The Dryden will screen Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg, Canada 1970, 63 min., 35mm).

Surreal even by Cronenberg's standards, this early feature serves as a fascinating catalog of obsessions that would soon become the King of Body Horror's stock-in-trade: "creative cancers" that produce puzzling, functionless new organs; dermatological anomalies caused by toxic cosmetics; sexual fetishes masquerading as science; foamy bodily fluids that are as viral as they are tasty. As our narrator and tour-guide Dr. Adrian Tripod travels from the "House of Skin" to the "Institute of Neo-Venereal Disease" and "Metaphysical Import-Export," where he conducts research into "Oceanic Podiatry," Cronenberg maps a grimly corporate biomedical landscape controlled by deranged dermatologists and strangely depopulated of women. Oddly enough, this stark, virtually silent film also happens to be one of Cronenberg's funniest films, a wry spin on the very same themes he would soon begin to treat with deadly earnestness.

[source: Eastman House calendar, 2015-Sep-14]