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Biography: "Dave 'Deprave' Cronenberg, 'King of venereal horror', 'Baron of blood', as he has often been called, was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of a journalist and a piano player. After showing an inclination for literature at an early age (he wrote and published eerie short stories, thus following his father's path), Cronenberg graduated from Toronto University in Literature, after quitting the Scientific Department. He reached the cult status of 'horror meister' with the gore-filled, modern vampire variations of Shivers and Rabid following an experimental apprenticeship in independent filmmaking and in Canadian television programs. Gained popularity with the 'head-exploding', telepathy-based Scanners after the release of the much underrated, controversial and autobiographical The Brood.
Cronenberg become a sort of a mass-medial 'guru' with Videodrome, a shocking investigation of the hazards of reality-morphing television and critical extravaganza on contemporary esthetics. The issues of tech-induced mutation of human body and topics of the prominent dichotomy between body and mind are back again in The Dead Zone and The Fly; bright examples of a personal filmmaking identity, even if both films are based on mass-entertainment materials: the first being a rendition of a Stephen King best-seller, the latter a remake of famous genre horror movie.
With Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch, the Canadian director, no more a mere genre moviemaker but a fully realized author, gets the unconditioned acclaim of international critics. Such profound statements on modern manhood and ever-changing society survive in the provocative Crash and in the virtual reality essay of eXistenZ, both well fared at Cannes and Berlin Film Festivals." - IMDB.com
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