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cleoenfaserum · 1 year

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The Strange Death of the Twin Gynecologists. A patient’s notes. (By Linda Wolfe)

PART 1 OF 3

Editor’s note: New York’s issue of September 8, 1975 included a cover story about two gynecologist twin brothers who had died under strange circumstances on the Upper East Side. The brothers’ story eventually inspired a novel, Twins, by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, and a film adaptation, Dead Ringers, directed by David Cronenberg and starring Jeremy Irons in both roles. In April 2023, Dead Ringers was remade as a Prime Video TV series, this time with Rachel Weisz as the doctors.

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Lke so many other people I spoke with this summer, I found myself uncharacteristically haunted by the deaths of Stewart and Cyril Marcus, the twin gynecologists found gaunt and already partially decayed in their East 63rd Street apartment amidst a litter of garbage and pharmaceuticals. The story of their deaths had, for me, even in its barest bones, that element of stupefying reality that Philip Roth calls an “embarrassment” to the writer’s imagination; here was a reality that could make the capabilities of even the most imaginative writer seem meager.

Several aspects of the deaths contributed to my stupefaction. One was the very fact of the men’s twinship, the doubleness which had given them a mutual birth date and now a mutual death date as well. Another was the men’s prominence. When beggars die in a state of bizarre deterioration in New York, there are no comets seen; when two doctors still on the staff of a mighty New York hospital die in a state of bizarre deterioration, the heavens themselves blaze forth questions of responsibility. Had these men actually been seeing patients — perhaps even performing operations — while already on their route to disintegration? (Such was the case, as it turned out.)

Had none of their learned colleagues noticed, if not a mental alteration then at least the clear signs of physical change that had come over them? (They had, and, in fact, New York Hospital decided to dismiss the Marcuses — but only weeks before their deaths.).

But I had a special personal reason for curiosity about the deaths of the Marcuses, for I had once been a patient of Stewart’s. At least, it was Stewart whom I called for appointments and whose name appeared on the bills I received, although the friend who had recommended him to me told me she sometimes had her doubts about which twin she was actually getting. Yes, they were that much alike. She was convinced that from time to time they had played classic twin jokes, one substituting for the other. Another woman with whom I spoke had had the same impression recently, and said, “Of course, they never told the patients they were doing this. But I got so I could tell which was which. Stewart’s neck was thicker.” Other patients could tell which twin was which because they detected a difference not in anatomy but in personality. Their doctor, kindly on one visit, would be strangely inaccessible on the next. Thus, the story grew that one was a “good twin,” the other a “bad twin.” But there was widespread disagreement as to which was the good one, which the bad. And it was never quite clear whether the personality change was a result of the twins’ pinch-hitting for each other, or whether because within each twin there was a split and ranging personality. I tended toward the latter belief, and was convinced I always saw the same doctor, but that he had dark and darker moods.

Eventually I left off seeing him. This was about eight years ago. I had found him/them distant, remote, incapable of or unwilling to engage in discussion or explanation. Hardly what one wants in a doctor. His/their reputations were good. They were among the few surgeons to have perfected the “purse string,” an operation that helped women who had difficulty carrying a fetus to full term. They were said, also, to be the best gynecologists in town — in those days — at inserting with a minimum of pain the then still new IUD’s — intrauterine devices. But communication with him/them was so often difficult that I finally realized that reputation was, for me, less important than responsiveness.

Perhaps because of having felt so strongly my Dr. Marcus’s distance from life, I wasn’t really surprised when I read of his and his brother’s deaths. The initial police reaction was that they were victims of a suicide pact. There were no signs of anyone’s having forced entry into their apartment; no signs of external violence to either body. Stewart was found face up on the floor, nude except for his socks; Cyril was found dressed in his shorts and face down on a big double bed. Stewart had died several days before Cyril. There was no note — the usual accompaniment to suicide — although according to Bill Terrell, the building repairman who called the police and, with them, was the first to enter the apartment, there was a piece of paper in a typewriter with the name and address of the woman whom Cyril had married and divorced.

