The Dead Zone is a rare film that manages to be both a great literary adaptation, and a strong film on its own terms. Adapted from a best-selling novel by Stephen King and directed by David Cronenberg, one might easily expect the film to be extremely disturbing and unrelenting in its depiction of graphic violence and bodily horrors, making it marketable only to hardcore horror fans. Instead, The Dead Zone is an understated piece of work with a near absence of violence and gore that still manages to be compelling, thought provoking, and accessible to mainstream movi
In 1983, David Cronenberg did something few directors ever really accomplish: he released a masterpiece. Videodrome, which is both written and directed by Cronenberg, is one of his best horror films, a fusion of many, if not all, the themes Cronenberg had explored previously, and would continue to explore in his later films. In this respect, Videodrome is more than an author's masterpiece, a sublime example of “auteur theory” in film.
David Cronenberg’s 1979 effort The Brood would provide only a single scene for a highlight reel of his entire body of work. You want to like it, to call it a precious gem in Cronenberg's progression of films. You want to be scared, to be disgusted. You want everything you have come to expect from a Cronenberg movie. You end up with disappointment. It's obviously a stepping stone, a film that needed to happen before his much better films could come to be.
Before ascending to Hollywood's A-list, Canadian writer-director David Cronenberg, much like Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson, started out making low-budget horror movies.
Although Shivers is not technically David Cronenberg’s first film (he had made some art films previously), it should be considered his debut. Shivers boldly announces the arrival of a creative mind able to concoct horror movies layered with subtext and commentary that don’t forget to entertain at the same time. One can clearly recognize the work of a mad cinematic scientist with preoccupations never seen before (and only imitated since).
Credits above are only for personnel unique to this episode. For credits relating to "Masters of Horror" as a whole, see the Masters of Horror review gateway.
I wish I could tell you that Santa's Slay, a movie starring a massively muscular Jewish professional wrestler as a murderous Santa Claus, was so spectacularly bad that it was a laugh riot. I wish I could tell you that Santa's Slay was surprisingly good, an undiscovered gem of modern slasher horror. Sadly, both of these ends of the spectrum are wrong. Santa's Slay is merely a disappointment, a cheap horror comedy that wishes it was funnier.
Sharon Da Silva (Jodelle Ferland) is a troubled girl: she experiences recurring nightmares, during which she talks about a place called Silent Hill. Her foster mother Rose (Radha Mitchell) discovers that Silent Hill is the name of a ghost town in West Virginia, abandoned after a coal fire thirty years ago. Determined to learn what the town has to do with her daughter and to make the nightmares stop, Rose takes Sharon to Silent Hill, against the wishes of her husband Chris (Sean Bean). Through a set of circumstances, mother and daughter wind up in a car accident.
Credits above are only for personnel unique to this episode. For credits relating to "Masters of Horror" as a whole, see the Masters of Horror review gateway.
Credits above are only for personnel unique to this episode. For credits relating to "Masters of Horror" as a whole, see the Masters of Horror review gateway.
