Episode 16

Crash (1996)

Published on: 21st April, 2023

A story about sex in cars, sex with scars, sex with strangers, and oh yeah... car crashes.

Listen in as me and returning guest Dan buckle up and put the pedal to the metal with this car-wreck of film—in a good way!

Written and directed by David Cronenberg (The Fly, A History of Violence) and based on the book by J.G. Ballard (High-Rise, Empire of the Sun), Roger Ebert called the film "pornographic in form, but not in result," while the Christian Science Monitor said it was "surprisingly dull given the story's outrageous subject." Of course you'd say that CSM...

It tells the story of TV director James Ballard (played brilliantly by James Spader) and his wife, Catherine (a stunning Deborah Kara Unger), as they engage in extramarital affairs in an attempt to reignite their own sex life. One day, James gets into a serious auto accident which brings him into contact with the widow of the man he's killed and an entire subculture of auto-wreck enthusiasts. As he gets drawn into this fetishist underworld, the lines between bodies, steel, sexuality, and brutality, all become blurred.

The film is currently available on Blu-Ray and DVD.

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About the Podcast

Subversive Cinema
The show about the weird, whacky, and downright wrong entries in cinema history.
There are a lot of films out there, so it's only natural that a decent amount of strange content exists. These are the films we examine.

Each week, I sit down with a guest and we take a look a one of these weird, whacky, or downright wrong cinematic entries. Each of them has something about it that makes it special — I call it the "Subversive Sauce" — and that is recipe we try to break down.

Is it scientific? Absolutely not. Will you learn things you didn't know? Maybe. Might you hear about films worth checking out? Most definitely.

Tune in and see what the subversion is all about!
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About your host

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Art Hall

Art started in the podcasting ecosphere back in 2007 with the outrageous, yet short lived, scripted variety show "WBKR: Buckwilde Radio," which claimed listeners from over 20 different countries. After hanging up his headphones and heading west to move to Los Angeles, he kept podcasting in his heart but only made appearances rather than producing or hosting. It only took a global pandemic, boredom, and the pleading from his buddy, Joe, to get back into the mic booth.