This contains spoilers for the premiere episode of Slasher: Flesh & Blood, which is now streaming on Shudder.
The premiere episode of “Slasher: Flesh & Blood” hits the ground running with a high-stakes game of life and death. Patriarch Spencer Galloway (David Cronenberg) gathers his highly dysfunctional family together on a remote island and restarts the annual family one last time, in which they’ll get knocked out of the game one by one. The prize? His entire fortune. What none of them know is that there’s another player on the field, a plague-masked killer out for blood.
That’s not the only significant revelation the premiere brings, either. Spencer lays his entire worth on the line because his life draws near its end. He’s dying of cancer, and once the game officially commences, Spencer decides to meet death on his own terms. A euthanasia cocktail is intravenously connected straight to his heart, allowing a swifter but gentle death. He sees visions of his first wife beckoning him into the afterlife before a masked killer comes into view. Spencer’s hopes for a painless death get dashed by a needle full of acid injected straight into his heart. Bloody Disgusting chatted with Spencer actor David Cronenberg to talk us through the season’s first major death.
Cronenberg breaks down his character’s mindset going into this scene, “[Spencer], being the control freak that he is, wants to control his death as well. He has a logic behind it. Spencer says that he’s seen as his first wife die horribly and in pain and didn’t want that for himself. Spencer knew there was no hope, so he has arranged to die an assisted death, which should be painless and in his control when he’s ready. If anybody’s going ever to have sympathy for him, this character, they would probably have it around that point. But then, of course, there’s a twist, and he realizes at the last minute that his control has been an illusion, and he is not at all in control.“
Spencer locks up in pain as the camera pans down to his chest, the acid bubbling up and dissolving the flesh and tissue to expose his heart. This moment is a blend of effects, including prosthetics, marking a first for the horror director. He explains, “Yes. That was another thing. I’ve often had my actors undergo being cast, having a prosthetic cast made of their faces, of their bodies. James Woods did Videodrome, of course, where there’s some unusual bodily thing, and you have to have a prosthetic part of your body made. For me, it was my head and my chest. You’re covered in silicone for 20 minutes. You can’t breathe, you can’t speak, you can’t see. It’s not for the claustrophobic when you’re getting a cast of your head made. And the chest. Part of what you see in episode one is prosthetics, and then it is, as we say, sweetened by digital effects. It’s a combination of CGI and an actual on-set prosthetic which I wore over my chest.”
While getting cast for on-screen prosthetics was a first for Cronenberg, he did get cast once before for the sake of fine art. “I did do it once, though, for a sculpture of me that was done by a Canadian sculptor. I had done it once before decades ago. The sculptor’s name was Don Bonham, and it’s quite good. It’s like I’m an angel of, not of death, but darkness,” Cronenberg refers to Bonham’s Saint Michael (The Angel of Vengeance).
Cronenberg previously spoke about how pivotal Spencer is to Flesh & Blood, but does the character’s death mean we’ve seen the last of him this season? That’s yet to be determined. But Cronenberg’s joy of playing Spencer in the past and present in the premiere might offer a hint at possibilities. “I played the present-day character with my own gray hair. For playing the character in the past, my hair was dyed, different makeup, different kind of clothing, in an attempt to de-age me a little bit. Not digitally, but just in terms of makeup and posture and so on. That was something that I’ve never done before as an actor. It was a lot of fun and really interesting to see the state of mind that it puts you in as an actor. It’s quite different from just playing a straight present role.”
One thing is for sure; if such a grisly demise of a prominent character kickstarts the season, things are about to get very bloody on “Slasher: Flesh & Blood.”