Cronenberg's first feature focused on the (fictional) Canadian Academy for Erotic Inquiry, which was investigating a parapsychologist named Luther Stringfellow. (Photo: Courtesy David Cronenberg)

This is the kind of Cronenberg "body horror" image you might know without knowing where it came from. 1981's Scanners is about people with the special ability to "scan" other people's minds — with occasionally explosive consequences. (Photo: Photofest)

If you've ever heard the phrase "Long live the new flesh," it comes from this film starring James Woods, about a small Toronto TV station that broadcasts strangely captivating depictions of violence and torture. (Photo: Photofest)

From the TIFF exhibition, a prop used to create "melting TV" effect from Videodrome (Photo: Courtesy TIFF)

In this still: Jeremy Irons, Geneviève Bujold and Jeremy Irons again (Photo: Photofest)

In 1991, Cronenberg made a very loose adaptation of William S. Burroughs' 1959 novel Naked Lunch. Unlike the original, the movie version featured giant bugs and Peter Weller, shown here with Cronenberg (Photo: Atilla Dory © Recorded Picture Company Limited and Naked Lunch Productions Limited)

The set from the above still, at the TIFF exhibition (Photo: Courtesy TIFF)

Here's Jeremy Irons kissing John Lone in M. Butterfly (Photo: Photofest)

This adaptation of the classic 1973 J.G. Ballard novel tells the story of a group of people who derive sexual pleasure from car accidents. Pictured here, Rosanna Arquette, one of the members of the crash-fetishist group (Photo: TIFF Film Reference Library)

The brace that Rosanna Arquette wears in the previous still, from the TIFF exhibition (Photo: David Cronenberg Collection, TIFF Film Reference Library)

eXistenZ, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, imagines a world where thousands are addicted to video game consoles called "game pods" that connect directly to "bio-ports" in the players' spines — and a counter-movement of "realists" trying to snap people out of their gaming addiction. (Photo: TIFF Film Reference Library)

One of the eXistenZ game pods, at the TIFF exhibition (Photo: Courtesy TIFF)

2005's A History of Violence marked a turn away from science fiction and body horror and a turn toward Viggo Mortensen, who starred in three successive Cronenberg features. This one is a crime thriller set in rural Indiana. (Photo: TIFF Film Reference Library)

Cronenberg on the set of his 2011 drama about the complex relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung — and their shared patient and colleague Sabina Spielrein.