Lottos and Torture and Boars, Oh My!

The time has come.

Kind of.

On May 23rd, the world said goodbye to something very special. Scoff at unexplained physics, the mere presence of Nikki & Paulo, and the weekly questioning of “Why are you telling me this?” but for six years, LOST gave us a weekly viewing experience unlike anything else ever seen on television.

So how to fill that Hurley-sized void in your Island-less heart? One way ticket to Hawaii? Pricey. Enlistment in the Dharma Initiative? Perilous. New career as a con man/spinal surgeon/fertility doctor/rock star/protector of golden light? There has to be an easier way!

And naturally, there is and all you need are a few great horror movies. So dear Islanders and Tailies, Sideways inhabitants and Others, I give you a few key elements of your favorite ABC show and how you might fill them.

1. Terry O’Quinn

Even Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof couldn't let go of one of the industry’s longest underrated actors, a bald and enigmatic presence so vital to the universe that he took on a whole new role as Evil (maybe) Incarnate in the final two, post-dead John Locke seasons. So where does one go for that sparking blue-eyed smile that never quite feels right? The late 80s, naturally. In 1987’s The Stepfather (and its first sequel), O’Quinn plays--wait, who is he again? We’ll call him Jerry, the name he takes to woo a lovely widow and later, attempt to kill her and the family she has left. By far the second best way to see this charmer wield an oversized knife.

2. Torture

Sayid, you scamp! From the Iraqi National Guard to Sawyer’s fingernails, everyone’s favorite curly-haired loveboat was quite the expert when it came to inflicting pain. Life won’t quite be the same without his sad puppy dog eyes seeking validation or that petite Benjamin Linus accepting that sweaty fist in his cheek, but thanks to the 21st century trend of torture porn, you can at least pretend their spirits live on. Sure, you could go standard and find a cheap boxed set of Saw or Hostel, but why not make like Charles Widmore sipping aged scotch and go classy with the philosophical genre twisting Martyrs. Yes, you’ll have to read subtitles (unless you decide to wait for the American remake, brought to you by the people who made Twilight which is sure to be the best thing you can possibly ever in your life witness) and yes, the film isn’t for everyone, but much like Lost, Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs takes viewers on an ambiguous, poetic, and post-death journey (maybe) that happens to be accompanied by a whole lot of blood and beatings.

3. Crazy French Woman Trying to Steal Your Baby

Danielle Rousseau, we hardly knew ye, but one thing we were sure of was just how much you missed your little girl. Left alone for 16 years with nothing but surprisingly tame bangs and a rifle, this shipwrecked mother wanted nothing more than her child back in her arms...even if (briefly), she had to take someone else’s. Where to find that special mother with a hole in her heart? Easy: Inside. Beatrice Dalle’s La Femme. Basically, it’s the same exact thing. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

4. Surgeons Under the Influence

From Jack’s shaky pain medicated hands to his dad’s functional alcoholism, Lost was never a role model for hospital interns. Now that Dr. Shepard squared has gone on to a better, hopefully less accident-prone place, where will we fans ever find our illegal and falsified prescriptions of malpracticing hunks? Canada, naturally. In David Cronenberg’s 1988 masterpiece Dead Ringers, Jeremy Irons plays--whaddya know--two related gynecologists slowly slipping into a drug addicted depression. While wielding medical instruments. On women’s vaginas. Wow. This makes a mere 18-hour spinal cord rebuilding look like a romp on the beach.

5. Undoing the Past

“What happened, happened!” shouted so many an island survivor, but Lost’s final season tried awfully hard to put us in a reality where it didn’t. For a somewhat similar plot thread, check out 2004’sThe Butterfly Effect, an ambitiously flawed sci-fi love story of sorts that also shared a few random Lost ties: leading men temporarily bound to wheelchairs, likable dogs, surprise bombs with devastating results, and black-and-white journals that also serve as vouchers for time traveling.

6. Boars

John Locke instantly proved his worth by serving up porkchops his first week as a castaway, but Gary Oldman found himself on the wrong side of dinner when his wheelchair-bound--whoa! double link!--millionaire molester reunited with Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lector.

7. Smoke Monster

Gray precipitation that moistens the air and summons ghosts? Call your lawyer, John Carpenter! Though Smokey, aka The Man In Black When Mobile didn’t have a whole lot in common with the pirate ghoulies of 1980’s The Fog, there are plenty of random links: shipwrecks, radio towers, Maggie Grace (a few steps removed of course). But hey. It’s John Carpenter’s The Fog. Do you really need another reason?

8. The Lottery

Ever say to yourself “If my numbers would just come up, all my problems would be solved!” Then you watched Hugo “Hurley” Reyes lose his friends, grandfather, and sanity in a pile of green and said, “Well, A LOT of my other problems would still be solved!” Maybe you need a harsher lesson in the fickle nature of Lady Luck. If that’s the case, queue up Final Destination 2 for a reality check, where one newly minted motorcyclist learns the hard way that money may buy gold rings and frozen dinners, but it won’t pay off Death to spare you from an eye gouging via fire escape.

