Dead Ringers (1988)

Dead Ringers (1988, Can./US)

Co-writer/director David Cronenberg's dramatic psychological horror-thriller, with a fictionalized script by Cronenberg and co-writer Norman Snider, was inspired by Bari Wood's and Jack Geasland's 1977 novel "Twins" - about two real-life identical brothers Drs. Stewart and Cyril Marcus. In the bizarre true-life version of the twins, the two 45 year-old brothers were found dead (within four days of each other) in mid-1975 in separate areas of Cyril's shared NYC apartment. Toxology tests were conducted but were inconclusive (regarding barbiturate overdoses or withdrawal), since no traces of alcohol, barbiturates, narcotics or depressants were discovered in their systems. A major difference between the film and the source material was that the twins were not portrayed as homosexuals in the film.

Jeremy Irons skillfully portrayed both of the inseparable twins Elliot and Beverly Mantle, with cinematographer Peter Suschitzky employing over a dozen shots using split-screen technology (and innovative motion-control photography) for the scenes in which the similar-looking twins appeared in the frame together. Jeremy Irons was not nominated for Best Actor for his incredible performance, possibly because the film was considered disturbing and creepy.

The film's character study was a tale of identity confusion and deception between two identical twins who were inextricably linked together, but who early on subtly revealed signs that they were both on the verge of psychological instability. The film's tagline was:

Two bodies. Two minds. One soul.

They represented one 'conjoined' personality that was split between two people - they were actually two incomplete halves, both of which were not a complete fulfilled whole. Problematically, they had surprisingly different personalities and temperaments. The older twin Elliot was the outgoing, confident ladies' man type, while Bev was more introverted, studious, and dedicated to research. The two extreme co-dependents shared the same occupation, the same apartment, and the same interests. The two twins were gynecologists running a fertility clinic practice together in Toronto, Canada.

In the creepy, fascinating and unsettling film, the more outgoing twin brother grotesquely 'shared' a patient love-interest (a visiting film actress) with his less aggressive younger brother. A strange triangular love affair soon developed, especially after the victimized female discovered the deception, and as a result, the symbiotic relationship between the twins began to deteriorate. There were other factors including prescription drug-addiction, leading to downward spiraling and psychological unraveling - a total descent into madness.

It was a transitional film for Cronenberg, from his earlier "signature" body-horror films, including Shivers (1975) , Rabid (1977) , The Brood (1979), Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983), and The Fly (1986) , to more traditional horror films. The film was only a moderate success - on a budget of about 13ドル million, its revenues were 8ドル million (domestic), and only 14ドル million (worldwide).

• the opening title screens were presented on a scarlet colored blood-red background, with wood-cut drawings and engravings of medieval medical instruments (sharp hooks, forceps, scalpels, and specula), plus B/W sketches of the open wombs of pregnant women, reproductive organs, and various pictures of twins
• in suburban Toronto, 1954, based upon the first scene's subtitle, two 9 year-old geeky identical twin school-boys Elliot ("Elly") and Beverly ("Bev") Mantle (Jonathan and Nicholas Haley) casually discussed their newfound (and naive) discoveries about sex, chatting about sexless underwater fertilization; they lewdly and non-chalantly asked their young female neighbor Raffaella (Marsha Moreau) next door: "Will you have sex with us in our bathtub? It's an experiment"; their curiosity led to more female anatomy experimention upon a clear plastic human model with detachable internal organs

• in Cambridge, Massachusetts 1967, 13 years later, the two were medical students learning to perform gynecological exams on cadavers in a laboratory; as undergraduates, the extroverted Elliot accepted acclaim for inventing a device known as "The Mantle Retractor," although his brother Bev had actually invented it; the introverted Bev (who hadn't attended the award ceremony) congratulated his brother Elliot for receiving the honor; when Bev was told: "You should've been there," Bev meaningfully responded: "I was"
• in Toronto, Canada 1988, 21 years later, the two brothers (as twin gynecologists) had set up a successful clinical practice (specializing in fertility issues) known as the Mantle Fertility Clinic

