Review of Crimes of the Future (1970) by Marcey I — 20 Feb 2008

So... Bear with me here. There's a genre of film now coming into vogue: the apocalyptic documentary. It's appeal stretches from highbrow (it is the stylistic raison d'etre of Children of Men) to the middlebrow (Cloverfield) to the lowbrow (Diary of the Dead). But guess what, bitches? David Cronenberg did it like, fuckin' forty years ago, and in his debut feature, no less.

Granted, it is slow and stiff. The uninitiated may dismiss it as self-indulgent artiness, as gay cowboys eating their pudding.

Okay, you see the synopsis? That will give you the wrong idea. The subject of our film, Adrian Tripod, lives in world devastated by an epidemic. It has all but killed off the female population, and now men are slowly growing susceptible as well. Most of them have suffered brain damage from it, and stumble about like victims of syphilis.

In this omnipresent madness, the institutions of the modern world still persist, useless and hopelessly reduced. Mental patients are kept in the care of deranged psychiatrists. Researchers bandy about crackpot theories about how to preserve humanity, nutty ideas straight out of Lamarckism. And Adrain, narrating, attempts to navigate the crumbling social world: indulging the paranoia and obsession of his colleagues as though these were harmless eccentricities, conducting "scientific tests" on passersby that amount to unwitting homosexual foreplay, rationalizing his encounters with men reduced to apelike grunting as part of an ineffable social commerce.

Did I mention that this movie is a little weird?

It requires patience, but this is a movie worth seeing.