Shivers

Saw Shivers, an early Cronenberg film. It was a fairly icky film about a worm-like parasite that makes the host organism sexually rapacious. The parasite spreads by leaping from the host's mouth but even so the lust-zombies created by the parasite seem to go for the boobs and junk a lot. It's filmed in the 70s and set in a High-Rise-ish luxury apartment complex. The 70s decor reminds me of sleazy films I've seen (I can't for the life of me remember which ones though. I've seen a documentary on porn in the 70s. Maybe that's what I'm picking up? I've also seen Salo.)

The opening of the film, I feel, lays out the whole thesis. A man and a woman are being shown an apartment by an oily salesman and meanwhile, presumably upstairs, an old man strangles a woman in a school-girl outfit, cuts her clothing off, and pours acid into her abdomen. She is one of the firs sex-zombies we discover, but I think the heart of this film is in the contrast of the glass-and-steel luxury suites vs the ugly sexualized violence going on within. There's a lot of women being attacked and the old horror trope of women being objects of murderous interest is here as well. I had a hard time looking past all of that.

This is a Cronenberg film however, and body horror abounds. The parasites (which resemble flaccid penises) move lumily around in people's abdomens and one central character (played by Cronenberg himself!) tries to make friends with the disease, to become its servant. This is another Cronenberg obsession: the normalizing of the pathological. The parasites were created, we learn, by a mad scientist trying to usher in a new age, where humanity will become beautiful animals, and the earth a never-ending orgy. This is an unpleasant idea but who can say but that it might not get a following?

The ideas are interesting but there's a lot of rape and near-rape and it's all fairly gross. It's unpleasant to watch and it's not clear what statement it's making (if any.) Apparently some contemporary critic decried it as sexist trash and while I don't think it's entirely sexist trash, I can see where they were coming from. An interesting film when viewed through a Cronenberg-ian lens, but might be best to avoid otherwise (unless sex-crazed zombies are your thing in which case go for it!)