Rabid

I really enjoy gritty, low-key horror films like this one. The story revolves around Hart (Frank Moore) and Rose (porn queen Marilyn Chambers), a young couple involved in a motorcycle accident. Rose undergoes an emergency experimental skin graft operation and emerges as a plague-spreading pseudo-vampire who extracts blood via a syringe-style growth that has developed on her body. It's an interesting, original take of vampirism, especially the aspect that her victims get sick and turn homicidal ("Rabid," I guess).

In my opinion, this is Cronenberg's best 70s movie (I enjoyed it more than THEY CAME FROM WITHIN/SHIVERS and THE BROOD, also good horror films). The story is intelligent, very well thought out and full of political and social context if you want it. The horror scenes are creepy and effective. Chambers is beautiful and has a killer body, for sure, but she also delivers a surprisingly good performance. You can tell she was savoring this non-hardcore role and probably hoped for more of the same after this, but it just wasn't in the cards for her. Too bad. The rest of the cast was acceptable.

I wish they made more films like this nowadays!

It's only marginally better than Cronenberg's earlier work Shivers and in some ways, it feels like a sequel to it. It takes the hyper-sexualized, extra-gory zombies that the first film utilized and expands them over a wider area. No longer just contained to an apartment complex on an island, these bad boys are free to roam around downtown Montreal. The slices of apocalyptic action near the end of the film elevate this one above the earlier film, as it's a much darker consequence to the story's identical problem. Basically all the technical aspects remain the same, from amateurish acting to dated sets to a distinctive atmosphere, and the warning against scientific tampering is still there, but the aforementioned wider scope and subtle nods to the sociopolitical environment of 1970s Montreal make this one just a bit better. Cronenberg was just warming up, though.

I'm a fan of David Cronenberg, so I've gradually been unearthing his earlier work. I watched Rabid last week, and, too my surprise, it was a pretty good B horror flick. Sure, it had plenty of bad acting (though Marilyn Chambers was good-*gasp*), was a bit too long for what it was, and was uneven overall, but I could definitely see the genius that was too come from this very young Cronenberg. Interesting flick--give it a try. **Another interesting note--look for Ivan Reitman's name in the opening credits as a producer**

If compiling a list of favourite directors, David Cronenberg if to be honest wouldn't be on it (having only properly started seeing his work fairly recently). If compiling though a list of the most fascinating and unique directors, he would almost certainly be on it and high up the more work seen of his. A vast majority of his films disturb in his use of imagery and make one feel uncomfortable with his tackling of challenging subjects, but as said in some of my other reviews for his films there is much more to his work than just full on horror as seen with him moving away from it in later years.

While nowhere near close to being one of his best (not one of his worst either, 'Cosmopolis' for me is a contender for that title) and do prefer 'Scanners' and 'The Brood' as far as his early/body horror films go, 'Rabid' is an interesting and more than decent effort. For so early on and with limited resources, for all its obvious faults, 'Rabid' impressed me and admired it for its ambitious premise (like with 'Shivers'). The rest of the films that are part of his filmography are far more refined visually, explore their themes/subject much deeper and are far better written and acted, but there is a good deal to like here.

Admittedly the low budget is obvious, with 'Rabid' making for one of Cronenberg's worst-looking films. It does look better and less amateurish than 'Shivers' though. The effects and make-up are well done and pretty freaky, but 'Rabid' does have a drab look and looks simplistic and unfocused, and like a low budget television film made by an experimenting student.

The script is also very clunky and too often vague with too many parts not going into anywhere near enough explanation. It did feel that a lot of time went into most other components and the script was left at the bottom of the pile.

Do think that the acting is quite a lot better in general than in 'Shivers', which only had two good performances while most of the performances were acceptable (if not always much more than that). But Frank Moore did have ropey moments from personal view.

'Rabid' has a lot of things worth praising. As said the special effects and make-up are freaky, surprising as one does expect for minimal budget for the effects to be the worst part when it comes to production values.

Cronenberg gave himself a lot to take on and does so admirably, even if his style had not fully formed yet. Yet his style can still be found all over 'Rabid', with the famous themes and ideas often re-visited in later films present but much deeper and with more subtlety later on. The story is interesting with the ambitious concept not wasted, with the pace being slicker than before.

Especially good here in 'Rabid' are two things. One being the atmosphere. The other being the horror. 'Shivers', 'Scanners' and 'The Brood' (which also all had the better scripts) to me were more disturbing and stomach churning, but that is not to say that 'Rabid' isn't either of those things, quite the contrary, with the violence still being shocking today. There are some genuine chills and shocks and the sense of dread is handled very suspensefully. The threat is scary too and the imagery does churn the stomach in typical Cronenberg fashion. Enough of the acting is acceptable, with Marilyn Chambers being a surprisingly good lead (was honestly expecting her to be a disaster).

Summarising, decent film. 7/10

After a nasty motorcycle accident, a young couple, Hart (Frank Moore) and Rose (porn star Marilyn Chambers), are taken to a nearby plastic surgery clinic, where Rose undergoes a revolutionary skin grafting technique that results in the growth of a bloodsucking tumour. Driven by the lust for plasma, Rose flees the clinic and embarks on a series of attacks which leave her victims alive, but infected with a strain of rabies that causes them to react in a violent manner. As the disease rapidly turns into a city-wide epidemic and martial law is imposed, Hart attempts to locate his missing girlfriend, unaware that she is the carrier of the disease.

With crisper cinematography and more confident direction from David Cronenberg, Rabid is a technically superior effort to his 1975 film Shivers, but doesn't manage to be as satisfying an experience thanks to a script that becomes a tad too repetitive at times, strays a little to close to George Romero's The Crazies (1973) for comfort, and perhaps most importantly, fails to answer burning questions about the nature of Rose's condition: the needle tipped, phallic mutation, which emerges from a sphincter-like orifice from under Rose's arm, is as grotesque and unsettling as anything Cronenberg has conjured up since, but it's existence is never adequately explained, most likely because no amount of in-depth exposition could ever be convincing enough.

On a more positive note, Chambers does reasonably well in her first non-porn lead role, there are some genuinely nasty moments for which makeup guy Joe Blasco provides some pretty decent effects work (I particularly enjoyed the 'finger snipping' moment, and the impressive use of a pneumatic drill by one of the infected), and Cronenberg occasionally ditches his sober approach for the odd spot of delightfully twisted humour, such as the scene in which a mall Santa Claus gets accidentally machine-gunned by a trigger happy cop (well, I found it funny!).

Whilst Rabid certainly doesn't qualify as essential Cronenberg, it is still worth a look if you're a fan of the man's work and merits a reasonable 6.5 out of 10 from this viewer (generously rounded up to 7 for IMDb).