More mysterious than the question of whether their deaths had been intentional or accidental was the fact that the cause of death remained unknown for days. Despite the fact that Cyril, a man close to six feet tall, had weighed just over 100 pounds at the time of his death, and Stewart had been gaunt as well, no sign of serious physical illness was found in either man. No cancer: no heart condition.

Ultimately, extensive tests conducted by the Medical Examiner revealed that drugs — barbiturates — had caused their deaths, but not because they had suddenly taken a large quantity. Rather, they had been taking large quantities for a long period of time, and it was when they stopped — and had the fatal convulsions typical of barbiturate withdrawal — that they had died.

It is not easy to portray the Marcuses. The relatives are loath to talk about them, for obvious reasons. The wife from whom Cyril was divorced has children whom he sired. She feels an enormous, brooding compassion for her ex-husband. Colleagues of the Marcuses and those in an administrative capacity at New York Hospital were even less willing to talk, although three weeks after all my attempts at interviewing them had been defensively rejected, the Times was able to shame them into finally addressing the press. Because of these difficulties, I had to follow another direction and it took me closer to a resolution of the personal questions troubling me.

I went first to the building in which the Marcuses had been found dead. Cyril had lived there — in apartment 10H at 1161 York Avenue — for some five years, apparently since the time he had separated from his wife and children; Stewart had moved in with him sometime in the last few months. To the doormen and building employees, the two doctors were always distant, remote, too arrogant for a “Good morning” or even a “Hot weather, isn’t it?”

Because the two doctors eschewed small talk. no one talked to them much after a while. Thus it was that on a Tuesday, the Tuesday on which, presumably, the second twin was to die, his brother having done so several days earlier, doorman George Sich — who had worked in the building for 25 years — saw one of the twins leave the building sick and depleted and yet was unsure about how far to carry an offer of help. The twin — we now know it was Cyril — neared a table in the lobby on which packages were occasionally placed and began to stagger a bit. “I thought he looked ill,” says the doorman: “I thought he was going to faint, and I hurried over to help him.” But when Sich reached his side, the twin recovered his balance and said in an icy tone. “I’m all right.”

Inside the apartment that day, the other brother — Stewart — already lay dead. He had become just another part of the debris and decaying organic matter that had been collecting around the twins for a lengthy period of time. The newspapers described the apartment in which the bodies were found as “messy.” Stronger words were used by building employees and policemen who went into the rooms. In the room in which Cyril died there was no inch of floor space that was not covered with litter and garbage, not just in a single layer, but almost a foot and a half high. Bits of unfinished TV dinners and chicken bones, paper bags and sandwich wrappers from Gristede’s were heaped around the bed, a collection of plastic wraps from the dry cleaner’s entirely filled one closet, and human feces rotted in a handsome leather armchair of the type so many doctors favor.

Bill Terrell, the building repairman, says that he knew from the first that there was a dead body within. Neighbors had been complaining for two days that there was a smell emanating from 10H. Terrell says, “I knew what the smell meant. I was in combat, you see. The real conflict.”

But Terrell had reasons beyond the nose on his face to suspect that there was a dead man — or two dead men — in the apartment. Once before he had been called upon to break open the door to 10H. It is his story of this event that makes the death of the Marcuses seem not just a sudden inexplicable tragedy but a tragedy with long, concealed roots. That other time, about three years ago, Terrell had been passing by 10H on his way from a repair job in a nearby apartment when he heard a buzzing sound within. It sounded like a phone off the hook. He thought nothing of it until, several hours later, he had cause to be on the tenth floor once again, passed 10H, and once again heard the buzzing. This time he rang the doorbell and began to pound loudly on the door. When no one answered his noises, Terrell says, he got the phone number of Cyril’s brother Stewart and telephoned him at his office. Terrell said to Stewart, “There’s something not quite kosher at your brother’s place. I think your brother needs help.”

