Dead Ringers |  | Director: David Cronenberg
Actors: Jeremy Irons, Geneviève Bujold, Heidi von Palleske, Barbara Gordon, Shirley Douglas
Studio: Anchor Bay
Category: DVD
List Price: $24.98
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Rating:  75 reviews
Format: Color, DVD, HiFi Sound, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 0
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 116 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 6304698011
UPC: 013131032994
EAN: 9786304698013
Theatrical Release Date: September 23, 1988
Release Date: February 17, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com essential video
Like many other films by Canadian director David Cronenberg (especially Crash), Dead Ringers presents the cinematic and psychological equivalent of an automobile accident--you dare not look, but you can't turn away. The film marked a directorial breakthrough for Cronenberg, who was able to continue some of the themes explored in his earlier horror films while graduating to a higher, more critically "respectable" level of artistic sophistication. The film is loosely based, amazingly enough, on a true story about twin gynecologists who routinely traded each others' identities, lives and even lovers. Utilizing innovative split-screen technology (years before computer manipulation made such trickery much easier), the film stars Jeremy Irons in flawless dual roles as the identical brothers Beverly and Elliot Mantle. Their ability to instantly switch identities leads them to a shared relationship with a well-known actress (Genevieve Bujold) and, ultimately, a physical and psychological tailspin that sends them both to the brink of madness and death. The scenario suggests that both men are halves of a whole, and that one cannot exist without the other. But when Beverly pursues a kinky, drug-addicted affair with the actress, his more self-controlled brother is helpless to prevent their mutual decline. In this way Dead Ringers becomes a fascinating and stylistically clinical study of duality, and Cronenberg doesn't shy away from the dark and unpleasant aspects of the story. (One look at the movie's display of bizarre gynecological instruments and you'll know why women find this film particularly--and unforgettably--disturbing.) --Jeff Shannon
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 75
eerie September 17, 2009
Joshua Jack (Baltimore, USA)
If its a well made, and truly disturbing move you desire, it would be hard to do better than Dead Ringers.
 Dead Ringers February 2, 2009
greene_eyes (Georgia, USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This one sounded really interesting but the plot develops really slowly so I had already lost interest by the time it started to get interesting.
Profound examination of lost sanity, the decline of brilliance unto madness. June 17, 2008
TANTRUM!!!! (CHILE)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Like many other known masters of horror like Tobe Hooper or George Romero, David Cronemberg is one of the most renowned and prominent directors working today in the industry. Only few talented filmakers sprang into public consciousness with such audacity and intelligence, from a series of low budget surprising shockers back in the mid 70's , untill today's acclaimed classic masterpieces of all times in modern horror, with the unmistakable mark of a true author, a gifted brilliant talent that explored with authentic passion, the limits and boundaries of hallucination, grotesque, and surrealistic carnal madness.
The difference between Cronemberg and other repected colleagues worth mention, is that he never got caged in the same level of scanning of the genre, he's a dark pioneer, a visionary of the physical and emotional human alterations, showed in both style and aesthetics so gruesome and disturbing, they became the language, the vocabulary of his frosty architecture of fear. He evolved, refusing to stick to a safe formula, exploring with anxiety his great concern throught his always tormented characters: The profound examination of the mind and the descent of the human psyche unto lunacy, along with the dissection and mutation of the flesh, with all the pain, anger and frustration implied, inflicted upon a human soul.
In this horrific drama, Jeremy Irons, i a career performance, plays two twin brothers, Beverly and Elliot Mantle, renowned gynecologist who operate in an exclusive clinic and share a great reputation of brilliant innovators in the field. They also share more intimate aspects like sexual complicity, as the more confident Elliot seduces women and then allows his more shy and introvert brother Beverly to reap the benefits. It all goes down when Beverly falls in love with careless drug addict actress Claire Niveau (Genevieve Bujold), a new patient with a bizarre gynecological deformity, fascinating the unprevented twin and inducing him to a dangerous addiction to drugs and alcohol along with the separation from Elliot. However, Elliot senses his brother's decline to paranoia and tries to save him, only to fall victim of the same urges. What continues can be described as a surrealist downward spiral of eccentric, raw, and painfuly insane circumstances and consequences, surrounded by a creepy cold atmosphere.
Unlike his previous masterpieces like the astonishing "The Fly", the classic mind-bending visual shocker "Videodrome", or even his first major effort that catapulted him to a cult-following status "Scanners", all outstanding and incredible classics, this movie was the true Cronemberg consecration in his filmaking carrer, he was consolidated as a director, master filmaker and unique author, cementing his path in the industry as an amazing and original creator. All those strong achievements, without the abuse of the trademark gore imagery that shocked audiences worlwide and defined his atrocious and raw portraits of macabre. Not leaving the usual mind-flesh connection still in its glory, with this critically aclaimed masterpiece "Dead Ringers", David Cronemberg proved his value as an artist, leaving the forbidden pleasures and desecrations of the flesh aside, with a new devotion for the obscure corners of the human mind, a real descent to insanity, and the best proof ever filmed that the grisly and sinister special effects were only serving a higher purpose, all the way in his prolific career.
