31 Days of Horror- Day 22: Rabid (1977)

(dir. David Cronenberg)

Cinepix Film Properties Inc./New World Pictures

*First time viweing

After a motorcycle accident, a young woman receives experimental plastic surgery that leaves her with a appendage that creates a rabies-like epidemic.

One of the few David Cronenberg films I hadn’t seen, Rabid definitely fits in with the early Cronenberg canon, and works best as a companion piece to Shivers rather than to his later, more ambitious and thematically resonant body horror entries. While much of Cronenberg’s signatures, the body mutation, the unintentional AIDS metaphor, scientific mistakes given sinister power, are all present, Rabid doesn’t have the same confidence as Cronenberg’s later films or even the ones that immediately followed, like The Brood, or Scanners. Cronenberg struggled creatively with the film and while he managed to pull the film and himself together, Rabid still feels like its holding something back. Part of that is surely due to the budget, and part of that is a result of the not-so-great male leads. But the dissimilar elements of experimental skin grafts, a stinger like appendage that grows from lead Marilyn Chambers’ armpit, and the outbreak of a rage virus are all worthy of the uniqueness of Cronenberg’s name.

Cronenberg famously cast porn star Marilyn Chambers as the lead and originator of the virus, Rose. And despite her lack of classical acting training, Chambers is the most compelling part of the film, and the first in Cronenberg’s long line of protagonists who unwillingly and tragically, become threats to our very defined notions of humanity. While Canada becomes encompassed by the outbreak, Cronenberg stays focused on Rose and her almost blissful ignorance of her own role in the imminent destruction of the country. She’s a victim of body horror without even knowing the full extent of the horror her body has caused.  While Rabid is very much Cronenberg’s verson of Romero’s zombies (Dawn of the Dead wouldn’t be released until the year after, but pessimistic Rabid’s ending parallels Night of the Living Dead’s) it’s scope is narrower and more intimate and clearly points at the direction his future stories would venture.

Scare Factor: 1/5 Even as social commentary, we’ve seen many of Rabid’s ideas dealt with before in other properties, but for those interested in the evolution of the director, Rabid is a key film Cronenberg's development into an auteur.