9. Plane Crash

First class or coach, passengers on Oceanic Flight 815 started the series with a horror movie of their own, a crash that had the nerve to menace them even on land (pity the poor sucked-into-engine pilot). For the big screen, few films have ever quite matched the chaotic horror of 1993’s Alive, a crash made all the more terrifying by the fact that it actually happened.

10. The Numbers

Though we never learned the true significance of 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42, just knowing such digits held mystical and/or electromagnet powers was enough to keep us constantly ruminating on their place in the world (and on our own lottery tickets). What better companion piece is there then, than Vincenzo Natali's low budget 1997 mystery Cube, a film which shares Lost’s penchant for ambiguity, mismatched people forced to work together, and characters named after something they vaguely represent (in this case, American prisons). Also, savvy mathematicians (which thankfully includes one of Cube’s leads) are quick to latch onto the numerals found inside each cubic doorway, decoding their meaning and thus providing Losies with their own fan-fiction fantasy answer involving square roots and booby traps. 

There's a Party In My Armpit and Everyone's Invited!

Since flu season/a month of chocolate covered Santas is upon us, it seemed appropriate to revisit the work of a man who always makes me thankful for the body I've got. Sure, I may have a tickle in my throat and lack the Ivory Soap sanctioned skin of Marilyn Chambers, but at least you won't find an Ironside-sized headache spinning my brain or vaginal VHS insertion strip growing out of my stomach.

And so, to celebrate December, I give you David Cronenberg’s Rabid. 

Don’t look at me like that. The film has snow. And a smoking elf. Plus pornography, popped collars, and plastic surgery. What could be more seasonal?

Quick Plot: A young couple on a motorcycle flip themselves into a nasty accident but thankfully--or not--they land close to the Keloid Center, a plastic surgery clinic on the cutting (moohahaha) edge of experimentation. Driver Hart Read is treated and sent home but girlfriend Rose (Marilyn Chambers) is worse for the wear. Operations are needed, which is a bonus for Dr. Keloid, a talented surgeon itching to try out some new skin graphing technology on the unsuspecting patient.

A month or so later, the comatose Rose awakens to find a concerned doctor at her bed. Rather than call for help or morphine, she nuzzles the man into a bloody mess, later sneaking out for a little more off-premises squeezing from any creature she can get (grizzled alcoholic farmer, nonconsenting cow, etc). As we follow a few of her victims, it becomes clear that Rose is a Typhoid Mary of sorts, spreading a new strain of gooey green rabies all throughout the land of mounties and maple syrup.

Rabid marks the second full-length horror feature from David Cronenberg, and it makes a perfectly fine (although highly infectious) partner to his 1974 shocker Shivers. Both films take a deep and fluid-covered look at a toxic, almost zombie-esque disease spread through close (often suggestively sexual) human contact,. Like George Romero’s The Crazies, Rabid integrates some of the potential fear factor of martial law and the breakdown of society in the face of nearsighted scientific advancement (even mall Santa himself falls victim to what happens in a shoot-first-ask-questions-later kind of world), while the smaller-scaled Shivers kept the action inside one prime-meat filled apartment complex.

Neither film represents the best of Cronenberg’s canon, but both Shivers and Rabid offer prime looks at one of cinema’s most innovative filmmakers getting his start. With Rabid, Canada’s least shy director delves into the human body with what would become a trademarked sense of current advancements blending into the organic organism and creating a monster completely of its own. Sex and violence unabashedly coat each frame, but nothing feels gratuitous, nor is it pretentious in issuing any outright verdicts on medical practices or societal relations. While we can easily read Rabid as a sort of pre-meditation on plastic surgery and the AIDS crisis, it’s just as easy to sit back and wait for the next infected attack. 

High Points

Although she doesn’t quite get enough to do, Marilyn Chambers gives a nicely understated performance that 
proves the occasional stunt casting can work perfectly well when the actor in question still fits the bill

Few directors can stage such suspenseful surgery as Cronenberg. The ear lifting scene here doesn't quite rival Jeremy Irons' homemade scalpels and gynecological treatment in Dead Ringers, but it does cause for a quite a little squirming


Naturally, Cronenberg doesn't disappoint when it comes to the twisted aspects of body horror. Even though we’re now aware that Rose is stabbing or bleeding the men and women she grabs, it’s still quite shocking to get our first glimpse of (SPOILER ALERT) the sharply phallic armpit sword inside one nasty and poorly placed vaginal opening

Low Points

Like a lot of Cronenberg characters, Rose is drawn rather thin. Perhaps this was intentional in making her a less specific person, but it’s hard to know how to feel about Rose’s changed behavior when we don’t know a thing about her life before the accident.


In a combination of a stale character and a dull performance, Frank Moore's Read brings the film to a slow and creaky halt every time he takes center stage

Lessons Learned

Hitchhiking is a great way to meet some very kind drivers' license carriers in Canada. Likewise, traffic cops north of the border are just so darn nice.

