Shivers (1975 film)

Shivers
Theatrical release poster that features an alternate title
Directed by	David Cronenberg
Written by	David Cronenberg
Produced by	Ivan Reitman
Starring	Fred Doederlin Paul Hampton Lynn Lowry Barbara Steele
Cinematography	Robert Saad
Edited by	Patrick Dodd
Production company	CFDC
Distributed by	Cinépix Film Properties Inc. (Canada) Trans American Films (US)
Release dates	October 10, 1975 (1975-10-10) (Canada) July 6, 1976 (1976-07-06) (United States)
Running time	87 minutes
Country	Canada
Language	English
Budget	CAD$179,000 (est.)

Shivers (filmed as Orgy of the Blood Parasites; alternate titles: The Parasite Murders, They Came from Within, and Frissons for the French Canadian distribution) is a 1975 Canadian science fiction body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg.

Plot

Dr. Emil Hobbes is conducting unorthodox experiments with parasites for use in transplants. He believes that humanity has become over-rational and lost contact with its flesh and its instincts, so the effects of the organism he actually develops is a combination of aphrodisiac and venereal disease. Once implanted, it causes uncontrollable sexual desire in the host.

Hobbes implants the parasites in his teen-aged mistress, who promiscuously spreads them throughout the ultra-modern apartment building outside Montreal where they live. Hobbes, unable to undo the damage he caused, kills his mistress and then commits suicide. The police are called and the crime looks to be open and shut.

As the story develops, one of Hobbes' mistress' sexual partners begins to feel ill and returns from work. Here we see the parasite emerge from its host and escape into the building where it emerges and attacks a number of people. The story takes a quick pace here where the community's resident physician, Roger St. Luc uncovers some of the research that Hobbes had been working on. St. Luc encounters an elderly resident who has been attacked and burned by the parasite. St. Luc, along with his assistant and girlfriend, Nurse Forsythe, move the elderly residents to their room. They attempt to stop the parasite infestation before it overwhelms the city's population.

Instructing the elderly couple to wait and lock themselves in, St. Luc continues to the basement where the residents told him they had disposed of the parasite. St. Luc is attacked by a caretaker and manages to defeat the caretaker by bashing in his skull. Forsythe leaves the safety of the elderly residents' room and continues after St. Luc, where she is attacked, but is rescued by St. Luc. Meanwhile upstairs it is clear the parasite has spread the infection and more and more of the residents start to act out. The scene closes with the elderly couple's apartment broken into by the infected. Downstairs the security guard is infected and the auctioneer showing the apartment is slowly entrapping other unsuspecting guests.

St. Luc escapes to the parking garage and Forsythe is attacked by an infected resident. St. Luc appears to rescue her and get her to his car. However as they attempt to crash through the gate to the parking garage another car rams them. St. Luc helps Forsythe free and they escape to a remote area in the resident block. At this stage Forsythe starts to act out showing that she too has become infected.

St. Luc is forced to leave her and forge on to escape but at every turn he is trapped. Eventually he finds himself trapped in the swimming pool and he is attacked and eventually infected.

The closing scene is the residents happily exiting the residential block in their cars. The viewer is left to believe that Hobbes' plan to infect the world is under way.

Cast

• Paul Hampton as Roger St. Luc
• Joe Silver as Rollo Linsky
• Lynn Lowry as Nurse Forsythe
• Alan Migicovsky as Nicholas Tudor
• Susan Petrie as Janine Tudor
• Barbara Steele as Betts
• Ronald Mlodzik as Merrick
• Barry Boldero as Det. Heller
• Camil Ducharme as Mr. Guilbault
• Hanka Posnanska as Mrs. Guilbault
• Wally Martin as Doorman
• Vlasta Vrána as Kresimer Sviben
• Silvie Debois as Benda Sviben

Production

The film's chaotic structure mirrors the collapse of residential life in the apartment block. The opening shows a young couple being welcomed as residents to the tower block, intercut with Dr Hobbes murdering his adolescent mistress by strangling her, then cutting open her stomach and pouring acid into her body to kill the parasites, and then cutting his own throat. Partway into the story, the audience learn the reason for Hobbes's actions; most of Shivers consists of social set piece tableaux showing the sexual promiscuity that spreads the parasites to the other residents. Cronenberg said he identified with the residents after they were infected; and shows the swinging sterility of "normal" life mercilessly caricatured through the characterization of the bland, rich, young professionals inhabiting the apartment block, and the hard-sell estate agent's sales pitch from Merrick, which accompanies the opening titles.

Shivers was Cronenberg's first feature film, and was the most profitable Canadian film made to date in 1975, but was so controversial that the Canadian parliament debated its social and artistic value and effect upon society, because of objections to its sexual and violent content. The film was shot on Nuns' Island in Montreal.

Release

The film was released theatrically in the United States by Trans American Films in July 1976. The film was released on DVD by Image Entertainment on September 16, 1998 and is currently out of print. It was also released in Canada on a French dub-only DVD titled Frissons on April 23, 2002 by Christal Films (from their earlier 1996 VHS release).

Reception

Shivers has received mostly positive revews and has a rating of 84% on critical review site Rotten Tomatoes. One review that put both the film and David Cronenberg on American radar was a respectful one by Roger Ebert, who noted that he expected a dismal exploitation film since Shivers was part of a double-bill with the rancid faux-snuff film Snuff, but instead was impressed by a lot of the film--even though it did not finish strongly--and ended up giving it a 2 and 1/2 star rating. Cronenberg won "Best Director" at the 1975 Sitges Film Festival.

Canadian journalist Robert Fulford, writing as "Marshall Delaney", decried the content of Shivers in the pages of the national magazine Saturday Night. Since Cronenberg's film was partially financed by the taxpayer-funded Canadian Film Development Corporation (later known as Telefilm Canada), Fulford headlined the article "You Should Know How Bad This Movie Is, You Paid For It." He called it "crammed with blood, violence and depraved sex" and "the most repulsive movie I've ever seen." Not only did this high profile attack make it more difficult for Cronenberg to obtain funding for his subsequent movies, but Cronenberg later said Fulford's article also resulted in him being kicked out of his apartment in Toronto due to his landlord's inclusion of a "morality clause" in the lease.

See also

• Rabid

External links

• Shivers at IMDb
• Shivers at Rotten Tomatoes
• Interview with David Cronenberg about Shivers (CBC television via TIFF)