Crash
Technology and sexuality meet in a head-on collision in Crash – director David Cronenberg’s controversial adaptation of writer J.G. Ballard’s hugely transgressive 1973 novel starring James Spader and Holly Hunter.
Spader stars as James Ballard, a film producer whose deviant sexual desires are awakened by a near fatal automobile accident with Dr Helen Remington (Hunter). Soon the pair, alongside Ballard’s wife Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger), are drawn into an underground world of car crash fetishism presided over by renegade scientist Vaughan (Elias Koteas). Danger, sex and death become entwined as eroticism and technology join together in a disturbing, deadly union.
Awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival for originality, daring and audacity, Crash remains an incredibly subversive and confrontational piece of cinema – Cronenberg himself describes it as “a dangerous film” – now newly refurbished in a stunning 4K restoration.
Technical Specifications
Supplements
- Brand new audio commentary with film scholar Adrian Martin
- Cronenberg Challenge – new interview with director of photography Peter Suschitzky
- Mechanical Animals – new interview with executive producer Jeremy Thomas
- The Shore Thing – new interview with composer Howard Shore
- License to Drive – new interview with casting director Deirdre Bowen
- 2019 Q&A with David Cronenberg and actor Viggo Mortensen at TIFF
- 1996 Q&A with David Cronenberg and source novel writer J. G. Ballard at the National Film Theatre in London
- Archival "Behind the Scenes" featurette and archival interviews with David Cronenberg, J. G. Ballard and actors James Spader, Holly Hunter, Deborah Kara Unger and Elias Koteas
- Cronenberg: Concrete Cowboy – brand new video essay by Caelum Vatnsdal on Cronenberg’s use of Toronto as a filming location
- Crash! (1971, 18 mins) – short film originally broadcast as part of the BBC’s Review series, starring J.G. Ballard and loosely adapted from his 1970 novel The Atrocity Exhibition
- Two short films inspired by Ballard and the novel Crash: Nightmare Angel (Zoe Beloff, 1986, 33 mins) and Nightmare Angel (Simon Barker and Jason Wood, 2016, 14 mins)
- Two Cronenberg short films: The Nest (2013, 10 mins) and At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World (2007, 4 mins)
- Original trailer (Canadian)
- American NC-17 trailer
- Fully illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Vanessa Morgan and Araceli Molina, alongside a reprinted excerpt from Cronenberg on Cronenberg
- Fold-out double-sided poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork
- Limited edition packaging with reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx