Product Details

• Actors: James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Deborah Kara Unger, Rosanna Arquette
• Directors: David Cronenberg
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NC-17
• Studio: New Line Home Video
• DVD Release Date: November 17, 1998
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (195 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305161968
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,155 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Crash" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Adapted from the controversial novel by J.G. Ballard, Crash will either repel or amaze you, with little or no room for a neutral reaction. The film is perfectly matched to the artistic and intellectual proclivities of director David Cronenberg, who has used the inspiration of Ballard's novel to create what critic Roger Ebert has described as "a dissection of the mechanics of pornography." Filmed with a metallic color scheme and a dominant tone of emotional detachment, the story focuses on a close-knit group of people who have developed a sexual fetish around the collision of automobiles. They use cars as a tool of arousal, in which orgasm is directly connected to death-defying temptations of fate at high speeds. Ballard wrote his book to illustrate the connections between sex and technology--the ultimate postmodern melding of flesh and machine--and Cronenberg takes this theme to the final frontier of sexual expression. Holly Hunter, James Spader, and Deborah Unger are utterly fearless in roles that few actors would dare to play, and their surrender to Cronenberg's vision makes Crash an utterly unique and challenging film experience. It's rated NC-17, so don't say you weren't warned! --Jeff Shannon

Product Description

A psycho-sexual journey into oblivion in this controversial film from acclaimed director David Cronenberg. James Spader is a bored film director who explores new realms after a near-fatal car accident introduces him to a world of sexually obsessed car cra

DVD Features:
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Production Notes
Theatrical Trailer

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 72 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Etiology of Sexual Arousal: Edge of Life Terror October 19, 2005

By Grady Harp HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

David Cronenberg takes chances and his pushing the edge of cinematic art is what makes his films so interesting. JG Ballard's controversial novel CRASH seemed an unlikely prospect for a film, so dark were its explorations of the outer zones of excitation and their relationship to near-death events. But Cronenberg worked through making Ballard's visions visual and his screenplay based on Ballard's book is more about interior dialogue and visceral sexual encounters as they relate to trauma.

James Ballard (James Spader) is a successful TV director who spends as much time as a lothario as he does making film. He is married to Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger) whose own sexuality leads her into stray paths. The two seem to connect physically but the fire is diminishing: they both concur that encounters with other partners enhance their sexual experiences. James is in a car accident and survives with a broken leg and scars, but the other car's male driver was killed and his surviving female companion Helen Remington (Holly Hunter) is hospitalized with James. While in the hospital both encounter a strange, scarred, limping male photographer Vaughn (Elias Koteas) who takes photos of the scars and trauma results of both James and Helen. Catherine visits James in the hospital and seems to find excitement in the scars and orthopedic paraphernalia binding her husband.

Once James is released from the hospital he is strangely drawn to the car he wrecked and finds Helen in the same mindset. The two move into physical attraction as well as an emotional attraction to Vaughn. Vaughn is obsessed with auto accidents, having been in many, and he stages famous car accidents (James Dean, Jayne Mansfield, etc) for a captive audience - which includes James, Helen, and Catherine. Vaughn insidiously draws the three into his obsession, sharing his 'actors' and fellow travelers - including Gabrielle (Rosanna Arquette - with both legs in orthopedic mechanisms), Colin and Vera Seagrave (Peter MacNeill and Cheryl Swarts) and those who help him stage his 'accidents'. Vaughn explains that he is exploring how to achieve that sensation of terror one feels during a car crash and equate it with orgasm. The odd group of folks all sexually interact with abandon: the crashed car becomes the bedchamber for bizarre sexual acting out. And how this all plays out in the end is the part of the film that simply must be seen to feel the experience.

This is clearly NOT a movie for everyone. The CD contains both the NC and the R rated version: I watched the NC version and while it is graphic and focused on sex it is oddly uninvolving emotionally - we care little about the people we meet. Perhaps part of the story here is that with the progressively dehumanization of man in his symbiotic relationship with machines, relating to fellow humans on anything except the sensual gratification is something we are losing. That is the kind of powerful statement Cronenberg shows us with these passionate yet cold people. The cast is exceptional, especially Koteas whose warped character is wholly three-dimensional as opposed to the oddly uninvolved characters Spader, Unger, and Hunter portray. A dizzying experience! Grady Harp, October 05

49 of 53 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent mainstream smut June 11, 2003

By Peter Throckmorton

Format:DVD

"Censors tend to do what only psychotics do... they confuse reality with illusion...I don't have a moral plan. I'm a Canadian." These are the words of visionary film maker, David Cronenberg, director of Videodrome, The Fly, Naked Lunch, Rabid and Dead Ringers. Here we're going to examine his film 'Crash', from the 1973 novel from J.G. Ballard. Crash debuted at Cannes in 1996, and won many awards over the next year or so.

