You’ll never read an article with the term “body horror” in it that doesn’t at some point reference the name of David Cronenberg.

The soft-spoken Canadian director’s name has become synonymous with the subgenre. And although he’s moved on from it (and has moved on from horror in general), during the first decade of his career, he made films that helped to define what we think of as “body horror.”

In this series, we explore Cronenberg’s beginnings, working in the underground film scene of Toronto, up through his first feature, SHIVERS, and up to the film that’s often considered the pinnacle of body horror, 1986’s THE FLY.