After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.
Ratings: 6.4/10
Category: Drama
Release Date: 21 March 1997 (USA)
Run Time: 100 min
Director: David Cronenberg
Writer: J.G. Ballard (novel), David Cronenberg
Stars: James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas |
Storyline
Since a road accident left him with serious facial and bodily scarring, a
former TV scientist has become obsessed by the marriage of motor-car
technology with what he sees as the raw sexuality of car-crash victims.
The scientist, along with a crash victim he has recently befriended,
sets about performing a series of sexual acts in a variety of motor
vehicles, either with other crash victims or with prostitutes whom they
contort into the shape of trapped corpses. Ultimately, the scientist
craves a suicidal union of blood, semen, and engine coolant, a union
with which he becomes dangerously obsessed. Written by
Matt A. Knapp <mak8@le.ac.uk>Download Tutorial Click Here
Movie Reviews
James Spader seems to prefer roles in which his sexuality is dark or deviant (e.g. Secretary, a fine film). He and the gorgeous Deborah Kay Unger are a couple, although not monogamous. Through certain accidents they stumble across a cell of car crash fetishists. More stuff happens: I shouldn't get into it. This movie would have been more disturbing if it didn't have such a sense of humor. There is a nasty scene in which Spader is about to rub his willie against a long puckered vagina-like scar on the luscious Roseanna Arquette's leg. She wears an outfit that is a combination of leather bondage gear and handicapped leg braces. A truly weird flick, with good sex scenes but not for a first date unless the girl likes SM and looks at copies of that full-color British magazine featuring motorcycle racing showing the racers proudly displaying their often horrid scars and injuries. Yikes. Well, if you liked Secretary, and if you liked Cronenberg's other flicks and his orifice obsession and general grotesqueness, you'll like this. It has a similar tone vis-a-vis humor as Secretary and some of Videodrome. The title credits are exemplary and some of the shots are marvelous. The scene wherein the camera lovingly rolls over Spader's leg brace after his accident is stunning. I am happy to say that there is no amputation in this flick at least. That would have been too much.