What happened next amazed and intrigued Terrell. There was, he says, a long silence. He got the feeling that Stewart was somehow consulting the air waves, communing with his brother, because he said nothing for a long, long time and then, quite abruptly, said, “Yes, You’re right. He does need help. I’ll be right over.” In Stewart’s presence, Terrell took apart the door lock. When they entered the apartment, they saw Cyril lying unconscious in the foyer. Stewart turned pale. Terrell said, “Give him artificial respiration.” “I can’t touch my brother. You do it.” “I can’t,” said Terrell. “You’re the doctor. You do it.”

PART 2

PART 3

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osarothomprince · 1 year

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‘Dead Ringers’ review: Rachel Weisz meets David Cronenberg in tale of twisted twins

Why make a 1988 David Cronenberg film into a six-episode-long miniseries? That was my main question — and concern — about Prime Video’s Dead Ringers, a series based on the Cronenberg film of the same name, itself adapted from the novel Twins by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland. In Cronenberg’s movie, Jeremy Irons plays the…‘Dead Ringers’ review: Rachel Weisz meets David Cronenberg in tale of twisted…

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byneddiedingo · 2 years

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Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988), Cast: Jeremy Irons, Geneviève Bujold, Heidi von Palleske, Barbara Gordon, Shirley Douglas, Stephen Lack. Screenplay: David Cronenberg, Norman Snider, based on a book by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland. Cinematography: Peter Suschitzky. Production design: Carol Spier. Film editing: Ronald Sanders. Music: Howard Shore.

#Dead Ringers #david cronenberg

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80smovies · 9 months

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#Bat*21 #Bat 21 #Dead Ringers #David Cronenberg #Bari Wood #Jack Geasland #Norman Snider #Jeremy Irons #Geneviève Bujold #William C. Anderson #George Gordon #VHS #80s

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cinesludge · 3 years

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Movie #32 of 2021: Dead Ringers

Claire Niveau: “I've been around a bit. I've seen some creepy things in the movie business. This is the most disgusting thing that's ever happened to me.”

Elliot Mantle: “I doubt that.”

#dead ringers #david cronenberg #english #drama #horror #thriller #norman snider #bari wood #Jack Geasland #howard shore #peter suschitzky #ronald sanders #1988 #32 #cathodetv #35mm

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davidosu87 · 3 years

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This is another film that was selected for Movie Club Challenge over on The Podcast Under the Stairs. It was a blindspot for me in David Cronenberg's filmography and I'm glad I knocked this one off. It is an amazing performance from Jeremy Irons and just a great look at depressing look at these two characters descending into madness. What are your thoughts on this movie?

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miserecarni · 2 years

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Twins, Bari Wood & Jack Geasland

#the twins werent children!!!!! where is that post i made abt wh #twins #🌺

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myhauntedsalem · 4 years

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Horror Movies Based on True Events

Open Water (2003)

When a couple goes scuba diving in Open Water, their boat accidentally leaves them behind in shark-infested water. It’s based on something that really happened to American tourists Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who were left behind by a diving company off the Great Barrier Reef. By the time the mistake was realized two days later, it was too late, and they were never seen again. A shark attack seems not to have been the cause of death, however, as the couple’s dive jackets were eventually found. The jackets weren’t damaged, which suggested that the Lonergans likely took them off, “delirious from dehydration,” and drowned.

