Body horror, a genre trope that showcases often graphic violations of the human body, is also justifiably called biological horror. The true biological nature of the horror elicited by these films is here discussed in light of hybrids, metamorphoses, mutations, aberrant sex, and zombification.

E-Book
Publication Date: 2018-11-06
It's not often that a remake outshines its original but David Cronenberg's "reimagining" of The Fly (1986) is one of those rare exceptions. Equal parts horror, science fiction, and romance, The Fly takes the premise of its 1958 original—a man unintentionally fusing with a housefly during an experiment in teleportation—and reinterprets the plot as a gradual cellular metamorphosis between these two organisms. This book teases out the intricate DNA of The Fly and how it represents the personalities of many authors, including a distinguished history of Man-as-God tales stretching back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). Drawing from interviews with cast, crew, film commentators, and other filmmakers, Emma Westwood interlaces the "making of" travails of The Fly with why it is one of the most important examples of master storytelling ever committed to screen.

"Shivers" (1975) depicts a venereal parasite infecting both male and female characters, but the manner in which women are victims as well as victimizers problematizes the function of the monster in this and other David Cronenberg films.

Operating self-sufficiently on the fringes of the Japanese film industry for almost his entire career, the work of independent filmmaker Tsukamoto Shinya is perhaps best-known for its uncompromising, musical freneticism, as well as its corporeal spectacle. However, Tsukamoto’s dynamic clashing of visual media signifiers, such as those of theatre and television (industries within which he also operated prior to his film career during the 1980s), and how these impact upon his reflexive cinematic style, has yet to be fully considered.

At its surface, Scanners is a comic-bookish, sci-fi, male-centric action/adventure fantasy, featuring predictable themes of world domination and good vs. evil; but like much of Cronenberg's work, the movie uses fantastic imagery and sardonic wit to tell a larger than life tale about the directions thirty-something baby-boomers are about to take as they are handed, or grab, the reins of power from the previous generation. [...]to his homeless garb, Vale is now dressed in white from head to toe, the image of purity, a blank canvas.