David Cronenberg, also known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood, has made some cracking films over his career, but which are rated his best?
We crunched the scores from IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Letterboxd to get a true average… and here’s the results.
Crimes of the Future (1970)
Crimes of the Future is set in a future where sexually mature women appear to have been obliterated by a plague produced by the use of cosmetics. It details the wanderings of Adrian Tripod director of the dermatological clinic the House of Skin. Tripod seems at a loss following the disappearance of his mentor Antoine Rouge.
4.74 out of 10
Crash (1996)
After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.
5.43 out of 10
Fast Company (1979)
An early departure from director David Cronenberg’s canon of visceral horror, 1979’s Fast Company profiles one of his personal passions, racecars, in a gritty melodrama that also features exciting racetrack footage. Veteran toughguy William Smith is top-billed as a champion drag racer who clashes with the unscrupulous oil-company executive (John Saxon) who sponsors his team.
5.65 out of 10
M. Butterfly (1993)
David Henry Hwang adapted his Tony Award-winning play for this fact-based drama about a French diplomat who enters into a torrid love affair with a star of the Chinese opera. What he doesn’t realize, however, is that his beloved is a double agent for the Red Chinese — and that “she” is actually a man in disguise.
5.87 out of 10
Maps to the Stars (2014)
Agatha embarks on a friendship/relationship with Jerome Fontana, an aspiring actor/writer who is working as a limo driver until his big break. Like many in his position, he hopes to use whatever life experience to work into his movie career.
5.95 out of 10
Rabid (1977)
A woman named Rose is involved in a motorcycle accident, and has experimental surgery performed in order to save her life. However, as a result of the surgery, she develops a taste for blood. Her victims grow in number as well as madness, turning the city into chaos.
6.17 out of 10
eXistenZ (1999)
In the near-future, biotechnological virtual reality game consoles known as “game pods” have replaced electronic ones. The pods present “UmbyCords” that attach to “bio-ports”, connectors surgically inserted into players’ spines. Two game companies, Antenna Research and Cortical Systematics, compete against each other. In addition, the Realists fight both companies to prevent the “deforming” of reality.
6.46 out of 10
A Dangerous Method (2011)
A Russian woman, Sabina, enters a psychiatric hospital in Zurich with a typical case of hysteria. She undertakes a new course of treatment with Dr. Carl Jung, which involves word association and dream interpretation. Patient and doctor become attracted to each other. Sabina comes between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.
6.55 out of 10
Shivers (1975)
A scientist living in an apartment complex kills a girl and uses acid to destroy her internal organs, and then kills himself. While investigating, a doctor discovers that the scientist was doing experiments on the use of genetically engineered parasites as organ transplants. Soon, other people in the complex begin showing signs of carrying the parasites, spreading the things through wanton orgiastic abandon, and the complex begins suffering an attrition problem.
6.62 out of 10
Videodrome (1983)
Sleazy lowlife cable TV operator Max Renn discovers a snuff broadcast called “Videodrome.” But it is more than a TV show–it’s an experiment that uses regular TV transmissions to permanently alter the viewer’s perceptions by giving them brain damage. Max is caught in the middle of the forces that created “Videodrome” and the forces that want to control it, his body itself turning into the ultimate weapon to fight this global conspiracy.
6.98 out of 10
Naked Lunch (1991)
Blank-faced bug killer Bill Lee and his dead-eyed wife, Joan, like to get high on Bill’s pest poisons while lounging with Beat poet pals. After meeting the devilish Dr. Benway, Bill gets a drug made from a centipede. Upon indulging, he accidentally kills Joan, takes orders from his typewriter-turned-cockroach, ends up in a constantly mutating Mediterranean city and learns that his hip friends have published his work – which he doesn’t remember writing.
6.99 out of 10
Scanners (1981)
After a man with extraordinary—and frighteningly destructive—telepathic abilities is nabbed by agents from a mysterious rogue corporation, he discovers he is far from the only possessor of such strange powers, and that some of the other “scanners” have their minds set on world domination, while others are trying to stop them.
7.00 out of 10
The Brood (1979)
A man’s wife is under the care of an eccentric and unconventional psychologist who uses innovative and theatrical techniques to breach the psychological blocks in his patients. When their daughter comes back from a visit with her mother and is covered with bruises and welts, the father attempts to bar his wife from seeing the daughter but faces resistance from the secretive psychologist. Meanwhile, the wife’s mother and father are attacked by strangely deformed children, and the man begins to suspect a connection with the psychologist’s methods.
7.03 out of 10
Spider (2002)
”Spider” is the story of Dennis Cleg, a man who is given a room in a halfway house catering to mentally disturbed persons. Cleg has just been released from a mental institution and in his new abode starts piecing together or recreating in his memory an apparently fateful childhood event.
7.37 out of 10
Dead Ringers (1988)
Elliot, a successful gynecologist, works at the same practice as his identical twin, Beverly. Elliot is attracted to many of his patients and has affairs with them. When he inevitably loses interest, he will give the woman over to Beverly, the meeker of the two, without the woman knowing the difference. Beverly falls hard for one of the patients, Claire, but when she inadvertently deceives him, he slips into a state of madness.
7.51 out of 10
The Dead Zone (1983)
Johnny Smith is a schoolteacher with his whole life ahead of him but, after leaving his fiancee’s home one night, is involved in a car crash which leaves him in a coma for 5 years. When he wakes, he discovers he has an ability to see into the past, present and future life of anyone with whom he comes into physical contact.
7.74 out of 10
A History of Violence (2005)
Tom Stall, a humble family man and owner of a popular neighborhood restaurant, lives a quiet but fulfilling existence in the Midwest. One night Tom foils a crime at his place of business and, to his chagrin, is plastered all over the news for his heroics. Following this, mysterious people follow the Stalls’ every move, concerning Tom more than anyone else. As this situation is confronted, more lurks out over where all these occurrences have stemmed from compromising his marriage, family relationship and the main characters’ former relations in the process.
7.77 out of 10
Eastern Promises (2007)
Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), who is both ruthless and mysterious, has ties to one of the most dangerous crime families in London. He crosses paths with Anna (Naomi Watts), a midwife who has come across potentially damaging evidence against the family, which forces him to set in motion a plan of deceit, death and retribution.
7.93 out of 10
The Fly (1986)
Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is a scientist working on teleportation. Just when he thinks he’s ironed out the last bug in his system, the intervention of a common house fly turns Seth into a 6 foot insect. The transformation from man to fly is gradual but horrific, and is witnessed by Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) ; a reporter documenting Seth’s story. Seth has some time to try to find a cure, but is there enough time…?
8.19 out of 10
