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MM29 - Early Cronenberg feat. Nick Newman
🕑 Added 2024-10-16 11:00:10 +0000 UTCDeath to all other movie podcasts! Long live the New Mindset!
Today we are joined by Nick Newman of The Film Stage to take a trip inside the bodies and spaces of Canada through the early films of our Northern neighbor’s finest cultural export: David Cronenberg.
In Shivers (1975), the clean, manicured luxury of an apartment complex becomes the site of disgust, shit, blood, and the total breakdown of society as an epidemic of parasitic leeches spread through sexual contact and turn the infected into, for lack of a better term, fuck-zombies, acting out the most compulsive and taboo instincts of the human animal.
Then in Rabid (1977) an experimental skin graft procedure gives a young woman an exiting new organ and soon she finds herself becoming patient zero for the outbreak of a rabies-like disease that threatens to destroy Montreal.
Both films demonstrate an embryonic form of the clinical Cronenberg style which takes an epidemiological view humanity and sexuality, combining the intellectual and visceral to create extreme and upsetting metaphors for why sex is scary.
You can read Nick’s interview with Cronenberg here:
Comments
Alejandro
Creepiest part of shiver was the unnerving faces of canadians
Methuselah Obama
Is there more to this season. I’m late to the game and finished your back log. Now I have nothing 😢
Equality State Of Mind
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that "hot gay guy" who gets shot actually the husband character that Hesse hates?
Chantz
Yeah I was looking to see if anyone said this before commenting myself... he shoots Nick because he's looming over the corpse of the Pickle Doctor lol, not because of any gayness
Patrick Taffe
He was on the Chapo Halloween episode from a few years back playing the founder of the 1960s satanism movement; Henry is one of the funniest voice actors in the business
Patrick Taffe
Imagine my shock having only seen Scanners and Eastern Promises only to learn from this episode that those are the "tame" ones in Cron's repertoire
Letty
Rabid and shivers are on Tubi!
Ernest Ambrus
Pete Postlethwaite baby-girl
Michael S. Judge
Sometimes I wish I was a David Thewlis-type guy
Ralley Taura
Lest we forget the amazing surgical wear in Dead Ringers.
Jenkum Terry
I love Crimes of the Future so much can't wait for The Shrouds
Marcos Carlos Da Silva
Best episode of movie mindset, cronenberg is by far by favorite director. Crimes of the Future will probably stick with me for the rest of my life
M Varnzo
So Shivers is about meth?
OtherRussert
I saw Naked Lunch in the theaters; not a week – or maybe a month at most – goes by without me thinking of it.
Scott Grabel
My fav scene in Rabid was the DPW guys drilling through the car door, as the men scream in incomprehension, because you usually don’t see zombies good at handling tools.
Michelle
I cannot tell you how many times I watched Dead Ringers when I was 15-16. Jeremy Irons was born to play Eliot and Beverly. Tried to watch it again after many years and couldn’t deal with it at all. Being a woman of a certain age who has had “lady problems” makes it hit much, much differently. I’ve also learned it’s vaguely based on a true story, and that’s just bananas.
Hot Rod
20:43
Nick Muscatiello
Dont touch my pp please
Sybil-Shanks, the Prison Cat
anyone make a "dong of the dead" joke yet?
ME123456789
Thought Cronenberg fans might enjoy this video essay on Shivers: https://youtu.be/N8jH-0L-lHQ?si=O6dbLzF5xaQB1R-n
Lorean Martin
Heard this podcast and went to find a Cronenberg on my streaming. Only had Crimes of the Future available. I’m so grossed out.
PEE Vacation
I saw The Fly when I was about 7 and am 41 now and can still see the ear scene as vividly as I did back then
Daniel
Banger. I thought this in season 1 MM but i feel my mind expanding listening to these… will and hesse are just so damn good at watching and talking about movies
Ctrane
Get a job
C. Ries
I went to the pool there
SunRaTheThird
i hope we get some swedish movies next year. you could do frostbiten/låt den rätte komma in as schlock drama combo for next hallowen.