• Beverly, the more reserved, bookish (usually with glasses), studious and shy brother of the two (although the more talented as a researcher and doctor), was in an examination room with a female patient - a famous French-Canadian movie actress named Claire Niveau (Geneviève Bujold) who was briefly in town to shoot a mini-series; at 7:20 pm, she was visiting the Clinic to discover why she was having issues with becoming pregnant; without telling the patient specifically, Bev realized that she had an unusual physical abnormality: ("There are a couple of extra ones that shouldn't be")
• Bev hurriedly notified his more outgoing and confident brother Elliot of his findings in another room - he diagnosed Claire as being "trifurcate" (in possession of three cervixes) and incapable of having children; Elliot entered the exam room, pretending to be the same doctor, and 're-examined' her uterus area; he proclaimed it "fantastic" - she reacted: "I've never had anybody say that about the inside of my body before"; he discussed how he felt about inner beauty: "Surely you've heard of inner beauty? I've often thought there should be beauty contests for the insides of bodies...Why don't we have standards of beauty for the entire human body, inside and out?"
• afterwards at a late dinner with Claire and her agent Leo (Nick Nichols), Elliot explained her full diagnosis:
  • "Well, it has three doorways. Three cervixes leading into three separate compartments in your uterus. That is fabulously rare"
• Claire admitted to having only one or two very weak periods each year; Elliot told her that having triplets was a physical impossibility
• meanwhile the same evening, Beverly had taken Elliot's place for a fund-raising dinner engagement with a 'Contessa' ("the chairman's wife") to secure a financial grant, allowing ladies' man Elliot to seductively wine and dine with Claire (the two had sex together off-screen)
• the obsessively-bonded brothers shared an apartment together, and often also shared responsibilities, switched appointments, or substituted for each other, without patients and other acquaintances being aware of their frequent exchanges due to their indistinguishable similar looks
• after returning home late after being with Claire, Elliot suggested and firmly urged that his reluctant and more passive brother Bev fill in for his scheduled lunch date with Claire the next day, while Elliot would remain at the clinic to see Bev's patients:
  • "I want you to go. Bev. You've got to try the movie star. She's unbelievable. Don't worry, you'll be all right. Just do me"
• the less sexually-aggressive Bev met with Claire the next day, who was still glowing about her previous night's tryst with Bev's twin Elliot: "What did you do to me last night? I'm still vibrating all over"; she was unaware that Bev was substituting for his brother Elliot; she asked about her prognosis, and he confirmed that she couldn't bear children, even though she didn't use contraceptive devices, was very promiscuous, and was taking hormone injections; the masochistic-minded Claire suggestively and playfully told him that she had been "bad" and needed to be punished before having sex with him
• Bev returned to the clinic mid-day, where Elliot was having his secretary Danuta (Barbara Gordon) deal with a traumatized patient, and thankful that Bev had come back: ("I'm just no good with the serious ones"); Bev admitted to Elliot that he hadn't completely fulfilled Claire's masochistic wishes for some S&M sex-play: "I'm just no good with the frivolous ones"; Elliot laughed: "All she wanted was a little slap on the arse, Bev...She's an actress, Bev, she's a flake. She plays games all the time. You never know who she really is"; Elliot reminded Bev of their strange, unhealthy sexual fantasy:
  • "If we didn't share women, you'd still be a virgin....You'd never get laid on your own...The beauty of our business is you don't have to get out to meet beautiful women"
• Bev complained to his pushy, solicitous brother Elliot that their scheme wasn't "ethical," implying that Elliot was dismissive of meaningful human relationships; it was the beginning of the development of a solid wedge between the two inter-dependent brothers; to pressure Bev to comply, Elliot proposed returning to Claire (while pretending to be Bev) to do "terrible things" to her; in the next scene, Bev had taken up the challenge; he was making love to Claire (with both of her arms restrained and tied back with latex medical tubes and clamps); she moaned with ecstasy: "Doctor, you're cured me!", but then painfully confessed that she was incomplete and infertile: ("I'll really never have been a woman at all. Just a girl"); she begged: "Please don't tell anybody about me. Please don't tell. I'm so vulnerable. I'm slashed open"); Bev asked rhetorically: "Who would I tell?"
• upon his return home, Bev clammed up when asked about any "yummy detail" about his sexual encounter by his brother Elliot; for the first time in their lives, a rift was developing, and Bev was against sharing: "I don't want to tell you about it. I want to keep it for myself"; Elliot was angered: "You haven't f--ked Claire Niveau until you tell me about it," prompting Bev to answer: "Then I haven't f--ked Claire Niveau"
• during another encounter with Claire, Bev learned that she was taking dosages of 'dextroamphetamine resin' (or uppers) to treat short-term obesity, with long-term effects including sleeplessness, rapid heartbeat, and euphoria; she also described having "psychosexual pain"; as the two brothers discussed Claire's pill-taking, Bev became concerned that Elliot was also prescribing Butazamine for her to improve their sex; tensions rose between the brothers when Elliot suggested that she was using them: "I've got her number. This lady's hustling us for drugs...I think we should drop her, Bev"; Bev wildly counter-manded: "You drop her!"; Elliot acknowledged their disagreement: "This is unknown territory we're moving into"
• after Claire heard Bev off-handedly mention that he had a brother, she teasingly asked about his feminine name: "Why did your Mom give you a woman's name, I wonder?...Does your brother have a woman's name, too?"; Beverly instantly lashed out and lost his temper:
  • "What are you trying to suggest? That I'm gay or something? My mother wanted girls. What the f--k is this bulls--t psychoanalysis!"
• the suspicious Claire attempted to judiciously question and suggest that Bev was psychologically unstable with two subtle but different personality types: "You're subtly schizophrenic or something"; she also said that she liked him, but sometimes he was only just "an amusing lay" for her; to calm his nerves, he reacted by feeding them each a Butazamine pill - both of them were abusing the sex-enhancement drug
• at lunch with her friend Laura (Shirley Douglas), Claire realized that her intuition had been semi-accurate, but she was still shocked and upset when asked which identical-looking Mantle brother (Beverly or Elliot) she was sleeping with; thus, she learned that Bev was a twin:
  • "Of course there are two of them. They're twins, dear, identical twins! My dear, you've gone absolutely pale. Have I said something?"

