Crash (1996)

After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.

Director:

David Cronenberg

Writers:

J.G. Ballard (novel), David Cronenberg

Stars:

James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas

8 wins & 4 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
James Spader	...	James Ballard
Holly Hunter	...	Helen Remington
Elias Koteas	...	Vaughan
Deborah Kara Unger	...	Catherine Ballard
Rosanna Arquette	...	Gabrielle
Peter MacNeill	...	Colin Seagrave
Yolande Julian	...	Airport Hooker
Cheryl Swarts	...	Vera Seagrave
Judah Katz	...	Salesman
Nicky Guadagni	...	Tattooist
Ronn Sarosiak	...	A.D.
Boyd Banks	...	Grip
Markus Parilo	...	Man in Hanger
Alice Poon	...	Camera Girl
John Stoneham Jr.	...	Trask

Storyline

Since a road accident left him with serious facial and bodily scarring, a former TV scientist has become obsessed by the marriage of motor-car technology with what he sees as the raw sexuality of car-crash victims. The scientist, along with a crash victim he has recently befriended, sets about performing a series of sexual acts in a variety of motor vehicles, either with other crash victims or with prostitutes whom they contort into the shape of trapped corpses. Ultimately, the scientist craves a suicidal union of blood, semen, and engine coolant, a union with which he becomes dangerously obsessed.

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Plot Keywords:

car | car accident | car crash | sex | semen | 

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Taglines:

The most controversial film you will ever see.

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Genres:

Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated NC-17 for numerous explicit sex scenes

Details

Official Sites:

Fine Line Features

Country:

Canada UK

Language:

English Swedish

Release Date:

21 March 1997 (USA)

Also Known As:

Crash: Extraños placeres

Filming Locations:

North York, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Box Office

Budget:

$9,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$738,339 (USA) (21 March 1997)

Gross:

$3,168,660 (USA) (18 April 1997)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Alliance Communications Corporation, Movie Network, The (TMN), Recorded Picture Company (RPC)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

100 min 90 min (R-rated)

Sound Mix:

Dolby SDDS Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Vaughan's "benevolent psychopathology" speech ("The car crash is a fertilizing, rather than a destructive event . . . ") is taken word-for-word from a passage in J.G. Ballard's 1970 book "The Atrocity Exhibition", published three years before the novel "Crash".

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Goofs

After Vaughan repeatedly crashes the left front bumper of his Lincoln into a junker James Ballard is sitting in, causing major damage to the bumper and the lights, Vaughan is soon shown driving on the highway with no damage to the bumper and both left lights operational.

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Quotes

Colin Seagrave: I want really big tits, out to here, so the audience can see 'em get all cut up and crushed on the dashboard.

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Connections

Referenced in Acts of Violence (2006)

User Reviews

This film is fascinating but definitely not for everyone

I love this film. I have now viewed it three times and I still keep getting something new out of each viewing.

I think it's one of Cronenberg's best. It is not, however, for the uninitiated. By that, I mean those who are not familiar with Cronenberg's previous work, and those who have not read J.G. Ballard, whose novel was the basis for this film.

Cronenberg excels at bringing difficult pieces of fiction to film. This is one such example.

The written works of J.G.Ballard are generally, dark, dreary, and disturbing psychological fiction. The characters in them are often very disturbed and socially dysfunctional. These are people who, often due to unusual circumstances, are not in their right minds.

In Crash, we are observing a group of characters who are all survivors of horrific car crashes. Like many crash survivors, they are, during their period of recovery, in shock. They are badly shaken. They are recovering from severe physical injuries, and they are disoriented, fearful, and emotionally numb.

Instead of recovering in the normal fashion, (how sad that we've come to think of auto accidents as normal) these characters stumble into the car crash cult of Vaughan. Vaughan, who is brilliantly portrayed by Elias Koteas, is a scientist who believes that there is a strong connection between the violence of a car crash and the passion of the sexual act.

He easily indoctrinates the other characters into his mode of behavior and beliefs. By staging car crashes for entertainment, by initiating traffic altercations with his followers and ultimately finishing with some very warped sex, usually involving cars, there is a metaphor being created. Accidents, and the viewing of them becomes foreplay. It's the eroticism of the automobile taken to an extreme.

Our society has had, what is often referred to as a "love affair" with the automobile. This love affair has resulted in a worldwide addiction to a means of transportation that is, in reality, often very unhealthy and destructive. Aside from the aftermath of pollution and the sheer carnage of the ever rising highway accident rate, this addiction also increases people's isolation from each other. Hidden in their private shells, they move about, only interacting with one another as necessary. This interaction rarely becomes intimate until it is violent, as in aggressive driving and accidents .

In Crash, the characters are all portrayed as cold hearted, numb, and incapable of true intimacy with each other(they sure have a lot of sex though). They are only capable of intimacy through their cars.

This film is a bizarre metaphor for the human condition and how it is affected by our choice of technology. It is not meant to make car crashes look sexy. It is meant to draw attention to how our most familiar technology has changed us and made us less human.

I love this film. Brilliant cast. Great cinematography. An excellent soundtrack by Howard Shore (multiple layers of cleanly played, very dissonant electric guitar, sounding like a cross between Sonic Youth and Brian Ruryk). Only Cronenberg would have the guts to tackle a subject as difficult as this particular work of Ballard's. I think he did quite well.

Depending on your mood at the time of viewing, this film can range from being shocking, amusing, revolting, hilarious, to even just plain boring. It's a great piece of art, but you really do have to be in the right mood for it.