There is a very good reason why William S. Burroughs'Naked Lunch was considered unfilmable for such a long time. As David Cronenberg puts it, a film that strictly follows the book would "cost 100 million dollars and be banned in every country in the world." After all, there is a lot of weirdo drug usage on top of ultra-long scenes of the most freakish orgies and death scenes one could imagine spliced over these 150-or-so pages. If Naked Lunch wasn't so funny, it would have been one of the scariest pieces of art in the 20th century, particularly with its capacity to turn virtually every ordinary object or corner into something sinister and rotten.
But yeah, a film was made eventually and by none other than Cronenberg himself! The trick, however, is that the film does not follow the book at all, opting instead to borrow its atmosphere and combine it with the-making-of-Naked-Lunch plot that for some reason works. Maybe it's Peter Weller channeling Burroughs to the T or maybe it's the buggy typewriter that does the job but who knows, and at the end of the day, who cares: as long as it's grimy and full of mugwumps! In any case, here's the trailer for the thing - enjoy it if you can!
Hold your meals, ladies and gentlemen, for now we’re coming up with something fairly revolting…
Body horror, or venereal horror as David Cronenberg calls it now and then, is any form of horror based primarily on transfiguration and mutilation, be it explicit the way all gore movies are, or implicit like Rosemary’s Baby. Body horror involves everything from alien chestbursters to weresheep transformation sequences to vagina dentata, and that’s before we get to an entirely new level with Cronenberg's Videodrome.
The 1980s are a particularly rich decade for this type of horror as cyberpunk and industrial aesthetics dug deep into the language of popular culture, riding the media-fueled fears of what the 21st century was supposed to hold for the human body. Think not only of the obvious examples like Akira and Robocop but also of "cleaner" projects like Dune and Blade Runner (remember the eye plant?). That gore became such an important thing for the slasher genre after Friday the 13th wasn't going to help things, either.
Of course, body horror has always been present in storytelling as it really represents the visual component of aging and death – it reminds us that as much as we’d like to think of ourselves as spirits, we’re 100% organic and we tend to decay over time. Myths and legends make full use of chopped-off body parts and strangely mutated human beings to drive the point home; so are the tales of the Brothers Grimm and pretty much all European folklore. Last season we covered the Thing-Without-a-Name and the Werewolf - an important thing that needs mentioning is that body horror plays a huge part in why they are so effective. On one hand, it is way easier to detest an abomination than a perfect being; on the other hand, if you leave out this visual externalization of what is essentially internal struggle within the main characters, you might as well scratch the genre and watch a psychological drama (to significantly lesser impact). Just think of Tod Browning's Freaks.
As I’ve suggested on several occasions, if there is one true master of body horror, it would have to be David Cronenberg. The guy is a true auteur, making movies so dry they could snap at any given moment, much like the main characters they make room for; yet this unsettling vibe is always used as a force to push the overall themes forward and not just to provide visual spectacle. As others have noted, over the arc of his career, Cronenberg's films have followed a definite progression, moving from the breakdown of social order in his early films (e.g. Shivers, Rabid) to personal chaos (e.g. Scanners, Videodrome) to self-changing experiments (e.g. The Fly, to certain extent Dead Ringers). For this reason, it made perfect sense to pit him against William S. Burroughs for the production of the “unfilmable” Naked Lunch. At the end of the day, Cronenberg clearly has a thing or two for the human condition, or rather for its fragility - disease and disaster, according to him, are less problems to be overcome than agents of personal transformation (and if you want to read more about it, go here and here for interesting articles on the subject; also, you might want to check out the following clip).
Musically speaking, this episode ties 100% with the body horror theme, covering as much ground as possible between Tapeworm’s version of Skinny Puppy’s “Warlock” and Clinic’s “Distortions”, including a couple of turns by the ever-present Fantômas. Enjoy!
The summer break is finally over, which means that the new season of Danse Macabre is starting tonight at midnight! As much as we covered throughout the first 13 episodes of the show, it was just an introduction to the truly hardcore stuff that's coming in the following weeks and months. To begin with, we'll be focusing 100% on body horror by the way of David Cronenberg in the very first episode titled "Tetsuo and the New Flesh". You're wondering what Tetsuo we're referring to and what it has to do with the bigshot Canadian director? Well, Tetsuo: The Iron Manis probably one of the 10 most important Japanese films ever and certainly the industrial film of the 20th century, quite infamous for the way it combines body decay with sexual activities - which is what Cronenberg's 1980s output is known for, too.
