a new set of gynecological surgical tools.

I wonder if Cronenberg considered male gynecologists’ role in women’s health. This movie is fictional, but Dead Ringers seems to address Western medicine’s gender bias against women. Given that men have long been central medical providers, the medical system has long studied the male biology over female. This has led to a lack of understanding of women’s health, and specific women’s health issues.

Seeing as the brothers treat women as objects to further their professional and sexual desires, it is easy to associate the ideas presented in this movie with those facts.

It is especially noticeable when Beverly encounters a career woman who doesn’t satisfy his desires, making him feel abandoned.

Without Claire’s support, or his brothers, Beverly loses his mind.

I see this as a comment about men’s dependence on their partners for psychological care and nurturing. Was this another theme that Cronenberg chose to explore? I’m unsure if it was voluntary, but examining the film through this filter is interesting. Many men struggle with intimacy, and their primary partners are bearers of their emotional struggles. Instead of creating healthy boundaries, relationships spiral into codependent ones.

Isaac falls back into his codependent relationship with Beverly to try and return him to sanity, but Beverly spirals when confronted with his brother’s overbearing, toxic love.

There is an allusion to the twins being of one mind—they are referred to as Siamese twins. Cronenberg depicts them as one in a dream sequence where they are together in bed with Claire, joined by an umbilical cord that Claire bites through.

Is it because she is seen as ending their codependence? If so, Beverly wants to move his dependence from his brother to his lover and cannot handle it when Claire can’t provide it.

It is a long spiral, but when we arrive at the end, there isn’t any escaping the inevitability of Bev’s death at his brother’s hands. Seeing that he can no longer provide what his brother needs, Isaac decides that death is the only option.

Irons handles the brothers' mania well—he is always almost in control, and when he is beyond control, he seems to be attempting to exert control on those around him. Few could manage this role, but Irons does it so well that you can differentiate the two characters without the small visual cues the filmmakers use.

Dead Ringers ends in death—Isaac, stoned out of his mind on barbiturates, embraces his dead brother in his arms. Their codependency continues into death.

The movie leaves me feeling like I need a bath. Plus, I’ve been in codependent relationships and have a propensity for them, so watching the film is like staring into a dark mirror. As someone who has looked for confirmation that he won’t be abandoned, only to be abandoned, I can relate to the protagonists. I’ve done work around this—but I recognize its horror and fight against my desire to dump my emotional well-being into the arms of another.

Well, if self-refection brought on by relating to the protagonists of a grisly film filled with horrid, misogynistic protagonists doesn’t make me feel like I need to mentally and physically scrub, nothing else will.

In summation, after watching and dissecting Cronenberg, I find myself shocked, appalled, and needing a long shower. The journey is never comfortable, but I kept watching his filmography, which never left me feeling perfectly safe.

We’ll find more of this when we meet in the third chapter, where I will discuss Crash and more of Cronenberg’s ‘erotic era’ of films.

Hope you’re well,

Martin