The master of horror-surrealism dominated the sugestion as a form of mind-disturbance, in this almost isolated experience in his filmography, before he retaked the gore and shocking visuals imagery in the diurnal nightmare known as "The Naked Lunch". However, this masterpiece remains as a true portrayal of collapse in a frighteningly believable fashion, and obscure drama about obsession and emotional defects in a disquieting clinical tone, with all the bizarre qualities that turned Cronemberg in a master filmaker, side to side with David Lynch in the description of disturbing, deformed, atmospheric and uncomfortable worlds within human behaviour.
Smart horror for the thinking person to obsess upon May 25, 2008
C. B Collins Jr. (Atlanta, GA United States)
This is one of the most disturbing films I have seen and I recently watched it again after 10 years and found it is just as disturbing now as 10 years ago.
The story is very hard to describe because much of the action is actually mental deterioration of Beverly and Elliot Mantle, twin gynecologists. These men are brilliant and whereas one conducts the clinical research and writes the journal publications, the other markets their work and is the public face of their accomplishments. Beverly sees patients and conducts surgery while Elliot deals with hospital and departmental power struggles. Beverly is more studious, withdrawn, shy; while Elliot is more daring, verbal, outgoing, and assertive. They have developed a pattern whereby Elliot will seduce women and as he tires of her he will hand her off to Beverly who steps in and acts like Elliot.
This pattern breaks down when Beverly diagnoses a famous actress, Claire Niveau, played by Genevieve Bujold, as having three cervixes and as infertile. Elliot beds here first and then Beverly but as a master of emotion and acting, she quickly figures out the scam once she learns they are twins. Claire starts Beverly on a downward projection in that he becomes emotionally attached to her and this creates a distance between he and Elliot. She is also a drug addict and he begins taking all the uppers, downers, all-arounders that she doles out to him until he takes the lead and puts her to shame with the amount of drugs he eats.
As Beverly deteriorates, Elliot tries to keep him sane. Yet as Beverly sobers up, Elliot oddly enough becomes completely out of control and addicted, as if Beverly was actually passing off his addiction to Elliot. As these two personalities dissolve into schizophrenia, addiction, and eventually suicide and murder, the viewer better hold on for a wild ride. Beverly becomes totally out of control during surgery and during gynecological examinations in some frightful scenes. A classic scene is where he has tied off his arm and injected heroin sitting at his office desk and his secretary comes in and calmly resigns saying that she can't take the chaos any more while Beverly is too intoxicated to care.
Jeremy Irons displays absolutely a phenomenal job of acting in this film. This is an outstanding performance, worthy of high praise. He must not only play two characters but also play those same characters as they fall apart and deteriorate. Genevieve Bujold is also superb and convincing.
Many sub-themes bubble about in this film, including exploring the similarity between emotional and chemical dependency. Creepy but challenging, unnerving yet thoughtful, this is a thinking person's horror show.
Survival by death March 16, 2008
Jacques COULARDEAU (OLLIERGUES France)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Cronenberg is the most surprising and shocking film director I know but he always deals with situations that are out of the ordinary and he pushes them to their extreme end or even beyond. In this film he explores the relation between two real twins who have perfectly identical routes in life to the point of becoming schizophrenic and wanting to get rid of the second half of their individual personality, which is the personality of the other. They become obsessed with separating the Siamese twins they are in a way and yet are not. This derangement develops all by itself and they discover that they cannot survive separately and as soon as one does something that the other does not do both of them are disturbed to the point of having to become morbid, death-obsessed, death-seeking, death-hungry and death-thirsty. Death becomes what they physiologically need, each one of them, and both of them, to survive by compensating the difference that has appeared in their relation. All that sounds crazy and is in fact just extremely natural, natural to the extreme. The death instinct, the other side of the libido, takes over when the slightest difference appears between them and is interpreted, unconsciously, subconsciously and even consciously, as a treason of their libido, or libidos, of their libidinous survival instinct. Their survival instinct calls their death instinct up to regulate the disruption and what has to happen happens: one kills the agreeing other and that one let himself die on the body of the one he has killed, the one who has died first. The supreme irony of that film is that these two identical twins are gynecologists by profession and they are giving birth to babies day after day, till they finally and mutually abort their own lives. Amazing. And what's worst in this picture is that it is realistically possible. Cronenberg here reveals the deep fear we feel in front of identical twins, a real vertigo, in Hitchcock's meaning of the word.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Showing reviews 1-5 of 75
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