• after learning of the deception, the next time Claire was with Bev, she confronted him about how he had lied to her about not having any close links with his brother; she now knew that the two brothers were inseparable - the two lived in the same apartment and were actually very "close" to each other; she demanded to meet his brother: "I have to meet him...I want to know everything about you...I want to see you two together"; the agitated Beverly stuttered out excuses ("It's very difficult"), told her that they were not psychologically identical, and refused to cooperate, but then changed his mind about a confrontation
• in a restaurant, Claire awkwardly met with the two brothers (Elliot wore a red tie, while Bev had on a dark-colored tie) seated at the same table; she tried to decipher if there were any true differences between them, besides a few millimeters in height; she turned "feisty" and insultingly accused the "smarmy" Elliot of sexually taking advantage of her and setting her up with his shy brother: "Beverly's the sweet one, and you're the s--t. Am I right?"; she was brutally forthright and demanded the same: "You can be honest with me. After all, I am laying both of you, aren't l?"; Elliot reacted by impuning her: "I was the one who f--ked you first, but I gave you to my baby brother because you weren't very good"
• when Beverly sought to soften his brother's insult, Claire tossed a glass of water into his face, and then told the two "creepy" doctors that what they had done was extremely "disgusting"; after Claire stormed off, Elliot chuckled and appeared amused, but Beverly was very emotionally sad and upset, and hoped to sort things out - without his brother's help
• at an awards ceremony, Dr. Elliot Mantle was introduced and received recognition from his peers for the work of the two of them; as Elliot spoke from the podium to a congratulatory audience, the drunken Beverly stumbled in, interrupted the proceedings, made his uneasy way to the platform, and falsely claimed that the two had switched places:
  • "There's been a fraud perpetrated here tonight. The whole thing's a fraud! He's Beverly and I'm Elliot!"
• at the podium, Beverly resentfully continued and blamed Elliot for taking credit for his work:
  • "A lot of you are probably wondering how we divide the work. Well, it's like this. I slave over the hot snatches, and Elliot makes the speeches! I do everything for those bimbos, except take them home and stick it in them!"
• the next day, Elliot told his "baby brother" Beverly that he had been offered the associate professorship at the hospital, implying that most of the clinic work would now fall on Beverly; by this time, Beverly was precariously addicted to "dex" pills - amphetamine uppers
• red-haired Cary (Heidi von Palleske), Elliot's current 'girlfriend,' stood naked under a long black robe in the Mantle's bathroom, intentionally trying to entice Bev to become interested in her
• Bev met with Claire to apologize for their predicament: ("My brother and I have always shared everything"); Claire asked if Elliot might become jealous of him: ("Is he worried I'll steal you away from him?"), and then told Bev that he might not understand the psychosexual dynamic between him and his brother: ("I think you two have never come to terms with the way it really does work between you")

