Fantasias of fear with David Cronenberg

Unlike his fellow creepmeister Alfred Hitchcock, director David Cronenberg doesn't do self-referential cameos in his films. He made an exception in "The Fly," however, appearing as an ob-gyn doctor in his heroine's nightmare, delivering her monstrous maggot-child. It's spot-on casting. In his cool, highbrow horror films, Cronenberg displays a clinical interest in disfigured human bodies and delusional minds. He spills the resulting imagery onscreen in fantasias of vivid, kinky dread.

To choose one example from a perverse 35-year career, 1975's "Shivers" featured leech-like parasites crawling around beneath people's skin. It originated the bio-horror notion of a monster bursting out of you, a concept "Alien" skillfully popularized a couple of years later.

From "Crash," with its cult of sexual deviates titillated by auto wrecks, to "Dead Ringers," starring Jeremy Irons as twin drug-addicted gynecologists, Cronenberg's motifs are disturbing, infectious and intense. Having gotten into your mind, his work echoes there like an unforgettable piece of music.

Cronenberg is the ideal moviemaker for a season of lengthening shadows and grasping, clawlike branches. Trylon Microcinema, the cozy little Minneapolis art house, offers a monthlong series of early, edgy films made before Cronenberg's recent mainstream hits "A History of Violence" and "Eastern Promises." A word to the wise: Trylon seats just 50 and is subject to quick sellouts.

"VIDEODROME" (1983)

7 & 8:50 p.m. today-Saturday

Decades before cyberculture arrived, Cronenberg explored a world of addictive cable TV and human bodies physically melded to technology. James Woods stars as a sleazeball TV programmer who discovers a ratings winner with a torture channel broadcasting from parts unknown. Blondie's Deborah Harry appears as a therapist with disturbing masochistic drives. Sick, twisted and incoherent, but chilling.

"SCANNERS" (1981)

7 & 9:10 p.m. Oct. 16-17

Psychic power is a curse and a weapon in this telekinetic thriller best known for its infamous set pieces of exploding skulls. An aloof doctor (Patrick McGoohan) treats a homeless young "scanner" overwhelmed by the voices in his head. The physician is only helping him so he can be used to halt a messianic telepath waging war on the "normals." Michael Ironside makes the renegade scanner a creature of transcendent evil.

"THE BROOD" (1979)

7 & 9 p.m. Oct. 23-24

Divorce and child abuse breed monsters, warns this weird essay in psychological horror, filmed after Cronenberg's own messy breakup. Samantha Eggar stars as Nola, a patient at a clinic specializing in experimental treatments for destructive rage. The head psychiatrist (Oliver Reed) aims to channel her fury through physical manifestations. As her ex-husband works to protect their daughter and discover more about her treatment, a pack of murderous dwarflike children begin killing the targets of Nola's hatred. The husband takes matters into his own hands; a disturbing conclusion implies that each generation passes emotional violence to the next.

"THE FLY" (1986)

7 & 9 p.m. Oct. 30-31

Cronenberg just announced plans to remake his sci-fi/horror classic, but it's hard to see how he could improve on it. Jeff Goldblum is touching as a teleportation researcher infatuated with business reporter Geena Davis. He transports himself to impress her, unaware that he had housefly DNA inserted in his genome. At first it's a buzz. He's stronger, lustier, more aggressive. Then he begins sprouting insectoid hairs and drooling digestive acid. In the '80s the film was received as an AIDS allegory, but it's an equally compelling metaphor for the inevitable physical deterioration and decay of aging.