SHIVERS (1975)
By 1974
David Cronenberg was worried that after three years his film directing dream
would never properly come to fruition. He’d made his two short experimental
films STEREO and CRIMES OF THE FUTURE and the TV shows he has hired for had not
helped to build a reputations. He went to Los Angeles, wondering after
reluctance if he would have to consider being part of the Hollywood machine to
get funding for his latest script ORGY OF THE BLOOD PARASITES. Roger Corman’s
company loved it, feeling its inexpensive sensational horror premise would be
viable for their undemanding drive-in audience.
Upon returning to Canada,
Cronenberg suddenly found that the exploitation company Cinepix had come
through with backing themselves, and so in wary conjunction with the government
body the Canadian Film Development Corporation, his first feature was in business
to the tune of $179,000. He narrowly avoided an early assimilation into
Hollywood by just one month. This is something which he has still adhered to,
having never shot any of his films in the industry environs of L.A.
SHIVERS
deals with the horrific transmission of parasites between residents in the
lavish apartments of the new Starliner high-rise complex on the fictional
Starliner Island in Montreal. It is activated by the creation of a parasite by
Dr Hobbes, who infects his young mistress with it as an experiment to connect
people to their primal fleshy selves, but doesn’t realise how free his mistress
is with her affections. Hobbes kills his mistress early on and then himself but
he is too late to stop the infection outbreak.
Thus, the leech-like creatures are passed orally amongst the whole
building, causing a psychosexual frenzy of lust and homicide-driven insanity
across the Starliner’s occupancy. Finally, after the heroic efforts of the medical
clinic’s doctor result in his being infected also, we see that come the
morning, the hordes of libidinous occupants now drive out into the city and
beyond, now apparently normal but calmly focused on spreading the terrifying
contagion.
Shooting
covered August to September 1974 and was a valuable first opportunity for
Cronenberg to understand how to delegate to a professional crew; for his
previous films he had been forced to handle all the technical roles himself.
Now he needed to learn the various department’s names and duties and entrust
them. Fortunately he had Ivan (later famous for GHOSTBUSTERS) Reitman as
producer and music composer as well as Joe Blasco, whose under-skin bladder FX
earned great admiration from make-up guru Dick Smith who had pioneered the
technique. Cronenberg also saved money by living in one of the apartments in
the Nun’s Island high-rise used for shooting – by doubling it as the FX
workroom. He had intended to use real
leeches for the close-ups but they were accidentally frozen by a fellow crew
member in the freezer.
The cast was
made up of virtual unknowns for the most part, except for Lynn Lowry who’d been
in George Romero’s THE CRAZIES the year before, as the nurse here, and famous
horror genre star Barbara Steele as the vampy lesbian Betts. Those who’ve seen
STEREO and CRIMES OF THE FUTURE will recognise Ron Mlodzik as the unruffled,
soothing promotional agent for Starliner (It’s his voice you hear as well on
the promo film at the start selling the complex’s virtues). He has a chillingly
effective scene near the end where he helps take a terrified couple to a room
and then reveals it’s a trap to throw them to the libidinous wolves waiting for
their next sexual victim. Paul Hampton, the smooth Doctor Roger St Luc is
overly-relaxed for the most part until the tension is amped to critical. He is
more famous in real-life as a writer of pop songs. Probably the most
accomplished performer of the supporting cast is Joe Silver as the researcher
Rollo Linsky, making the connections between Dr Hobbes, the girl and the
infection. He is also almost never seen without eating a pickle, even when
driving.
The horror
sequences and the almost documentary feel of SHIVERS have a nightmarishly
effective tone. Despite some haphazard acting and awkward fight scenes, they
have a macabre edge. The passing of the parasite through the throats of Steele
and Lowry is unsettling, as are the corridor rampages and a great sequence
where St Luc escapes outside from the pool only to be confronted by a zombie-esque
chain of residents looming up out of the dark.
It’s not
surprising that there are staging weaknesses occasionally in the scenes.
Because of the intense budget strain, many more set-ups had to be shot each day
than would be normal including FX, car-crashes etc
The title
changed upon release to THE PARASITE MURDERS and then finally once the
French-Canadian distributors saw how well it did under the French title
FRISSONS, they used the English equivalent SHIVERS (aka THEY CAME FROM WITHIN
in the USA). French critics saw the film as almost a political attack on the
insulated, middle-class bourgeoisie and Cronenberg at least agreed enough to
admit that “people vicariously enjoy the
scenes where guys kick down doors and do whatever they want to the people inside…
a vicarious thrill in seeing the forbidden”.
In the UK,
James Ferman’s BBFC passed SHIVERS uncut, which is slightly surprising as he
was known for being highly sensitive to film-makers who exploited clear combinations of sex and violence.
Clearly, he felt that there was justification for sexualised brutality in the
plot. There were complaints back in Canada from appalled people getting wind of
taxpayers’ money being used to fund such a graphically-unpleasant horror movie. However, the film made a profit - unlike many. Like Clive Barker later, Cronenberg had
no patience with the idea of hiding the horror from the audience: “The very purpose was to show the
unshowable, to speak the unspeakable…”.Also, as he pointed out, in a film
that relies on visual depictions, if you cut away from the FX shots, the
audience wouldn’t know what was happening.
SHIVERS not
only made money, it began to make the writer/director’s reputation in the
horror field. Even Martin Scorcese was quoted as admiring the ending’s power: “The last scene…with the cars going out to
infect the entire world…is something I’ve never been able to shake”.
The
perversion of science for human experimentation, the revolt of the body from
the inside against its owner, public panic in the face of infection, all these
themes would be developed by David Cronenberg in the follow-on RABID and then beyond into the decades to come…
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