Shivers/Review

From The Grindhouse Cinema Database

< Shivers

David Cronenberg’s first feature has all the elements of his future erotic horror classics and is a genuine Canuxploitation flick. Shivers is in some ways very influential despite its low budget and amateurish style. It has many aspects that only an indie film can offer and while the acting leaves something to be desired any fan of retro or Canadian cinema would appreciate this grindhouse film.

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The opening segment is done as a commercial for a ‘modern’ apartment complex outside Montreal. This parodist introduction is juxtaposed with cuts to a scene of an older man struggling with a very young and hostile female inside one of the apartments. As the advertisement goes on the young girl is stripped, cut open and acid is poured into her stomach, afterward the older man then slits his own throat. These first parts set up the key elements of Shivers. Firstly we see that the setting is an isolated contemporary residential building. This is the perfect area for a contamination to break out and the actual goings-on inside each apartment are a wonderful contrast with the perfect façade of the facility. Also while the design of everything is incredibly modern for 1975 it now looks beautifully retro. From old pop cans to bright 70’s colours – Shivers captures the style of the era in a way only a low budget film can do.

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The next scene is of a man in another apartment getting ready for work. At one point he looks as if he is about to vomit while brushing his teeth and is continuously curt with his wife when she speaks with him. We then see that he is not going to work but to the young recently deceased women’s residence with which he has been having an affair. It is later explained that this woman has been sleeping with many older men in the building and spreading a disease. This infection contains itself in a slithery blood covered worm-like creature that lives inside the body and causes those exposed to go sexually and violently mad.

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It is later revealed that the man who slit his throat was a kind of radical Frankenstein. He thought that people had become too overly rational and lost their primal instincts. He created an organism that is a combination of aphrodisiac and venereal disease. Realizing he had gone too far he tried to stop it by killing the only human he had infected – the young girl – and then himself with whom the virus had been transferred through their sexual encounters. Little did the doctor know the young woman had been transferring “the shivers” throughout the building. Before there is time to alert the authorities or contain the virus the whole building turns into a wild party of death and sex. Plenty of blood and bare breasts are to follow.

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It would seem that a great deal of the budget was put into the special effects and make up which are very realistic. All the gore and the movement of the creatures inside a character’s stomach are grossly believable. We also see several different mad scenes of infection or the infected. Such as the two young girls being led on a leash and acting like dogs, a man eating the remains of his last victim in an elevator, people getting their clothes ripped off by crazed victims of the virus. And most memorably - vintage scream-queen Barbara Steele getting infected while nude in the tub. Steele’s performance is particularly note-worthy. Unlike the rigid gothic roles she is known for in Italian classics the sexy star plays a liberated 1970’s woman that becomes even more empowered by the shivers. Lynn Lowry is equally alluring and in one scene gives a completely unnecessary yet much appreciated strip tease. Like all Cronenberg’s best movies there’s more than a fair share of sexuality and gore.

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It is a point of the interest that the film did a lot to expand the scope of Canadian cinema and is also proudly Canadian. It was difficult to get funding for Shivers and while Cronenberg may have been able to make the movie in the US he chose to film and set it inside the Great White North. Unlike the 80’s slashers shot north of the border Shivers is set where it was produced. This violent and bizarre horror movie would have been unique for the limited films made in Canada at the time. Shivers has some very interesting philosophical themes about the obsession of rationality in modern times. And without giving too much away the ominous ending is done wonderfully in the same mockumentary style as the introduction. Cronenberg’s first feature is a must-see for any fan of the filmmaker and represents the prototype of the authentic Canuxploitation genre.

Reviewed by Shane D'Antimo

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