5. Elliot And Beverly Mantle - Dead Ringers (1998)
David Cronenberg deals out the demented doctors in this macabre movie. There are two of them - Elliot and Beverly Mantle - two highly successful private gynaecologists who happen to be codependent. An actress called Claire comes to the clinic for investigations into her infertility. She has an unusual uterus malformation which will make it almost impossible for her to conceive. The brothers become intoxicated by her and she has affairs with both of them. This leads to a downward spiral of drug and alcohol addiction for the brothers, as well as the commissioning of a set of stainless steel operating tools for performing surgery on 'mutant' women. Seriously, the sight of these implements would deter you from accepting a prescription for aspirin by these two nutters, let alone open your legs for a gynaecological procedure. Jeremy Irons plays the two twins to perfection - simultaneously making them two unique people but then blurring the lines between their personalities as they go mad. The gynaecological aspects of film allow Cronenberg to adequately indulge his obsession with body horror. But the most interesting aspect of the film is the twins' relationship and how well Jeremy Irons interprets it. The twins are so much like each other but also so different - they have a push/pull relationship in which although they are not individually like each other in the personality stakes, they are skilled in swapping places in surgery, in sex, in writing research papers. They can take on each other's mantle with ease. But Beverly falls in love with Claire and doesn't want to share her with Elliot. This proposed separation of the twins (who had hitherto always shared women) provokes their decline which is horrible to watch - you are half in awe and half in revulsion as Cronenberg unrolls his film. There is a very bleak and grim tone to the film. It is an uncomfortable, yet compelling piece of expert cinema featuring two dodgy doctors you would never want to come into contact with - even if you were a 'mutant' woman and needed a gynaecologist immediately. No way, José.