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
Creepiest part of shiver was the unnerving faces of canadians
Alejandro
2025-10-27 14:41:45 +0000 UTCIs there more to this season. I’m late to the game and finished your back log. Now I have nothing 😢
Methuselah Obama
2025-02-19 11:32:00 +0000 UTCCorrect me if I'm wrong, but isn't that "hot gay guy" who gets shot actually the husband character that Hesse hates?
Equality State Of Mind
2024-11-29 23:55:59 +0000 UTCYeah 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
Chantz
2024-10-30 16:32:23 +0000 UTCHe 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
2024-10-25 23:59:40 +0000 UTCImagine 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
Patrick Taffe
2024-10-25 23:58:05 +0000 UTCRabid and shivers are on Tubi!
Letty
2024-10-25 13:52:09 +0000 UTCPete Postlethwaite baby-girl
Ernest Ambrus
2024-10-21 10:28:50 +0000 UTCSometimes I wish I was a David Thewlis-type guy
Michael S. Judge
2024-10-21 10:26:40 +0000 UTCLest we forget the amazing surgical wear in Dead Ringers.
Ralley Taura
2024-10-20 17:30:09 +0000 UTCI love Crimes of the Future so much can't wait for The Shrouds
Jenkum Terry
2024-10-19 21:40:12 +0000 UTCBest 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
Marcos Carlos Da Silva
2024-10-19 15:23:13 +0000 UTCSo Shivers is about meth?
M Varnzo
2024-10-19 01:56:08 +0000 UTCI saw Naked Lunch in the theaters; not a week – or maybe a month at most – goes by without me thinking of it.
OtherRussert
2024-10-18 20:26:51 +0000 UTCMy 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.
Scott Grabel
2024-10-18 19:13:33 +0000 UTCI 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.
Michelle
2024-10-18 13:28:52 +0000 UTC20:43
Hot Rod
2024-10-18 00:18:14 +0000 UTCDont touch my pp please
Nick Muscatiello
2024-10-17 23:39:59 +0000 UTCanyone make a "dong of the dead" joke yet?
Sybil-Shanks, the Prison Cat
2024-10-17 22:58:59 +0000 UTCThought Cronenberg fans might enjoy this video essay on Shivers: https://youtu.be/N8jH-0L-lHQ?si=O6dbLzF5xaQB1R-n
ME123456789
2024-10-17 22:39:29 +0000 UTCHeard this podcast and went to find a Cronenberg on my streaming. Only had Crimes of the Future available. I’m so grossed out.
Lorean Martin
2024-10-17 20:22:11 +0000 UTCI 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
PEE Vacation
2024-10-17 19:45:22 +0000 UTCBanger. 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
Daniel
2024-10-17 18:07:18 +0000 UTCGet a job
Ctrane
2024-10-17 14:25:05 +0000 UTCI went to the pool there
C. Ries
2024-10-17 13:38:26 +0000 UTCi hope we get some swedish movies next year. you could do frostbiten/låt den rätte komma in as schlock drama combo for next hallowen.
SunRaTheThird
2024-10-17 06:48:34 +0000 UTCShoutout to SUNY Purchase
John Lisowy
2024-10-17 06:47:38 +0000 UTCPhenomenal 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.
ResilientBastard
2024-10-17 04:16:42 +0000 UTCAlmost counteracts Drake and Jordan Peterson
C. Ries
2024-10-17 03:34:10 +0000 UTCI'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
Christopher Farley
2024-10-17 01:59:36 +0000 UTC6:39
Hot Rod
2024-10-17 01:43:15 +0000 UTCTo 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).
Connor Schoen
2024-10-17 01:33:36 +0000 UTCDon't worry, we've got two more Vincent Price movies coming up and they're more fun than scary.
Tim O'
2024-10-17 00:23:58 +0000 UTCYou'll forgive me if I don't stay around to watch. I just can't cope with freaky stuff.
Yarblockos
2024-10-16 23:29:41 +0000 UTCDo something new, different, creative. Fuck movies.
buttface
2024-10-16 23:25:15 +0000 UTCGreat episode. This show has introduced me to Cronenberg, Altman, and Wilder - keep up the good work!
Jacob Harris
2024-10-16 23:16:44 +0000 UTCVaries 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
2024-10-16 22:47:36 +0000 UTCI have been watching various recommendations from this podcast. Proof podcasts can be praxis.
K H
2024-10-16 22:42:42 +0000 UTC👍🍗
Hardcore Virgin
2024-10-16 22:26:28 +0000 UTCHesse 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?
Paul Xanders
2024-10-16 18:20:08 +0000 UTCWhile 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
Katie Doyle
2024-10-16 18:20:02 +0000 UTCWe see you. We hear you. We arghh YoOuuu!
justDave
2024-10-16 17:45:12 +0000 UTCI for one welcome the new flesh
MCL
2024-10-16 16:57:12 +0000 UTCThe guest doesn't talk all that much?
Extrajudicial Pod
2024-10-16 16:54:30 +0000 UTCMan I regret listening to this one
Joey Fazzoli
2024-10-16 15:41:06 +0000 UTCeh 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
andrew rogers
2024-10-16 15:35:15 +0000 UTC"We're trying to watch a nice romantic movie and all we can hear is you screaming about injecting DNA into an egg"
Doug Cartel
2024-10-16 15:34:58 +0000 UTCHe's great in it yea. way terrifying than the monsters by default because the monsters are all friendly and nice!
andrew rogers
2024-10-16 15:26:43 +0000 UTCHenry 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
IPritch
2024-10-16 14:55:17 +0000 UTCChapo's gotta do The Substance
Hall wingfield
2024-10-16 14:25:12 +0000 UTCI’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
Blank
2024-10-16 13:59:06 +0000 UTCOne 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.
Frances Mary
2024-10-16 13:31:22 +0000 UTCDoes he call himself the n-word in this motion picture?
Christian Johnson
2024-10-16 13:18:32 +0000 UTCWe got a whole planet of Cronenbergs walking around down there, Morty
Matthew
2024-10-16 13:12:09 +0000 UTCSpeaking of club random y'all should do "House 2" it features a youngish Bill Maher presumably playing himself. I.e. a creeper
Eric Murphy
2024-10-16 12:58:06 +0000 UTCCronenberg 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.
Brian Taulbee
2024-10-16 12:33:12 +0000 UTCI really don't know if I'm brave enough for these 😂
Drew
2024-10-16 12:21:49 +0000 UTCThe main character in shivers also reminds me of friend of MM Donald Sutherland
Eric Murphy
2024-10-16 11:34:14 +0000 UTCThere'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 🍿🍿🍿
Tim O'
2024-10-16 11:23:16 +0000 UTCThat last scene of Rabid is so bleak, damn
demonsweat
2024-10-16 11:17:59 +0000 UTCOh yeah I don’t like horror movies but Will and Hesse are such a delight
Blank
2024-10-16 11:14:48 +0000 UTCNGL I enjoy listening to these even though I know that I probably will never see the majority of these movies
Christian Johnson
2024-10-16 11:12:12 +0000 UTCI remember my first fuck zombie....
Eric Murphy
2024-10-16 11:12:08 +0000 UTCFirst!
Christian Johnson
2024-10-16 11:10:57 +0000 UTC