Borderland (2007)

When three friends head to a Mexican border town to have some fun in this movie, they get mixed up with a cult specializing in human sacrifice. The concept loosely stems from the life of Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, a drug lord and cult leader who was responsible for the death of American student Mark Kilroy.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

The iconic baddie Freddy Krueger kills teenagers via their dreams in Wes Craven’s franchise-launching film. Craven told Vulture that the idea stemmed from an article he read in The Los Angeles Times about a family of Cambodian refugees with a young son who reported awful nightmares. “He told his parents he was afraid that if he slept, the thing chasing him would get him, so he tried to stay awake for days at a time,” said Craven. “When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought this crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the middle of the night. By the time they got to him, he was dead. He died in the middle of a nightmare. Here was a youngster having a vision of a horror that everyone older was denying. That became the central line of Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Black Water (2007)

Set in the swamps of Australia, this movie sees a group of fishers attacked by a humongous crocodile. It was inspired by an actual crocodile attack in the Australian outback in 2003 that killed a man named Brett Mann in an area that his friends said they’d “never, ever” seen a crocodile before.

Dead Ringers (1988)

In David Cronenberg’s movie, Jeremy Irons plays twin gynecologists who do messed up things with patients and ultimately die together in the end. Cronenberg adapted the movie from Bari Wood and Jack Geasland’s novel Twins, which was inspired by the lives of actual twin gynecologists Stewart and Cyril Marcus. TheNew York Times noted that the Marcuses enjoyed “trading places to fool their patients” and that they ultimately “retreat[ed] into heavy drug use and utter isolation.”

Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

The movie follows a cop and a priest who team up to take on the supernatural. It’s based on self-proclaimed “demonologist” Ralph Sarchie’s memoir Beware the Night, in which he tells supposedly true stories, such as the time he found himself “in the presence of one of hell’s most dangerous devils” possessing a woman.

Poltergeist (1982)

In Poltergeist, a family’s home is invaded by ghosts that abduct one of the daughters. The film was inspiredby unexplained events, such as loud popping noises and moved objects, that occurred in 1958 at the Hermanns’ home in Seaford, New York.

Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock’s essential film traces a woman who embezzles money from her employer and runs off to a mysterious hotel where she is (58-year-old spoiler alert) murdered by the man running it, Norman Bates. Bates is said to have been based on Ed Gein, a Wisconsin man who was convicted for one murder in the 1950s, but suspected for others. He also was a grave robber, and authorities found many disturbing results of that in his home, including bowls crafted from human skulls and a lampshade made from the skin of someone’s face.

Scream (1996)

The classic ‘90s slasher flick uses dark humor to tell the story of a group of teens and a mystery man named Ghostface who wants to murder them. But the real story ain’t funny. The movie was inspired by the Gainesville Ripper, real name Danny Rolling, who killed five Florida students by knife over a span of three days in August 1990.

The Conjuring (2013)

The movie stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as ghost hunters helping out a family in a haunted 18th-century farmhouse. The hunters, Ed and Lorraine Warren, are real people, as is the Perron family that they assist. Lorraine was a consultant on the movie and insists that many of the supernatural horrors really happened, and one of the daughters who is depicted in the film, Andrea Perron, says the same. She recalled an angry spirit named Bathsheba to USA Today:“Whoever the spirit was, she perceived herself to be mistress of the house and she resented the competition my mother posed for that position.”

Annabelle (2014)

The creepy porcelain doll from The Conjuring gets her terror on in this spin-off of The Conjuring. The ghost-hunting Warrens have claimed that there was a real Raggedy Ann doll that moved by itself and wrote creepy-ass notes saying things like, “Help us.” The woman who owned it contacted a medium, who claimed that it was possessed by a seven-year-old girl named Annabelle who had died there.

The Disappointments Room (2016)

Kate Beckinsale stars in the movie as an architect who moves to a new home with a mysterious room in the attic that she eventually learns was previously used as a room where rich people would cast off disabled children. It was reportedly inspired by a Rhode Island woman who discovered a similar room in her house that she says was built by a 19th century judge to lock away his disabled daughter.

The Exorcist (1973)

Two priests attempt to remove a demon from a young girl in this box office smash. The movie was based on a 1949 Washington Post article with the headline “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip.” Director William Friedkin spoke about the article to Time Out London: “Maybe one day they’ll discover the cause of what happened to that young man, but back then, it was only curable by an exorcism. His family weren’t even Catholics, they were Lutheran. They started with doctors and then psychiatrists and then psychologists and then they went to their minister who couldn’t help them. And they wound up with the Catholic church. The Washington Post article says that the boy was possessed and exorcised. That’s pretty out on a limb for a national newspaper to put on its front page… You’re not going to see that on the front page of an intelligent newspaper unless there’s something there.

