Dead Ringers is a 1988 psychological thriller film starring Jeremy Irons in a dual role as identical twin gynecologists.

Identical twins Elliot and Beverly Mantle are gynecologists who jointly operate a highly successful clinical practice in Toronto that specializes in treating fertility problems.

Eventually, Claire leaves town to work on another film, sending Beverly into clinical depression, more prescription drug abuse and paranoid delusions about "mutant women" with abnormal genitalia.

Beverly seeks out metallurgical artist Anders Wolleck and commissions a set of bizarre "gynecological instruments" for operating on these mutant women.

Beverly prepares to operate on a patient during surgery with one of Wolleck's tools, while his shocked surgical team exchanges horrified glances.

Drugged and despairing, they celebrate their mock birthday and Elliot volunteers to be killed so as to "separate the Siamese twins" and allow Beverly to live his own life.

Baum told Cronenberg about Stewart and Cyril Marcus and sent articles written about the brothers and a book, Twins by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, to him.

[6][7] Bob Bookman at ABC Motion Pictures was interested in the film, but Snider, Baum, Roth, and the source material were dropped to avoid complications.

[9] Cronenberg previously worked with Dino De Laurentiis's backing on The Dead Zone[10] and an unsuccessful adaption of Total Recall.

However, Raffaella told Cronenberg that they could not fund the film due to their company's past financial failures, including Million Dollar Mystery.

[14] The film marked the screen debut of actress Jill Hennessy and her twin sister Jacqueline, who play call girls in a scene.

[14] Mark Irwin was meant to perform the cinematography for the film, but during the production delay he took a job in the United States and was replaced by Peter Suschitzky.

[13][15] Director Peter Greenaway claims that Cronenberg queried him about his film A Zed & Two Noughts for two hours before going on to make Dead Ringers eight months later.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Dead Ringers serves up a double dose of Jeremy Irons in service of a devilishly unsettling concept and commandingly creepy work from director David Cronenberg.

[22] For the same paper, Rita Kempley called it "every woman's nightmare turned into a creepy thriller", adding it was "like slowing down to look at a traffic accident, afraid you might see something.

[23] It is the favorite Cronenberg film of Korean director Park Chan-wook[24] and was voted for in the 2002 Sight & Sound poll by Lalitha Gopalan.

[43] On August 18, 2020, Amazon Prime Video placed a straight-to-series order for a television adaptation of Dead Ringers, with Rachel Weisz set to star.