Dead Ringers (DVD, 1998, Criterion Collection)

This dark, eerie, multi-layered drama may stand as Cronenberg's masterpiece. The film is loosely based on the true case of the Marcus Twins and the novel about them, TWINS by Bari Wood. The Mantle brothers, Beverly and Elliot, are brilliant gynecologists with an upscale Toronto practice. Elliot is charismatic and outgoing, Beverly is shy and hard-working; emotionally inseparable, the brothers function like psychological Siamese twins. They share everything, including women, until Beverly--the weaker of the two--falls in love with a neurotic, drug addicted, actress. Forced to separate from his brother for the first time, Beverly becomes hooked on drugs and suffers a complete mental breakdown. Elliot, unable to exist independently of his twin, soon joins Beverly in a nightmarish descent into madness and self-destruction. Irons plays the brothers (achieved with seamless camera trickery), whose award winning research in gynecology has brought them international acclaim. Wholly original and uniquely disturbing, it could have been made by an alien, providing he had David Cronenberg's healthy disregard for commercial cinema and a unique sense of the human condition.