The Girl Next Door (2007)

The movie follows the abuse of a teenage girl at the hands of her aunt, and it was inspired by the murder of Sylvia Likens in 1965. The 16-year-old girl was abused by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski, Baniszewski’s children, and other neighborhood children, as entertainment. They ultimately killed her, with the cause of death determined as “brain swelling, internal hemorrhaging of the brain, and shock induced by Sylvia’s extensive skin damage,”

The Possession (2012)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick star in the movie as a couple with a young daughter who becomes fascinated with an antique wooden box found at a yard sale. Of course, the box turns out to be home to a spirit. The flick’s “true story” basis came from an eBay listing for “a haunted Jewish wine cabinet box” containing oddities such as two locks of hair, one candlestick, and an evil spirit that caused supernatural activity. The box sold for $280 and gained attention when a Jewish newspaper ran an article about its so-called powers.

The Rite (2011)

In The Rite, a mortician enrolls in seminary and eventually takes an exorcism class in Rome, where demonic encounters ensue. The movie was based on the life of a real exorcist, Father Gary Thomas, whose work was the focus of journalist Matt Baglio’s book The Rite: The Making of an Exorcist. A Roman Catholic priest, Thomas was one of 14 Vatican-certified exorcists working in America in 2011. He served as an advisor on the film and told The Los Angeles Times that in the previous four years he had exorcised five people.

The Sacrament (2013)

In the movie, a man travels to find his sister who joined a remote religious commune, where, yep, bad things happen. It was inspired by the 1978 Jonestown massacre, in which cult leader Jim Jones led 909 of his followers to partake in a “murder-suicide ceremony” using cyanide poisoning.

The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece is about a man who is driven to insanity by supernatural forces while staying at a remote hotel in the Rockies. The movie Derives from Stephen King’s book of the same name, which was inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, where plenty of guests have reported seeing ghosts. The Stanley wasn’t actually used in the movie, however, because Kubrick didn’t think it looked scary enough.

The Silence of the Lambs(1991)

The Oscar-winning film tells the story of an FBI cadet who enlists the help of a cannibal/serial killer to pin down another serial killer, Buffalo Bill, who skins the bodies of his victims. FBI special agent John Douglas, who consulted on the film, has explained that Bill was inspired in part by the serial killer Ted Bundy, who like Bill, wore a fake cast. Ed Gein is also believed to be an inspiration, what with the whole skinning thing. And per Rolling Stone, 1980s killer Gary Heidnik was a reference for how Buffalo Bill kept victims in a basement pit.

The Strangers (2008)

Three killers in masks terrorize the suburban home of a couple (played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) in this invasion thriller. Writer-director Bryan Bertino has said the film was inspired by something that happened to him in childhood. “As a kid, I lived in a house on a street in the middle of nowhere. One night, while our parents were out, somebody knocked on the front door and my little sister answered it,” he said. “At the door were some people asking for somebody that didn’t live there. We later found out that these people were knocking on doors in the area and, if no one was home, breaking into the houses.”

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974 & 2003)

Ed Gein also reportedly inspired elements of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its remake. The movies are about groups of friends who come into contact with the murderous cannibal Leatherface. The original film memorably features a room filled with furniture created from human bones, a nod to Gein’s home.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976 & 2014)

The original film follows a Texas Ranger as he tracks down a serial killer threatening a small town, and the 2014 sequel of the same name essentially revives the same plot. Both are based on the Texarkana Moonlight Murders of 1946, when a “Phantom Killer” took out five people over ten weeks. The case remains unsolved

Veronica (2018)

The recent Netflix release follows a 15-year-old girl who uses a Ouija board and accidentally connects with a demon that terrorizes her and her family. The movie’s based on a real police report from a Madrid neighborhood. As the story goes, a girl performed a séance at school and then “experienced months of seizures and hallucinations, particularly of shadows and presences surrounding her,” according to NewsWeek. The police report came a year after the girl’s death when three officers and the Chief Inspect of the National Police reported several unnatural occurrences at her family’s home that they called “a situation of mystery and rarity.”

