In the not-too-distant future, two fully clothed men sit in a bathtub at a home for war veterans. After a few minutes of not saying anything to each other, one of them breaks the silence by saying “do you come here often?” The first man introduces himself as a secret agent, while the second man introduces himself as an expert on chemical and biological warfare. They discuss changes to humand and plant biology caused by chemical warfare in some un-named recent war. The agent takes notes as suddenly a mutated vine of a plant emerges from the drain and strangles the The film is centered on two men in a bathtub; it is implied that they are veterans of some past conflict but revealed that they are currently in a mental institution. Read More »

Filmed in 2000 for the Toronto Film Festival’s 25th anniversary, Camera stars Videodrome’s Les Carlson (he played the Jim Bakker-inspired Barry Convex) in a six-minute monologue about cinema as a group of children invade his home with a large 35mm camera and prepare to film him. Shot in digital video until a final, wonderful change to real film, Camera provides and excellent showcase for Carlson and manages to be both creepy and moving at the same time. Cronenberg’s composer Howard Shore supplies a brief, poignant music passage at the end. Read More »

David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Christopher Hampton’s play detailing the deteriorating relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as they contend with a particularly troubled patient. The year is 1904. Carl Jung, a disciple of Sigmund Freud, is using Freudian techniques to treat Russian-Jewish psychiatric patient Sabina Spielrein at Burghölzli Mental Hospital. But the deeper Jung’s relationship with Spielrein grows, the further the burgeoning psychiatrist and his highly respected mentor drift apart. (~blu-ray.com) Read More »

Freud and Camus and the great Canuck fuck, a David Cronenberg bash. It begins with an abstruse dash of Dreyer (They Caught the Ferry) and briskly gets down to business, a biker chick (Marilyn Chambers) mangled in a road crash and pieced back together via “very experimental” skin-graft surgery. She awakens from her coma bewildered and bloodthirsty, under her armpit now lurks a quivering little Venus flytrap equipped with a peekaboo stinger; helplessly lunging at victims, she embraces, penetrates, and contaminates. The road to Montreal is littered with oozing cannibals snapping at each other, martial law is declared and machine-guns are brought out. On TV, the voice of Science weighs in: “So, uh… don’t let anybody bite you.” The venereal upheaval that bubbled up within the high-rise community in Shivers logically spills out into a foamy Quebec apocalypse, a wintry landscape smacked with tremor upon omnisexual tremor. Read More »

SYNOPSIS:
A man’s wife is under the care of an eccentric and unconventional psychologist who uses innovative and theatrical techniques to breach the psychological blocks in his patients. When their daughter comes back from a visit with her mother and is covered with bruises and welts, the father attempts to bar his wife from seeing the daughter but faces resistance from the secretive psychologist. Meanwhile, the wife’s mother and father are attacked by strangely deformed children, and the man begins to suspect a connection with the psychologist’s methods.

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“Television is reality and reality is less than television.” Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley) in Videodrome.

Max Renn (James Woods) runs a sleazy Toronto cable station that airs softcore porn and bizarre, violent entertainment. When a station techie begins receiving pirated signals of a disturbing sadomasochistic program called “Videodrome,” Renn decides that it would make the perfect addition to his line up. While appearing as a guest on a cable talk show, Renn meets relationship expert Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry). The two of them are immediately drawn to each other, both sharing a penchant for rough sex and, naturally, Betamax dupes of “Videodrome.” When it’s discovered that the pirated signal originates from somewhere in Pittsburgh, television producer Masha (Lynn Gorman) attempts to help Renn secure the rights for his station. She discovers that local television guru Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley) is behind the violent show and that the behind-the-scenes machinations are of a deeply sinister and complex nature. Against Masha’s advice, Renn seeks out the elusive O’Blivion just as his obsession with the show begins to affect his own reality. Bizarre hallucinations melding his body and the video image begin to plague him. As a vast (yet increasingly personal) conspiracy behind “Videodrome” is slowly revealed, Renn begins a profoundly disturbing transformation into “the new flesh.”

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IMDB:
Riding across Manhattan in a stretch limo in order to get a haircut, a 28-year-old billionaire asset manager’s day devolves into an odyssey with a cast of characters that start to tear his world apart. Read More »