The editing is pretty rough draft and sloppy joe in spots- but Cronenberg’s ideas- specifically his obsession with body horror is in full bloom here piggybacking on the horror genre and the zombie sub-genre
The film is cold and filled with scenes of graphic violence/horror/gore- he’s already establishing this in 1977
There’s a Da Vinci poster and character reading from the Freud book (which he would later do in a dangerous method of course
It borrows heavily from George Romero and certainly there isn’t the profound social statement there is here like there is in night of the living dead 1968 but here Cronenberg takes on cosmetic surgery (again not nearly for the last time- crash, the fly, dead ringers
Again he’d do this again later- the beginning of this is a motorcycle crash like the car accident in crash in 1996
There are some narrative issues- a character calls another for help that he definitely shouldn’t according to the world of the film
The film has about a 60 minute idea and it simply runs out of steam
I’ve got it in the archives but wouldn’t fight much if others don’t
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