#Horror Movies Based on True Events #horror #horror movies #paranormal #ghost and hauntings #ghost and spirits

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hyaenagallery · 4 years

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Going with our earlier post on the Twins that inspired Dead Ringers...here's a small collection of books we rounded up from the estate of Jack Geasland, author of Twins: Twins (yellow cover). 2001 softcover Authors Guild edition. Great condition. $10 Twins (silver cover). 1978 1st Signet edition paperback. Well read condition. $5 Twins (black/purple cover). 1979 Great Britain paperback). Good condition. $7 Faux Semblants (black cover). 2010 French softcover. Great condition. $10 Faux Semblants (graphic cover). 1988 French paperback. Great condition. $10 DM or email [email protected] with inquiries https://www.instagram.com/p/B_nQYg7hfr7/?igshid=ghn3p9hiax1f

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docrotten · 3 years

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Dead Ringers (1988) – Episode 177 – Decades of Horror 1980s

"Tell me about my uterus." It is a movie about twin gynecologists so that line is not near as weird as it sounds. … Okay, it’s still pretty weird. Join your faithful Grue-Crew - Crystal Cleveland, Chad Hunt, Bill Mulligan, and Jeff Mohr - as they encounter more Cronenberg-induced oddballery in Dead Ringers (1988).

Decades of Horror 1980s Episode 177 – Dead Ringers (1988)

Join the Crew on the Gruesome Magazine YouTube channel! Subscribe today! And click the alert to get notified of new content! https://youtube.com/gruesomemagazine

Twin gynecologists take full advantage of the fact that nobody can tell them apart until their relationship begins to deteriorate over a woman.

IMDb

Director: David Cronenberg

Writers: David Cronenberg, Norman Snider; (from the novel, Twins, 1975, by) Bari Wood, Jack Geasland

Selected Cast

Jeremy Irons as Beverly Mantle/Elliot Mantle

Jonathan Haley and Nicholas Haley as young Beverly/Elliot

Geneviève Bujold as Claire Niveau

Heidi von Palleske as Cary

Barbara Gordon as Danuta

Jill Hennessy as Mimsy

Jacqueline Hennessy as Coral

Dead Ringers is Crystal’s pick so it should come as no surprise that she loves the film. She thinks it’s beautifully shot, loves Jeremy Irons, and of course, don’t forget … Cronenberg! Bill also loves Jeremy Irons’ performance, going so far as to say he was robbed for not being at least nominated for an Academy Award. Appreciating Dead Ringers more every time he sees it, Chad identifies it as a squirm-inducing, psychological thriller and character study of twins. Jeff is also on the Jeremy Irons bandwagon, lauding his nuanced performance of the twins, but also appreciates Genevieve Bujold’s critical role as the catalyst to the twins’ downfalls. Of course, everyone else agrees with Crystal on how beautiful the cinematography and the production design are.

Dead Ringers is worth a watch and even several rewatches. As of this writing, it is available for streaming on Amazon Prime and as physical media on a Blu-ray disc from Shout Factory.

Every two weeks, Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1980s podcast will cover another horror film from the 1980s. The next episode’s film, chosen by Chad, will be The Return of Swamp Thing (1989). You won’t want to miss that one!

Please let them know how they’re doing! They want to hear from you – the coolest, grooviest fans: leave them a message or leave a comment on the gruesome Magazine Youtube channel, on the website or email the Decades of Horror 1980s podcast hosts at [email protected]

Check out this episode!

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