Crimes of the Future (1984)

Must See Movie...

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Crimes of the Future (1970) ** (out of 4) Normally I'd use this portion of my review to describe the "plot" of the film but I must admit that I have no idea what the plot of this film is. Basically it takes place at a disease clinic where several people are staying and we're introduced to a doctor and a mysterious disease that has killed off sexually active women.CRIMES OF THE FUTURE was the second feature film from director David Cronenberg and it's a lot like his first STEREO. Both films are very experimental and I'm going to guess that you could show both of them to a hundred different people and you'd probably get a hundred different explanations of the plot. Heck, you'd also probably get quite a few walk-outs because neither film is what you'd call normal or for the mainstream.I honestly felt the same for both pictures. I honestly respect both of them a lot more than I was actually entertained by them. I thought Cronenberg did a good job with the direction and there's no doubt that you're watching a film from someone with a vision. I also thought the performances were nice. There was a bizarre atmosphere to the film as well, which is something else I liked. With that said, did I enjoy watching the film? No, I didn't. Would I ever watch it again? No, I wouldn't.

Back in 2000 I posted three unnecessarily flippant reviews of David Cronenberg films, including the two that followed this. But while the Cronenberg of 2000 wasn't a stranger to critical appraisal, or even mainstream commercial appeal (particularly in the 1980s), it was easy to be flippant about a director who was so well known for body horror, verging on schlock.Fast forward to 2012 and Cronenberg has managed to completely reinvent himself, a late career renaissance as he prepares to enter his 70s. That the director could build a career for thirty years as the master of visceral horror and then completely reinvent himself is an extraordinary feat. That's not to say that his works of the new millennium haven't been sexually aware, or even in possession of an asymmetrical prostate, but suddenly he's a man of serious critical attention.Which makes it an ideal time to reinvestigate his early back catalogue, in particular his first four films. 1966's student film "Transfer" is a study of mental illness, an extremely rare, 7 minute student film that, to date, only 55 people have seen on the IMDb... myself not included. Following this was arguably the most accessible of his first four efforts, 1967's 13m student piece, "From The Drain". So esoteric that there are wholly different plot summaries of it on the net, this story of two men in a bathtub is open to interpretation.The first film proper was 1969's "Stereo", a silent black and white piece with narration, lasting a little over an hour. Crimes of the Future follows this trend, though adds colour and ambient sound to the mix, the minimalism possibly there as a budgetary requirement as much as a need for the avant garde. As films to study, they're more than worth anyone's time, particularly fans of the director and his work. As entertainments, they're largely null and void, a future auteur trying out his craft rather than narratives to engage. Five long years passed before Cronenberg got to do another film, then averaging a picture every two years or so from 1975's "Shivers" until the present date. Seeing "Shivers" again as part of this study, I realise I was perhaps too hard on it, and it's interesting to see Cronenberg emerge from avant garde director to man behind a serious (albeit black humoured) narrative. The jump to full audio and speaking parts does make his direction look a little clumsy in places, but this was a man honing his craft via experience. The issues with "Shivers" – the debatable misogyny, the crass titillation and suspect subject matter – are actually all present in Crimes of the Future, right down a sequence that involves paedophilia... in this case it forms Crimes' denouement. Such story elements are in highly questionable taste, even for satirical science fiction, and do paint the young Cronenberg out as a man who wanted to shock. However, without these early ventures he may never have established a platform for himself as one of the most notable directors of the modern age.

Crimes of the Future starts out stronger, more dynamic than its predecessor, "Stereo" and indeed throughout the film there is more of an emphasis on "action" though it is a weird, distanced, poorly choreographed sort of action that could almost be at home in "Dr. Who"; but on the whole the film is very similar to "Stereo" both thematically and cinematically, apart from the major obvious difference of color film. Like the previous film it was shot silent and makes use of voice-overs, and like "Stereo" it is an SF film about a fictional scientific institute, in this case dedicated to finding the cause of a worldwide plague that has killed off the majority of women. Like the previous film it stars Ronald Mlodzik, who seems to perfectly convey a 60s Mod vision of an otherworldly character, in this case (apparently) a journalist -- or perhaps a physician/scientist, Adrian Tripod, doing a story -- or studying patients at an institute -- somewhere -- afflicted with this strange disease/plague/virus but not yet dead. Like the earlier film it has an unseen (apparently dead in this case) mastermind scientist character, called Antoine Rouge, who may in fact be responsible for the plague and who may also be reborn in another body. This was an extraordinarily dense and difficult work which I can only scratch the surface of on one viewing; I don't know how much I liked it, but I was awfully impressed at the intellect behind it; like Cronenberg's first feature, it bears comparison with the early works of Peter Greenaway.

Well, my favorite Cronenberg anyway. The dialogue is incredibly detailed, with a seemingly pseudo-scientific bent which in fact, actually makes some sense if you pay attention! Many obscure facets of telepathy research are examined in a very Burroughs/Ballard style of writing, coupled with an intense strangeness to the multiple voice-over narration. This is of course, all helped out by the setting in a nightmare near-future after a major cosmetics related catastrophe has wiped out most of the female population. The men in the film have, by a natural balancing process, become more feminine; more androgynous. However, there is a secret lurking in this research institute- a fresh, organic, young, female secret... a secret worth dying for, maybe. Truly fantastic experimental cinema that outre' film fans everywhere should at least check out! Note: one of the subtly eerie things about this film is the lack of sound other than the voice-over. A recording by the San Francisco-based avant-garde soundtrack group SPOONBENDER 1.1.1 called 'Stereo Telepathy Academy' was released this year. It seems that the group took advantage of the fact that there is no sound in Crimes Of The Future, and wrote a score for the film. They performed it live while the film was projected. I have it and have been lining it up to my DVD of Crimes at home! Awesome!