The Cinema of David Cronenburg: From Baron to Blood to Cultural Hero

David Cronenberg has become one of North America’s most respected movie directors. Since the early seventies, the soft-spoken Baron of Blood has attracted widespread controversy with a steady stream of shock–sex crazed parasites in Shivers (1975), exploding heads in Scanners (1981), revolutionary flesh technology in Videodrome (1983), mutating bugs in The Fly (1986), car-crash scars in Crash (1996), and psychopathic bursts of gun violence in A History of Violence (2005). This book provides an overview of Cronenberg’s films in light of their international reception.