Crimes of the future

Couple the recurrent Cronenberg motif of transformative physiological processes with the director’s private demons at the time of production, and the offspring is The Brood, one of his finest films.

A lot of even very excitable David Cronenberg fans have never seen his 1970 film Crimes of the Future: it seems to be seen as something of a curate’s egg and dark and imaginative, of course, like everything he does, but perhaps made too long ago now, and surely overshadowed by his later work. It was his second film, after Stereo in 1969. Stereo is a similarly short feature film dealing with telepathy, sexual exploration and, like Crimes of the Future, had its commentary added later: it also starts Ronald Mlodzik wearing black and looking terrifying.