David Paul Cronenberg is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a principal originator of the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infectious diseases, and the intertwining of the psychological, physical, and technological. Cronenberg is best known for exploring these themes through sci-fi horror films such as Shivers (1975), Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983) and The Fly (1986), though he has also directed dramas, psychological thrillers and gangster films.
Victoria Louise Samantha Marie Elizabeth Therese Eggar is a retired English actress. After beginning her career in Shakespearean theatre she rose to fame for her performance in William Wyler's thriller The Collector (1965), which earned her a Golden Globe Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
Rabid is a 1977 independent body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg. An international co-production of Canada and the United States, the film stars Marilyn Chambers in the lead role, supported by Frank Moore, Joe Silver, and Howard Ryshpan. Chambers plays a woman who, after being injured in a motorcycle accident and undergoing a surgical operation, develops an orifice under one of her armpits that hides a phallic/clitoral stinger she uses to feed on people's blood. Those she bites become infected, and then feed upon others, spreading the disease exponentially. The result is massive chaos, starting in the Quebec countryside, and ending up in Montreal. Rabid made $1 million in Canada, making it one of the highest-grossing Canadian films of all time. A remake of the same name, directed by Jen and Sylvia Soska, was released in 2019.
The Brood is a 1979 Canadian psychological body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, and Art Hindle. Its plot follows a man and his mentally ill ex-wife, who has been sequestered by a psychiatrist known for his controversial therapy techniques. A series of brutal unsolved murders serves as the backdrop for the central narrative.
Videodrome is a 1983 Canadian science fiction body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring James Woods, Sonja Smits, and Debbie Harry. Set in Toronto during the early 1980s, it follows the CEO of a small UHF television station who stumbles upon a broadcast signal of snuff films. Layers of deception and mind-control conspiracy unfold as he attempts to uncover the signal's source, complicated by increasingly intense hallucinations that cause him to lose his grasp on reality.
Barbara Steele is an English actress and producer, known for starring in Italian gothic horror films of the 1960s. She has been referred to as the "Queen of All Scream Queens" and "Britain's first lady of horror". She played the dual role of Asa and Katia Vajda in Mario Bava's landmark film Black Sunday (1960), and starred in The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962), The Long Hair of Death (1964), and Castle of Blood (1964).
Felissa Rose Esposito, better known as simply Felissa Rose, is an American actress and producer. Rose has amassed over 150 film credits, and is best known for her work in the horror genre, for which she is recognized as a "scream queen".
Shivers, also known as The Parasite Murders and They Came from Within, and, for Canadian distribution in French, Frissons, is a 1975 Canadian science fiction body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Paul Hampton, Lynn Lowry, and Barbara Steele.
Crimes of the Future is a 1970 Canadian science fiction film written, shot, edited and directed by David Cronenberg. Like Cronenberg's previous feature, Stereo, Crimes of the Future was shot silent with a commentary added afterwards, spoken by the character Adrian Tripod.
Vampira is a 1974 British comedy horror film directed by Clive Donner, and starring David Niven and Teresa Graves. This spoof of the vampire genre was re-titled Old Dracula for release in the United States, in an attempt to ride the success of Young Frankenstein.
I Drink Your Blood is a 1971 American hippie exploitation horror film written and directed by David E. Durston, produced by Jerry Gross, and starring Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury, Jadine Wong, and Lynn Lowry. The film centers on a small town that is overrun by rabies-infected members of a Satanic hippie cult after a revenge plot goes horribly wrong.
Danny Lopes is an American actor and model.
The Crazies is a 2010 science fiction horror film directed by Breck Eisner from a screenplay from Scott Kosar and Ray Wright. The film is a remake of the 1973 film of the same name and stars Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson and Danielle Panabaker. George A. Romero, who wrote and directed the original, served as an executive producer. It is about a fictional Iowa town that becomes afflicted by a biological agent that turns those infected into violent killers. The film was released on February 26, 2010, and grossed $54 million on a $20 million budget. It received mixed reviews according to Metacritic, with the critical summary on Rotten Tomatoes calling the film "tense, nicely shot, and uncommonly intelligent".
Torture Chamber is a 2013 horror film written and directed by Dante Tomaselli. The movie first released on October 10, 2013 at the Sitges Film Festival and was released onto DVD on January 28, 2014. The film stars Vincent Pastore, Christie Sanford, and Lynn Lowry, and follows a family trying to save a teen boy from demonic possession. This marks a change from Tomaselli's usual horror formula, as prior films showed adults in the role of monster.
Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska, also known as The Soska Sisters or The Twisted Twins, are Canadian twin sisters who collaborate as film directors, producers and screenwriters. They are known for directing often violent and visceral horror movies such as Dead Hooker in a Trunk, See No Evil 2 and American Mary.
The Brides of Blood Island is a 1966 Filipino horror film directed by Eddie Romero and Gerardo de Leon from a screenplay by Cesar J. Amigo, and starring John Ashley, Kent Taylor, Beverly Hills, Eva Darren and Mario Montenegro. It was the first movie that Ashley made in the Philippines, beginning a long association between Ashley and that country. The Brides of Blood Island was the second in a series of four horror films produced by Romero and Kane W. Lynn known as the "Blood Island" series, which also included Terror Is a Man, The Mad Doctor of Blood Island and Beast of Blood. Brides of Blood was later released to television syndication in some areas as Island of Living Horror.
Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Andrew Monument, based on the 2004 book of the same name by Joseph Maddrey. The film examines the appeal of the horror film genre to audiences and how the genre has continually evolved to reflect changing societal fears in the United States during the 20th and 21st centuries.
Pandie James, also known as Pandie Suicide, is a New Zealand writer, actress, producer and model.
Kane W. Lynn (1919–1975) was an American film producer who made a number of movies in the Philippines with producer Irwin Pizor and Filipino director Eddie Romero as Hemisphere Pictures, or the House of Horror as they often referred to themselves. Later Pizor quit the company after an argument, and when Romero left to form a production company with actor John Ashley, Lynn tired of making movies and his Hemisphere Pictures became just a movie distributor, mainly handling adult films and low budget B-movies. It was his guidance that kept Hemisphere Pictures solvent and constantly moving forward, releasing a diverse product line of low-budget independent movies from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s.
Ronald Mlodzik is a Canadian character actor, Archdeacon and retired professor best known for his myriad appearances in the early films of body horror director David Cronenberg, including Stereo (1969), Crimes of the Future (1970), Secret Weapons (1972), Rabid (1977), and Shivers (1975), in which he played his most prominent role as Mr. Merrick, the building manager of the fictional Starliner Towers condominium complex. Mlodzik ceased to appear in any films or television post-1977.
