[Derek]

Hey, let's jump more on the bandwagon.

1. Videodrome
2. Crash
3. Dead Ringers
4. Naked Lunch
5. The Fly

[Dr. Eugene Felikson]

Damn, every single one of these lists have been so difficult to make.

1. The Fly
2. Videodrome
3. Shivers
4. Naked Lunch
5. Crash

[demonrail666]

1. Shivers
2. Rabid
3. Videodrome
4. The Brood
5. The Dead Zone

[noisereductions]

1. Videodrome
2. Rabid
3. The Fly
4. Shivers
5. Dead Ringers

[Derek]

demonrail your list is strange... but I like it.

Rabid is my least favourite Cronenberg movie though.

[demonrail666]

I tend not to like Cronenberg after Videodrome. I put Crash in more because I think it's the best of his worst from that period than because I really like it. I'm surprised you find Rabid his worst film. Although I put it just behind Shivers I consider them about equal in their greatness. My view is that Cronenberg is a great ideas man but a bad filmmaker and that after Videodrome he began to think more in terms of his films as art rather than as a vehicle for brilliant concepts. I always think he would've made a better screenwriter than a director. Actually, I've just edited my list to replace Crash with The Dead Zone. I'm putting on my flameproof suit in readiness.

[Derek]

Yeah you do have a point but I still find his later movies to be awfully entertaining and thought-provoking. Rabid doesn't really... entertain me much. I like the atmosphere of it but I just can't enjoy it for some reason. Whereas no matter how alienating his other films can get, I still really enjoy them.

[atsonicpark]

1. Videodrome
2. Dead Zone
3. Dead Ringers
4. Crash
5. Shivers
6. Naked Lunch
7. History of Violence
8. The Brood
9. Scanners
10. The Fly
11. Crimes of the Future
12. Spider
13. From the Drain
14. Eastern Promises
15. Stereo
16. Existenz
17. M. Butterfly
18. Rabid
19. Transfer
20. Fast Company

[atsonicpark]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

My view is that Cronenberg is a great ideas man but a bad filmmaker.

I sort of... well, maybe not "agree" but see what you're sying. He's not so much a bad filmmaker as a very.. complacent.. one. There is really no style in his directing. No artfulness. Very mundane and flat. Rarely has any shots that wow me. It serves its purpose, but I can see it not impressing people. Good thing his films are so interesting and the music is always so great!!! I gotta say, though, Cronenberg creates an amazing atmosphere in most of his (extremely Canadian!) films. The Dead Zone, for example, would have likely turned out incredibly cheesy in a lot of people's hands. And okay, there are some cheesy parts in it, but it's also incredibly powerful at times.

Also, yeah, I loved "Rabid" when I saw it years ago but I recently rewatched it with a friend who hadn't seen it and it's not as good as I remember, though it certainly has its charms.

All in all, he's an incredibly consistent director, very complex at times, and he's rarely let me down in any way, even with having made 20 or so movies and shorts.

[terminal pharmacy]

in no particular order:


naked lunch
existenz
scanners
crash
the fly

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by atsonicpark

I sort of... well, maybe not "agree" but see what you're sying. He's not so much a bad filmmaker as a very.. complacent.. one. There is really no style in his directing. No artfulness. Very mundane and flat. Rarely has any shots that wow me. It serves its purpose, but I can see it not impressing people.

I think when he was doing stuff like Shivers or Rabid, his rather blank style worked perfectly. It was later on, when he seemed to be trying to develop into some kind of arthouse director, that he started to really show his limitations. For me, Spider was like listening to Sham 69 trying to play Erik Satie.

[atsonicpark]

Yeah, all around, Spider just seemed like a Clean, Shaven wannabe... still like it though obviously.

[demonrail666]

The one thing I love about his stuff, especially early on, is just how fucking depressing the endings of his films are. The bit at the end of Rabid, where they just stick Marilyn Chambers' body in the rubbish truck, is one of my favourite endings to any film, ever. Seriously cold.

[atsonicpark]

Yeah, definitely. I've noticed also that a lot of his endings, strangely, involve guns. Even when the rest of the film usually has no guns in them.

[demonrail666]

Hmm. I've not noticed that. I know Videodrome ends like that. (Another one of my all-time favourite endings) I'll look out for it in his other stuff.

[Lamont Cranston]

The Fly ends with the Brundleflypod being shot, Naked Lunch ends with Bill Lee shooting his wife again, eXistenZ ends with the couple shooting the game designers.
Others?
So how come you people don't like his stuff since he moved on from making films about the New Flesh?

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by Lamont Cranston

So how come you people don't like his stuff since he moved on from making films about the New Flesh?

Slugs coming out of plug holes and climbing up Barbara Steele's vagina? Cronenberg's your man. But when he decided he was a French existentialist it all went a bit pear shaped for me.

[atsonicpark]

Dead Zone ends with a shooting, as does History of Violence (though that one has a lot of gunplay/action in it). I know a couple others do as well but my mind is blank at the moment.

[demonrail666]

Dead Zone is such an underrated film I think. Aside from Carrie it might be my favourite Stephen King adaptation.

[max]

no particular order here too (and kudos for this top 5 thing, you're all over my fave directors!):

the dead zone
scanners
videodrome
shivers
naked lunch