Early David Cronenberg

Clara Mayer in Stereo

Stereo (David Cronenberg, 1969)

Cast: Ronald Mlodzik, Jack Messinger, Paul Mulholland, Iain Ewing, Arlene Mlodzik, Clara Mayer, Glenn McCauley. Screenplay: David Cronenberg, Cinematography: David Cronenberg. Film editing: David Cronenberg. 

Ronald Mlodzik in Crimes of the Future

Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg, 1970)

Cast: Ronald Mlodzik, Ronald Mlodzik, John Lidolt, Tania Zolty, Paul Mulholland, Jack Messinger, Iain Ewing, William Haslam, Raymond Woodley, Stefan Czernecki, Rafe Macpherson, Willem Poolman. Screenplay: David Cronenberg. Cinematography: David Cronenberg. Film editing: David Cronenberg.  

I can't imagine there's much of an audience for David Cronenberg's Stereo and Crimes of the Future (a title he reused in the 2022 feature, which borrows an element of the 1970 film but otherwise has no resemblance to the first one) except among film scholars and passionate devotees of his work. They look like the work of a film school student, although Cronenberg was teaching himself how to make movies at the time. Both are silent except for voiceovers that do what they can to give the images a narrative shape. In the case of Stereo, there's very little of that: The voiceovers sound like excerpts of lectures given by social science professors about a research project concentrated on telepathy and sexuality. Crimes of the Future has a more complex narrative line, as Adrian Tripod (Ronald Mlodzik), a dermatologist who heads a clinic called the House of Skin, tells about the attempts to halt a plague caused by cosmetics. It's a creepier film than Stereo, more in the line with Cronenberg's later work, with a nice performance by Mlodzik, who appeared in several of his films before entering the clergy.    

Shivers (David Cronenberg, 1975)

Cast: Paul Hampton, Joe Silver, Lynn Lowry, Allan Kolman, Susan Petrie, Barbara Steele, Ronald Mlodzik, Barry Baldaro, Camil Ducharme, Hanna Poznanska. Screenplay: David Cronenberg. Cinematography: Robert Saad. Art direction: Erla Gliserman. Film editing: Patrick Dodd. 

Shivers is a kind of zombie movie, except that the zombies aren't out for brains, they're out to get laid. And they aren't really dead, but just under the influence of a parasite that unleashes their libidos and eliminates their inhibitions. It takes place in a high-rise apartment building on an island near Montreal, where a doctor has been experimenting with parasitic organisms that could potentially eliminate the need for transplants: Instead of having, say, a kidney transplant, why not remove the diseased kidney and replace it with a parasite that, in exchange for a small amount of the patient's blood, would perform all the functions of a kidney? But the parasite he's working with has the unfortunate effect of producing the symptoms described above -- which is fine with the doctor, because he thinks human beings are too sexually repressed. It's a clever premise for a horror movie, and totally in keeping with writer-director David Cronenberg's exploration in his films of the unfettered id. Unfortunately, it was made a few years before its time, so Cronenberg has to be more discreet in his depiction of the orgies of the victims of the parasite than he might have been a few years later, and the budget for the film was obviously scanty. It's shot in a rather muddy but garish color, and the lighting is flat and harsh. There are a few familiar faces -- of the "where have I seen him/her before?" order -- among the actors, but mostly it's a cast of hard-working unknowns. One of Cronenberg's first features, it's a good sample of the better-made horrors yet to come.