Crash at 25: Sick and depraved or a serious piece of art cinema?

David Cronenberg’s JG Ballard adaptation about the erotic fascination with car crashes is about to be re-released, but the controversy that once accompanied it has all but vanished, says Geoffrey Macnab

James Spader and Holly Hunter in ‘Crash’ in 1996 (Rex)

In the years after its release, the Canadian director David Cronenberg used to look back with bemusement on the frenzied British reaction to his 1996 film, Crash, adapted from JG Ballard’s novel.  

The 1973 book, which Ballard proudly described as “the first pornographic novel based on technology”, explores the erotic fascination of car crashes. It is set, as its author later wrote, “at a point where sex and death intersect”.  

In spite of the provocative subject matter, Ballard claimed his novel “created little stir” when it first appeared in the UK. True, a reader at his publishing company had described him as “beyond psychiatric help” and had strongly recommended that the book shouldn’t be published. However, the novel did appear. Whatever revulsion certain critics showed towards Ballard’s writing, nobody called for it to be banned.