• after having sex together in Claire's place (during re-shoots), in the middle of the night, Bev experienced a frightening nightmare of Claire's suggested challenge to separate the two twins ("I'll just separate you"); she was in the same bed with both twins, and suddenly began gnawing at the connective tissue between them; startled, Bev woke up from his shocking dream in bed next to Claire; they both ingested a pill
• during his latest speaking engagement tour, during one evening, Elliot was visited by two identical twin call girls, identified as Escort Twins Mimsy and Coral (Jill and Jacqueline Hennessy); during sex, to know which one was which, he requested that Coral call him Elly and Mimsy call him Bev
• meanwhile, Bev was experiencing a severe drug-addiction problem, with symptoms including anxiety and depression; he was having problems eating, and wanted to cancel his clinic's appointments for the day; he became more nervous when told that Elliot had returned from his tour, and that Claire was meeting with her agent Leo to discuss contract negotiations for another film in Georgia; Elliot located Claire on a local movie set in a make-up trailer, where she expressed worry about leaving Beverly alone after she would be leaving to work on another film for 10 weeks; it really disturbed Elliot that Claire admitted to him that she openly cared more for Beverly than for him
• during Claire's absence, a delusional Bev - dysfunctional in the middle of his work-day in the office - called the "Niveau suite" and spoke to Claire's male, gay secretary Birchall (Damir Andrei); believing him to be Claire's new lover, Bev claimed to be her gynecologist, and asked "Have you examined her carefully yet?"; he then claimed he had diagnosed her as a "trifurcate" - a "mutation" due to abnormal genitalia; Bev instructed the stunned man to see for himself (Birchall reacted by hanging up!):
  • "Carefully lubricate the two prime fingers of your right hand, and insert them into Claire Niveau's vagina! Instead of feeling one cervical head, you will feel three. Basically this means that you have been f--king a mutant!"
• in their office, the increasingly-confused Bev told his brother that Claire was having an affair with a new lover: ("She's unfaithful to me, Elly"), and was worried that Elliot was behind Claire's betrayal; Bev was crazed and weeping: "I'm in love with her! I have to take it seriously"; Elliot was reassuring: "It can't be love if it does this to you, can it?"

• in the evening, in Bev's presence in their apartment, Elliot danced sensually with his new girlfriend Cary, to the tune of "In the Still of the Night" sung by The Five Satins; Elliot encouraged Cary to seduce Bev to join them - and she danced closely with him and they became a threesome, but then Bev collapsed; Elliot pushed Cary away as she administrated CPR, and took over: "Don't touch him, he's my brother!"; Bev required hospitalization
• Elliot was worried that if Bev's blood tests revealed drug abuse, they would lose their medical licenses and would be "finished"; Elliot proposed detoxing Bev by supervising him and locking him up in the clinic to have him dry out; although Elliot reassured Bev that he wouldn't have drug issues himself: ("Don't worry about me. I'm not you"), Elliot's own drug abuse also began to intensify
• during Bev's insensitive examination of a middle-aged patient named Mrs. Bookman (Miriam Newhouse) in stirrups, she complained of pain when he inserted a bizarre-looking "solid gold Mantle retractor" into her; afterwards, Elliot criticized Bev for using the device internally since it was only to be used for surgical retraction; Bev complained:
  • "There's nothing the matter with the instrument! It's the body! The woman's body was all wrong!"
• Bev proceeded to commission a metalsmith artist Anders Wolleck (Stephen Lack) to create or cast 3-D surgical steel prototypes of his own designs of gynecological medical instruments, to be used to treat his "mutant" patients; Wolleck suggested more artistic uses for the surgical steel: "Mutant women? That's a great theme for a show"
• the Mantle Clinic was beginning to lose mistreated customers who were transferring their records to other facilities; the Clinic's secretary Danuta burst into Bev's office to give her notice about quitting: ("I won't work under these conditions"), and caught Bev shooting up into his arm

