This scrabbly, extended 1970 short bridges the gap between David Cronenberg’s early independent films and the commercial horror movies (Scanners, etc) for which he’s known. Filmed in 16-millimeter and using Toronto’s stock of modernist architecture for an Alphaville-like discount vision of the future, it’s a pseudodocumentary, with lugubrious dramatic passages, about a devastating plague caused by a secret ingredient in a line of cosmetics. All of Cronenberg’s personal obsessions—the distortion of the body, the grotesquerie of sex—are on display, though the treatment is a bit sophomoric. A curiosity item for hard-core Cronenberg fans.