Smooth Eddy always looks good

It's hard enough to pick up a woman when you're dressed like an elf, so always be sure to pack some sort of conversation incentive. Cigarettes help (in the '70s), but one can't really expect full wooing without a light


A good trucker never hits a man with glasses

If you’re looking to meet men at a porno theater, make sure you buy a small popcorn to share (even if you can’t actually eat any pieces yourself)

Rent/Bury/Buy

Any genre fan has something of a responsibility to fully absorb the horrifically headiness of Cronenbergia, and Rabid is worth a watch on that premise alone. It’s not nearly as frightening as the masterful buildup of The Brood or quite as intelligent as something like Videodrome, but Rabid is still a fascinating ride into an intelligently rich cinema with a very specifically Cronenbergian twist. The DVD includes a filmmaker commentary, as well as a candid nterview which is really just one more excuse to hear Cronenberg discuss his early films, Canadian censorship, and the casting of Chambers. Stick the film on your queue and save it for one of those movie nights when you want something a little smarter than your average genre flick, yet still feel like watching zombie-esque vampiric Canadians chomp on straphangers and station wagon-driving chauffeurs.

ArachnaCronenberg-ia!

David Cronenberg is probably my favorite director, yet it embarrasses me to admit that I don’t own a single one of his films on DVD. For the most part, I’ll blame the economy (because everyone else is doing it and I hate to feel left out). Since his releases are often double discs or even Criterion editions, I usually have trouble finding them for under $25 (and when your video library includes 200 titles that rang in at $30, justification is rather difficult). On the flip side, his lesser celebrated (but not by me) films like The Brood are bare bones releases, yet because of their general unavailability, rarely clock in under $15.


Perhaps I can compare it to how I feel about upscale Chinese restaurants; why pay $20 for a smaller serving of sesame chicken when I can order a lunch special double the size, a quarter of the price and get extra fortune cookies upon request? Okay, with the exception of one scene in eXistenZ, there is no actual link between David Cronenberg and my tastes in Asian cuisine, but I did just order takeout. Emily’s stomach will stop blogging now.

There’s another reason though, for the Canadian vacuum in my DVD collection. I tend to buy films with rewatchablility. I can turn on Basket Case or Dawn of the Dead while washing dishes, matching my orphan socks, or cooking (i.e., microwaving leftover Chines takeout), but Cronenberg’s works always require far more energy. There’s rarely a feel-good moment to be found, and as much as I love doublemint Jeremy Irons, randomly looking up from my computer at Dead Ringers gynecology amok scenes are less than entertaining when I just want to play Boggle.

Spider, like many C-films, is not an enjoyable film. It’s a thoughtful, well-crafted, fascinating and deep character study, but despite a title that sounds ripped off the SciFi Channel, this is no web in the park. Ralph Fiennes plays “Spider” Cleg, a middle aged schizophrenic who has recently been released from an institution into a not-so caring halfway house run by Lynn Redgrave. Within 20 minutes, we see that this isn’t the story of a man trying to fit himself into society or form some kind of relationship with another human being; this is a psychological exploration of Spider’s life and how he came to be the mumbling ghost of a man we watch shuffle through a cold and lonely London today. To do this, Cronenberg follows Fiennes as he wanders through his childhood following himself as a quiet boy whose downtrodden parents are played by the incredible Gabriel Byrne and Miranda Richardson (who also takes on the looser role of a pub temptress named Yvonne with equal grandeur, thus giving the finest dual performances since, well, Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers).

To go any further may spoil what is an intriguing and original film, so I’ll leave my rather uninformative synopsis to say this is not a film about its story, but a study in mental illness that brings the audience inside a scary, confusing, and altogether fascinating place.


High Points
The performances--particularly Richardson, who is simply phenomenal--are all top notch and become even richer upon second viewing when you realize just how multifaceted they are

Many of Cronenberg’s images--like the DVD menu shot, where Fienes huddles down in a long coat that makes him seem like he has no head--are quite haunting


Low Points
Despite a title that begs for arachnids, there are no actual spiders in this film


Rent/Buy/Bury
Buy: It’s hard to be overly enthusiastic when recommending a film like this. You don’t watch it for fun and you might not even fully understand everything you see after the first time. In many ways, this is one of those miserable tales that makes you feel tired and itchy just to be watching it.

Having said that, this is a film to own, or at least rent with the intention of paying late fines when it’s overdue. Like a good Sondheim musical, everything it offers is not on the surface and sometimes won’t be found until the third go around. Several featurettes detail all areas of production and Cronenberg’s commentary track is extremely enlightening. Not only do you learn a little more about the film, you also come to realize just how challenging these roles were for the cast. Anyone with an interest in acting can learn a lot from the very particular nuances of Byrne, Richardson, and Fiennes (who was the pioneer of bringing this book to the screen) and students of psychology may find a truly introspective look at schizophrenia (eat that Russell Crowe! I mean, I loved you in Mystery, Alaska, and I baked you cookies and put that phone down please).