SOURCE: “Introduction: The Cronenberg Monster: Literature, Science, and Psychology in the Cinema of Horror,” in Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities, Vol. 15, No. 2, Winter/Spring, 1996, pp. 3–10.

In the following essay, Haas places Cronenberg within the tradition of the gothic narrative, and compares his “monsters” with those found in films of the 1930s.

Over the past twenty years, the films of David Cronenberg have remained remarkably consistent in subject matter and theme. Exploring his own conception of the nature of horror (often with bloody excess), his initial films were at first dismissed as grade “z” horror films, relegated to second feature drive-in status. However, over the past twenty years, Cronenberg’s films have matured, evolved, perhaps even mutated into complex examinations of the human condition. And, while the visceral nature of his early films may have been largely stripped away in his later work, his original vision...