Your Top 5 Favourite David Cronenberg Films
 

Hey, let's jump more on the bandwagon.

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

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

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

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

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

Rabid is my least favourite Cronenberg movie though.

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.

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.

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

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.

in no particular order:


naked lunch
existenz
scanners
crash
the fly

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

Spider was pretty weak. In fact, I had forgotten all about it 'til this thread.

Apart from Rabid, I find his weak ones to be M. Butterfly (that's obvious) and Scanners. Now Scanners is a movie that has a great idea but poor execution. Love the scanner battles though!

This lack of love for Rabid really surprises me. I always assumed it was sort of a given that it was one of best films.:confused:

actually, in all my years as a Cronenberg fan (probably 7 years now), you're the first person I've seen that really loves it. Nothing wrong with that though.

WHAT? I love, LOVE Rabid. That film is amazing. NOTE: I put it 2nd only to Videodrome.

unrelated, but you never answered me about that Hardy record.

Make that 2.

Out of curiousity I just looked and it's his lowest-rate film, next to Crash (though I assume people who didn't even see Crash gave it a 1 because of its "controversy").

Crash is amazing. The atmosphere and chill you get from it while they're racing up the highway is spine-tingling.

weird. I'd rather Crash (and obviously Rabid) much higher than say Spider or History of Violence or M Butterfly etc. Nobody mentioned EXistenZ either. I like that one a lot. I like Scanners a lot too.

Yeah I really like EXistenZ as well. Was very gripping for me.

he's defintely one of those directors that I can almost always count on liking the film. I ddint see his last one though. Um... what was it called again?

Eastern Promises? That movie ruled.

Long live the new flesh!

1. Crash
2. Scanners
3. Dead Ringers
4. The Brood
5. Videodrome

That's it! It was good? I dnt know. Spider then History of Violence. They were good films and all but... then this came out and ... I just wanted to see some kind of classic Cronenberg body horror.

Yeah, Eastern Promises is amazing. Best fight scene ever in a movie.

It's body horror. As in the horror of SELLING bodies.

this thread reminded me that i wanted to buy some cronenberg. it took me a while to decide, cause i didnt want to spent $20 on a movie, so i didnt get dead ringers. i really wanted videodrome, cause its one of my favorite movies, but my friend owns it so i decided to get dead zone, which i love, and the brood, which i havent seen.

i think its safe to say that the general opinion is that videodrome is his best?

my friend made me a t-shirt for my birthday that has a picture of the flesh with gun leaving the tv, and underneath it it say "long live the new flesh"

Well if you liked A History of Violence then you'll LOVE Eastern Promises. Maybe if you don't think of it as a Cronenberg movie you'd enjoy it a lot... and I mean, how will you enjoy it if you just think "man this does not seem like cronenberg" the whole way through? It does have a lot of blood and such in it so it's not like he's toning himself down anyway.

it's not blood I'm looking for. It's vag's on shoulders and guns f'ing stomachs.

I thought I did. Sorry. I was saying that I would buy it off you, only I don't have a record player. :(

EXACTLY!