Since I recently watched that movie CRASH that Roger Ebert said was the best movie of 2005, I decided to finally go back and watch the original David Cronenberg version, which in my opinion is pretty fucking different.
This is the courageous story of a movie producer (James Spader) and his wife (Debora Kara Unger from STANDER and PAYBACK and THE GAME) and all the people they like to fuck from behind (various). The movie opens with Ms. Unger in an a hangar rubbing her nipple against an airplane while some dude licks her ass. And you can imagine where it would go from there (perverted car crashes, etc.). Very predictable, standard stuff.
Okay, if I must spell it out for you: The plot really kicks in when Spader causes a car accident that badly injures himself and Holly Hunter, and kills her husband. They later meet up at the junkyard where their wrecked cars are kept, and have sex in a car while (we find out later) Elias Koteas takes pictures.
The only way to accurately describe this movie is as a late night Cinemax movie gone horribly, disastrously wrong. Maybe this is the Shannon Tweed movie you’d watch on Videodrome.
Elias Koteas’s character Vaughn is sort of the leader of a weird subculture of people sexually obsessed with car crashes. Both James Spader and Holly Hunter met him while rehabilitating in the hospital, because he came in and took photos of their injuries. Later they go around together and find highway accidents and lecherously photograph them.
My favorite scene in the movie is the introduction to this subculture. Spader and Hunter sit with a small crowd on some bleachers while Vaughn and two professional stuntmen recreate the car crash that killed James Dean. Then the cops show up (actually Department of Transportation, Vaughn says) and everybody runs off. This whole scene just has this great dreamlike feeling of that weird perverted thing you stumbled across that you probaly aren’t supposed to know about, like that time I found a web sight of photoshopped giantess pictures, or that other time I found the web sight of dudes riding around in canoes wearing diapers. What makes it even better though is Spader doesn’t look all that horrified by it, it’s more like he’s watching a school play or something. Everybody claps politely after the crash, even though they’re not sure yet if everybody is okay.
There’s not as much dialogue as in most movies, and what’s there is usually in half whispered monotones. The score is spacy, minimalistic guitar strumming. Some people will read this as artiness but for me it only emphasises the Cinemax feel. I like Cronenberg alot and his freakiness is a big part of his appeal. But I gotta be honest, I didn’t enjoy watching this one too much. The uncovering of the subculture is great, but after the Jayne Mansfield crash it seems like there’s no more plot to propel anything. It really does have a porno structure because most of the movie is just stringing together the different combinations of characters having sex with each other and the crazy, disgusting shit that happens. (At least in the NC-17 version I saw. I’m sure the R-rated version is probaly a light comedy about an auto race or competition among used car salesmen or something like that).
So you get a scene where Spader fucks Rosanna Arquette’s leg wound. And you get a scene where Spader and Vaughn get “prophetic tattoos” of a steering wheel and a hood ornament, then they fuck in a car and lick each other’s bloody tattoos. That kind of thing. There’s one scene that’s more like a normal sex scene between Spader and Unger, but if you’re gonna jerk off to that one you’ll probaly have to put it on mute because the whole time Unger keeps asking questions about Elias Koteas, like “Have you seen his penis?” and “What do you think his anus looks like?” It’s possible that she’s just really terrible at pillow talk but I think something more was going on here.
Okay I’ll just say it, I don’t get this movie. I mean I like that it exists but I don’t really understand what it’s supposed to be about. But I bet it’s something. Way to go Cronenberg, I imagine you probaly did a good job on this one.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Yeah….*rubs back of head*…..I saw this the other day…..don’t really want to talk about it.