Although not XXX smut, this film is one of the most eerily erotic movies of the past decade. The eroticism starts from the very first scene, Deborah Kara Unger standing in front of a small airplane in a hanger. The way she purposefully takes her breast out of her bra, leans over and allows the nipple to kiss the cool metal of the plane, and then receives a man, identity unseen, entering her from the rear bent over the machine... in many ways the subtle sensualities set the viewer's mind set to observe the rest of the movie.

Cut to a scene of James Spader, shagging the camera girl in the back room of a studio set. On arrival home, Unger and Spader casually and respectfully debrief each other - more worshipful listening than interrogation. Shortly, however, the violence central to the film arrives, with Spader driving alone, distracted, and swerving off the road and head on into a car. He is injured and thrown into shock - the other driver is ejected and shot like a rocket headfirst through Spader's windshield, dead. Looking up, Spader notices the passenger of the other car, Holly Hunter, inadvertently revealing a breast as she tries to free herself from her seat belt. The juxtapositions continue.

Thrown together by the accident of machine and fate, Hunter and Spader meet again in the hospital, and yet again - more fatefully - at the impound yard. Both arriving as if compelled, they find themselves driving together in a car identical to the one Spader crashed, they nearly crash again, and go immediately by almost unspoken simultaneous agreement to a public garage where they make love within the car.

An odd man who investigates and recreates famous automobile crashes, played by Elias Koteas, introduces Spader & Hunter to an esoteric private club. They recreate the death crash of James Dean's Porche ... same car, same lack of seat belt, all the details, regardless of the risk to the recreators. We also meet Rosanna Arquette, large metallic braces covering her black lace outfits, crippled and yet embracing her own sexuality fully. And we move on, slipping down a slope, into every combination of sexual encounter between the girls, the boys, the girls and boys, all intertwined with the violence of the ultimate urban technology. Gender soon means less than the context of the paraphilia. And curiously, most of the sex is rear entry, not facing each other, distanced as it is coupled.

In your heart of hearts, you'll realize at some point in this film that there is something about your own sexuality, something whether deeply hidden or not, that is every bit as potentially pathological as these folks. The difference in many cases is simply whether or not it interferes with your life or if you can incorporate it into your accepted fetishes and continue on with job, family, and all.

``It's a dangerous film in many ways,'' Cronenberg said. ``Everyone in the film is both afraid of and excited by the challenge of exploring society's fascination and our personal fascination with technology and sexuality.'' Critics split widely on the film internationally, with Roger Ebert stating "It left me wishing somebody would take this much effort to make a film about the kinds of things that turn ME on."

I recommend it. Take a chance, and see how much you can identify with yourself. You don't have to tell anyone what you decide.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow! Trully Unforgettable. July 17, 2004

By pizowell

Format:DVD

Soon after a head on car crash James Ballard (Spader) is introduced to a world of fetishists who find arousal in mixing raw sexuality, the mangling of human bodies, and the twisted steel of a fresh auto accident. Their fetish soon becomes a suicidal obsession with death and the ultimate pleasure.

Based on the novel by J. G. Ballard, Crash was one of most controversial movies of the 1990's. Exploring the psyche of those who extract pleasure through risk and eroticism through automobile accidents. James and Catherine Ballard are a married couple whose sex life has been reduced to recounting tales of mutual infidelity to turn each other on. James is eventually involved in a car accident that leaves one man dead. After his long rehab he meets the other survivor of the crash Helen (Hunter). They soon realize that the accident was the biggest turn on of their lives. Helen introduces James to a group, led by Vaughn (Koteas) who share in their fetish. To up the ante the group engage in more and more dangerous accidents to heighten their own arousal.  

Anyone familiar with director David Cronenberg's work should know what to expect from this movie, only here it seems that Cronenberg has license to go as far as possible with the message he was trying to get across about the human animal and our twisted psyche when it comes to what we find erotic. His experiment with Crash was met with much controversy at the time of it's initial release in 1996. While many will find the film repulsive and/or sick, I happen to find it a rather genius character study. A film that succeeds in challenging the viewer by showing them a different side of the human spirit and hopefully pointing out their own sick little perversions. One thing is for sure, whether or not you "like" the movie you have to admire the balls it took to make such an anti-Hollywood film that went against everything "politically correct." What's sad is that a challenging, though provoking film like Crash couldn't be made today and if it were the people making it would most likely be jailed. 
 
Cronenberg injects the film with a dreamy, trance-like quality that sucked me in from second one. That along with the low key score created a menacing atmosphere. The acting from the always brilliant James Spader is top-notch as always. Elias Koteas is one of the most underrated actors out there, he's brilliant here as well. Holly Hunter and the lovely Deborah Unger are also strong in supporting roles. This is what happens when a great script (written by Cronenberg), a great director, and great actors merge to create a truly original and daring film.

Much can be said about Crash, but the bottom line is: GO SEE IT! Rent the NC-17 version if your video store has it and explore this movie with an open mind. Whether you love it or hate it, Crash will challenge, make you think, and hopefully enlighten. Now days when crap films are recycled over and over like a commercially friendly PG-13 pop can, it was great to see a film that didn't treat the viewer like an idiot. Check it out!