The next three episodes will follow in similar vein, covering themes related to transformation or transfiguration of the human body. The schedule looks quite a bit like this:
>>> 04.09.2009 ep.15 "Faust and Pinhead" >>> 11.09.2009 ep.16 "The Z Word" >>> 18.09.2009 ep.17 "The Greatest Hits of the Marquis De Sade"
The new season will also bring some very interesting guests. The guest scheduled for tonight is none other than Gorand, the Macedonian comic book legend known for his bizarre characters, transgressive plots, and unflinching persistence on the unwelcoming scene in the last 15 years. Make sure you visit his devArt page!
EDIT: Unfortunately, Gorand had to cancel his appearance tonight due to personal reasons. Make no mistake, we will hear from him sooner rather than later! :)
Last but not least, the new season will bring a lot more updates and musical suggestions so to keep in line with everything that's going on, check out our Facebook and Last.fm pages. In the meantime, enjoy the show!
"First it controlled her mind, then it destroyed her body... Long live the new flesh!"
This trailer for David Cronenberg's cult classic Videodrome must be one of the most psychedelic film-related ads ever! The funny thing is - the short clip might be better on its own than the actual film, which is already quite accomplished but somehow feels incomplete.
Expect more about Videodrome and Cronenberg's brand of body horror in the weeks to come. In the meantime, enjoy!
Very often true terror lies in what we cannot change, which is why the passing of time and death never fail to give us grief no matter how hard we try to accept them as facts of life. On the opposite side of the table is the belief that one can influence the outcome of future events and thus create better tomorrow or potentially fix past mistakes. Sometimes, this belief is the only thing that can get a person through a severe bout of crisis. "Tomorrow is a new day," they say when they try to bring back that spark of optimism. But ask Cassandra what she thinks of your tomorrow and you may get an unexpected warning - maybe your future isn't any brighter than your past, maybe it's far, far worse - just be wise and don't ignore her or what she has to say.
The Cassandra complex, also known as the Cassandra effect, is a term applied in situations in which valid warnings, concerns or premonitions "occur" but are dismissed or disbelieved. The term originates in Greek mythology, from Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, who was given the gift of prophecy and then cursed never to be believed. Cassandra was, thus, left with the knowledge of future events, but could neither alter these events nor convince others of the validity of her predictions. The concept has been applied in a variety of contexts such as psychology, environmentalism, politics, science, cinema, and philosophy, and has been in circulation since at least 1949 when French philosopher Gaston Bachelard coined the term 'Cassandra Complex' to refer to a belief that things could be known in advance.
Of course, the true horror of the Cassandra complex is not revealed until the prophecy relates to an event that is tragic or truly apocalyptic in its nature. The mythic Cassandra had seen the fall of Troy before it happened but nobody had paid attention to her warnings. Similarly, Nostradamus may have foretold many events of our pasts but none of his prophecies have ever been prevented from actually happening - then again, Nostradamus may have been a hack and his success is based purely on people reading meaning into his prose where there is none.
Terry Gilliam's SF masterpiece 12 Monkeys (1995) revolves entirely around this concept of the Cassandra complex with convict James Cole who travels back in time acting as the storied Cassandra. One of the strengths of the film is that it acts as a loop, reinforcing the idea that the future is just as "frozen in a certain position" as the past is and it cannot be changed either. Whether you believe in destiny and the cosmic order it implies or you would rather take the absurdist stance and assert that we are all victims of our own freedom, that time such as it is only keeps record of our actions is up to you; but seeing James Cole as a kid see himself die as a grown up man forever and ever is certainly a heartbreaking idea.
12 Monkeys is definitely not the only film that deals with premonitions and how set in stone they are - there is always the David Cronenberg classic The Dead Zone as well as the Final Destination series, not to forget others such as Omen (1976) and The Mothman Prophecies (2002).
Relating to the show itself, our dear friend FlavrSavr was a special guest, and not only introduced us to a very interesting band called Why? but also shared with us his own visions for the future. You can now download the show HERE or stream it by clicking HERE. Enjoy!
Danse Macabre is a kick ass radio show dedicated to the meisters of the horror genre. The shows blasts the airwaves with a special theme every Friday from 00:00 - 02:00 CET. On April 10, 2009, episode 1: "Invitation to Dance" ran all the way to Valhalla.