John Lisowy
Shoutout to SUNY Purchase
ResilientBastard
Phenomenal ep. Any live screenings on the horizon? Roxy? Idk if Spectacle in WBurg does commison so to speak, but it’s a great diy venue.
C. Ries
Almost counteracts Drake and Jordan Peterson
Christopher Farley
I've gotten used to Will's... idiosyncratic pronunciations, but hearing him say "taboo" like that 5 times in a row was really a bridge too far
Hot Rod
6:39
Connor Schoen
To correct some information here, I Spit on your Grave was not the first rape/revenge film. That honor belongs to Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring (1960), which would later inspire Wes Craven's Last House on the Left (1972).
Tim O'
Don't worry, we've got two more Vincent Price movies coming up and they're more fun than scary.
Yarblockos
You'll forgive me if I don't stay around to watch. I just can't cope with freaky stuff.
buttface
Do something new, different, creative. Fuck movies.
Jacob Harris
Great episode. This show has introduced me to Cronenberg, Altman, and Wilder - keep up the good work!
K H
Varies from movie to movie. Evil Dead director had some regrets as I recall. Definitely some male id reaching through the 4th wall on many occasions. I wawatched Skelton Key on tubi and was surprised at how sexualized the female protagonist(Kate Hudson?) was for no reason.
K H
I have been watching various recommendations from this podcast. Proof podcasts can be praxis.
Hardcore Virgin
👍🍗
Paul Xanders
Hesse keeps talking about a scene in Shivers where St. Luc shoots a "young gay guy" who has just killed "an old guy," and I think she saw the scene where St. Luc shoots Nick and got confused?
Katie Doyle
While I would probably agree that David Cronenberg is our greatest cultural export I think whoever wrote the description forgot that James Cameron is also Canadian
justDave
We see you. We hear you. We arghh YoOuuu!
MCL
I for one welcome the new flesh
Extrajudicial Pod
The guest doesn't talk all that much?
Joey Fazzoli
Man I regret listening to this one
andrew rogers
eh it's good but it would make more sense for them to just cover more cronenberg or tetsuo or seconds or any of the great movies by which the substance was clearly inspired
Doug Cartel
"We're trying to watch a nice romantic movie and all we can hear is you screaming about injecting DNA into an egg"
andrew rogers
He's great in it yea. way terrifying than the monsters by default because the monsters are all friendly and nice!
IPritch
Henry Zebrowski from last podcast on the left has a pretty good story about being let into the wrong room at a doctors office and being greeted by a bent over David Cronenberg’s asshole directed at the door. Talk about body horror
Hall wingfield
Chapo's gotta do The Substance
Blank
I’m curious for Will/hesse’s thoughts on violence against women/sexual violence in horror movies. Not just ethics of its depiction but its significance, how it’s depicted by different directors etc. I find it pretty viscerally upsetting and difficult to handle
Frances Mary
One of the nicest aspects of being Canadian is Canadian content broadcasting rules meant that Cronenberg was surprisingly available on TV growing up. Both of these were very early faves for me.
Christian Johnson
Does he call himself the n-word in this motion picture?
Matthew
We got a whole planet of Cronenbergs walking around down there, Morty
Eric Murphy
Speaking of club random y'all should do "House 2" it features a youngish Bill Maher presumably playing himself. I.e. a creeper
Brian Taulbee
Cronenberg is also underrated as an actor. He’s FANTASTIC as the serial killer psychiatrist in Barker’s film Nightbreed. Easily more terrifying than any of the monsters, and ranking right up there with Lecter.
Drew
I really don't know if I'm brave enough for these 😂
Eric Murphy
The main character in shivers also reminds me of friend of MM Donald Sutherland
Tim O'
There's a shot in Shivers where one of the little monsters goes down someone's throat and there's suddenly this big lump that, like, pulsates out of their neck, and I almost threw up when I saw it. Pretty good movie 🍿🍿🍿
demonsweat
That last scene of Rabid is so bleak, damn
Blank
Oh yeah I don’t like horror movies but Will and Hesse are such a delight
Christian Johnson
NGL I enjoy listening to these even though I know that I probably will never see the majority of these movies
Eric Murphy
I remember my first fuck zombie....
Christian Johnson
First!
