Before They Were Stars: David Cronenberg Directs “Secret Weapons”

David Cronenberg’s feature-film directorial debut came in 1975 when he made the horror flick, Shivers, but by then, he already had a plethora of short films under his belt. One of his most obscure projects was directing an episode of a Canadian anthology series called Programme X, which aired on CBC in the early seventies. Cronenberg’s episode was entitled Secret Weapons, an historically accurate portrayal of a post-apocalyptic America in 1977, where a civil war is taking place and a drug has been developed that can alter your genetics and enhance your fighting skills. Like many of Cronenberg’s works, this story examines the primal fear of losing complete control over your own body.