• during a chaotic surgical procedure in a hospital using his newly-constructed, grotesque metal instruments (more like torture-devices), Bev began to faint in his drug-induced haze and asked: "I need something to slow everything down"; he lunged onto the patient and began to inhale from her gas mask, as an assistant called out: "Oh, my God, she's bleeding!"; the medical team assisting Bev had to restrain him in order to save the seriously-injured woman
• although Elliot tried to cover up for his brother's unraveling and malpractice by impersonating his brother and apologizing for their "radical techniques", a 3-person hospital board wasn't persuaded: ("They didn't buy it, Bev. I think they knew it was me. They said we could've killed her"); both brothers' hospital privileges were suspended, due acc. to Elliot, to their radical "surgical instruments...evidence of a disturbed mind"; the increasingly-insane Bev placed the blame elsewhere, and was convinced that his most recent patients required new instruments due to their strange interiors: ("Their insides, they're deformed"), and he was proactively taking appropriate measures with new surgical tools: ("I had to deal with it somehow! Radical technology was required"); to calm his brother and detox him, Elliot prescribed and over-medicated Bev with dosages of pills, and locked his brother inside the clinic
• Bev mused about the original conjoined Siamese twins Chang and Eng (representative of Elliot and Bev respectively) - in the middle of the night, Eng woke up next to his brother who had died of a stroke, and promptly died of fright in the bed
• Cary warned Elliot that their Clinic practice was also in jeopardy, as she watched him taking more pills and observed: "It's getting hard to tell the two of you apart"; Elliot's goal appeared to be to "synchronize" himself to his brother's addiction as a way to restore their twin-ship equilibrium and equalize their suffocating dependency on each other, but he was also self-destructing; Cary suggested that Elliot separate himself from his brother's disgraced condition: "You haven't done anything wrong. Look, your reputation's separate from Bev's. You've still got a career...You've got to stay away from him now....for God's sakes, Elliot, you've got to cut yourself loose"; but Elliot strenuously disagreed and argued that his success was solely dependent upon Bev's research:
  • "My brother's research is the basis of my career. I need him. Besides, the truth is, nobody can tell us apart. We are perceived as one person. If Bev goes down the tubes, I go with him. I've got to get him back.... Whatever's in his bloodstream goes directly into mine...Beverly and I just have to get synchronized. Once we're synchronized, it'll be easy."
• Claire returned from her film shoot, phoned Bev (still locked inside the Clinic), and asked to see him right away; she also cleared up the phone call-incident with Birchall: ("He's defiantly gay and you managed to gross him out completely"); Bev was able to extricate himself from the locked Clinic by contacting the floor manager Mr. Virdo; on the street, he vomited and then viewed a front-window exhibit of Wolleck's artistic medical implements - labeled: "GYNAECOLOGICAL INSTRUMENTS FOR OPERATING ON MUTANT WOMEN"; he entered and attempted to steal some of the devices ("They're mine") and fought off an Art Gallery Lady (Denise McLeod)
• at Claire's place, as Bev sweated profusely, became hyperactive and begged, she refused to fill a Seconal prescription he wrote out for himself; Bev told her he was worried that Elliot was becoming a "dangerous" drug addict; a week later, after becoming sober (and concerned about his twin), Claire asked about the unusual devices he had in his pockets; Bev replied - prophetically: "They're for separating Siamese twins"; as he left, Claire feared that he would never return: "Your brother won't let you come back"
• Bev returned to the Clinic and found the place trashed; he discovered a clothed Elliot seated under a steaming hot shower - despondent, despairing, degraded and totally wasted; the twins had interchangeably switched places - Elliot was now in need of Bev's care; the drugged twins vowed to end their drug-habits on Monday after a wild weekend: ("On Monday, we kick, right?"); they regressed to childhood, and celebrated their mock birth-day with two big handfuls of cake, ice cream (non-existent because "Mummy forgot to buy it") and a shared bottle of orange pop

• to end their suffocating dependency and to be reborn as two individuals to live entirely separate lives, Bev announced to Elliot, stretched out on a table: "We are about to separate the Siamese twins"; in a delirious, drug-induced, pain-relieving stupor, Elliot (acting as Chang) complied and let Bev (acting as Eng) surgically cut into his abdomen with one of Wolleck's clawed-like instruments; as blood trickled down his side, Elliot noticed Bev in tears, and asked: "Why are you crying?"; Bev replied: "Separation can be a terrifying thing"; Elliot reassured Bev: "Don't worry, baby brother, we'll always, we'll always be together"; with the best of self-sacrificial intentions, he felt he would be living on through Beverly

• in the depressing, tragic and melancholy ending, the next morning, Beverly awakened and turned toward his brother Elliot to tell him of his "horrible dream" - calling out and whimpering repeatedly: "Elly!" - he realized he had murdered his brother Elliot; devastated, he cleaned up, packed some clothes, left the Clinic, and called Claire on a pay phone; when she asked: "Hello? Who is this?" (the film's last line of dialogue) Beverly didn't respond; he hung up and walked off, returned to the Clinic, and silently collapsed (of a suicidal drug overdose?) over the body of his dead twin - similarly posed as Michelangelo's Pietà